Instead of entangling himself in the channels to leeward, Mark made the land well to the northward, entering the group by a passage that led him quite down to the Reef, as the original island was now uniformly called, with a flowing sheet.  Of course the schooner was seen an hour before she arrived, and everybody was out on the Reef to greet the adventurers.  Fears mingled with the other manifestations of joy, when the result of this great enterprise came to be known.  Mark had a delicious moment when he folded the sobbing Bridget to his heart, and Friend Martha was overcome in a way that it was not usual for her to betray feminine weakness.

Everybody exulted in the success of the colony, and it was hoped that the future would be as quiet as it was secure.

But recent events began to give the governor trouble, on other accounts.  The accession to his numbers, as well as the fact that these men were seamen, and had belonged to the Rancocus, set him thinking on the subject of his duty to the owners of that vessel.  So long as he supposed him self to be a cast-away, he had made use of their property without compunction, but circumstances were now changed, and he felt it to be a duty seriously to reflect on the possibility of doing something for the benefit of those who had, undesignedly it is true, contributed so much to his own comfort.  In order to give this important subject a due consideration, as well as to relieve the minds of those at the Peak, the Abraham sailed for the cove the morning after her arrival at the Reef.  Bridget went across to pay Anne a visit, and most of the men were of the party.  The Neshamony had carried over the intelligence of Waally’s repulse, and of the Abraham’s having gone to that chief’s island, but the result of this last expedition remained to be communicated.

The run was made in six hours, and the Abraham was taken into the cove, and anchored there, just as easily as one of the smaller craft.  There was water enough for anything that floated, the principal want being that of room, though there was enough even of room to receive a dozen vessels of size.  The place, indeed, was a snug, natural basin, rather than a port, but art could not have made it safer, or even much more commodious.  It was all so small an island could ever require in the way of a haven, it not being probable that the trade of the place would reach an amount that the shipping it could hold would not carry.

The governor now summoned a general council of the colony.  The seven seamen attended, as well as all the others, one or two at the crater excepted, and the business in hand was entered on soberly, and, in some respects, solemnly.  In the first place, the constitution and intentions of the colonists were laid before the seven men, and they were asked as to their wishes for the future.  Four of these men, including Brown, at once signed the constitution, and were sworn in as citizens.  It was their wish