“I believe you’re right, sir,” answered Hazard, the chief-mate, who was now on deck.  “There’s a sealing look about the gentleman, if I know my own complexion.  It’s odd enough, Captain Gar’ner, that two of us should come together, out here in the offing, and both of us bound to the other end of the ’arth!”

“There is nothing so very remarkable in that, Mr. Hazard, when we remember that the start must be properly timed for those who wish to be off Cape Horn in the summer season.  We shall neither of us get there much before December, and I suppose the master of you schooner knows that as well as I do myself.  The position of this craft puzzles me far more than anything else about her.  From what port can a vessel come, that she should be just here, with the wind at south-west?”

“Ay, sir,” put in Green, who was moving about the decks, coiling ropes and clearing things away, “that’s what I tell the chief-mate.  Where can a craft come from, to be just here, with this wind, if she don’t come from Stunnin’tun.  Even from Stunnin’tun she’d be out of her way; but no such vessel has been in that port any time these six weeks.  Here, you Stimson, come this way a bit.  Didn’t you tell me something of having seen a schooner at New Bedford, that was about our build and burthen, and that you understood had been bought for a sealer?”

“Ay, ay, sir,” answered Stimson, as bluff an old sea-dog as ever flattened in a jib-sheet, “and that’s the craft, as I’m a thinkin’, Mr. Green.  She had an animal for a figure-head, and that craft has an animal, as well as I can judge, at this distance.”

“You are right enough there, Stephen,” cried Roswell Gardiner, “and that animal is a seal.  It’s the twin-brother of the sea lion we carry under our own bowsprit.  There’s some proof in that, tastes agree sometimes, even if they do differ generally.  What became of the schooner you saw?”

“I heard, sir, that she was bought up by some Vineyard men, and was taken across to Hum’ses Hull.  They sometimes fit out a craft there, as well as on the main.  I should have crossed myself to see what they was at, but I fell in with Mr. Green, and shipped aboard here.”

“An adventure by which, I hope, you will not be a loser, my hearty,” put in the captain.  “And you think that is the craft which was built at New Bedford, and fitted out on the Vineyard?”

“Sartain of it, sir; for I know the figure-head, and all about her build.”

“Hand me the trumpet, Mr. Green; we shall soon be near enough for a hail, and it will be easy to learn the truth.”

Roswell Gardiner waited a few minutes for the two schooners to close, and was in the very act of applying the trumpet to his mouth, when the usual salutation was sent across the water from the stranger.  During the conversation that now took place, the vessels gradually drew nearer to each other, until both parties laid aside their trumpets, and carried on the discourse with the unaided voice.