In the year 1796 the Pacific Ocean was by no means as familiar to navigators as it is to-day.  Cooke had made his celebrated voyages less than twenty years before, and the accounts of them were then before the world; but even Cooke left a great deal to be ascertained, more especially in the way of details.  The first inventor, or discoverer of anything, usually gains a great name, though it is those who come after him that turn his labours to account.  Did we know no more of America to-day than was known to Columbus, our knowledge would be very limited, and the benefits of his vast enterprise still in their infancy.

Compared with its extent, perhaps, and keeping in view its ordinary weather, the Pacific can hardly be considered a dangerous sea; but he who will cast his eyes over its chart, will at once ascertain how much more numerous are its groups, islands, rocks, shoals and reefs, than those of the Atlantic.  Still, the mariners unhesitatingly steered out into its vast waters, and none with less reluctance and fewer doubts than those of America.

For nearly two months did Captain Crutchely, after quitting Valparaiso, hold his way into the depths of that mighty sea, in search of the islands he had been directed to find.  Sandal-wood was his aim, a branch of commerce, by the way, which ought never to be pursued by any Christian man, or Christian nation, if what we hear of its uses in China be true.  There, it is said to be burned as incense before idols, and no higher offence can be committed by any human being than to be principal, or accessory, in any manner or way, to the substitution of any created thing for the ever-living God.  In after-life Mark Woolston often thought of this, when reflection succeeded to action, and when he came to muse on the causes which may have led to his being the subject of the wonderful events that occurred in connection with his own fortunes.  We have now reached a part of our narrative, however, when it becomes necessary to go into details, which we shall defer to the commencement of a new chapter.

Chapter III.

    “God of the dark and heavy deep! 
      The waves lie sleeping on the sands,
    Till the fierce trumpet of the storm
      Hath summon’d up their thundering bands;
    Then the white sails are clashed like foam,
      Or hurry trembling o’er the seas,
    Till calmed by thee, the sinking gale
      Serenely breathes, Depart in peace.”

    Peabody.

The day that preceded the night of which we are about to speak, was misty, with the wind fresh at east-south-east.  The Rancocus was running off, south-west, and consequently was going with the wind free.  Captain Crutchely had one failing, and it was a very bad one for a ship-master; he would drink rather too much grog, at his dinner.  At all other times he might have been called a sober man; out, at dinner, he would gulp down three or four