human
Four thousand dollars, Mary, will quite cover the first cost of the schooner; that is without including outfit and spare-rigging, of which her master took about twice as much as was necessary. He's a capital fellow, is that young Gar'ner, and will make an excellent husband, as I've always told you, child. A little wasteful, perhaps, but an excellent youth at the bottom. I dare say he lost his spars off Cape Hatteras in trying to outsail that Daggett; but I overlook all that now. He's a capital youth to work upon a whale or a sea-elephant! There isn't his equal, as I'll engage, in all Ameriky, if you'll only let him know where to find the creatur's. I knew his character before I engaged him; for no man but a real skinner shall ever command a craft of mine.
gpt
Roswell _is_ a good fellow, answered Mary, with emphasis, the tears filling her eyes as she listened to these eulogiums of her uncle on the youth she loved with all of a woman's tenderness, at the very moment she scrupled to place her happiness on one whose 'God was not her God.'
human
No one knows him better than I, uncle, and no one respects him more. But, had I not better read the rest of his letter?--there is a good deal more of it.
gpt
Go on, child, go on--but, read the part over again where he speaks of the quantity of the ile he has shipped to Fish & Grinnell.
human
I have been much at a loss how to act in regard to Captain Daggett, said Roswell, in his letter.
gpt
He stood by me so manfully and generously off Cape Hatteras, that I did not like to part company in the night, or in a squall, which would have seemed ungrateful, as well as wearing a sort of runaway look. I am afraid he has some knowledge of the existence of our islands, though I doubt whether he has their latitude and longitude exactly. Something there is of this nature on board the other schooner, her people often dropping hints to my officers and men, when they have been gamming. I have sometimes fancied Daggett sticks so close to us, that he may get the advantage of our reckoning to help him to what he wants to find. He is no great navigator anywhere, running more by signs and currents, in my judgment, than by the use of his instruments. Still, he could find his way to any part of the world.
human
Stop there, Mary; stop a little, and let me have time to consider. Isn't it awful, child?
gpt
What is awful, uncle?
human
This covetousness in them Vineyarders! I consider it both awful and wicked. I must get the Rev. Mr. Whittle to preach against the sin of covetousness; it does gain so much ground in Ameriky! The whole church should lift its voice against it, or it will shortly lift its voice against the church. To think of them Daggetts' fitting out a schooner to follow my craft about the 'arth in this unheard-of manner; just as if she was a pilot-boat, and young Gar'ner a pilot! I do hope the fellows will make a wrack of it, among the ice of the antarctic seas! That would be a fit punishment for their impudence and covetousness.
gpt
I suppose, sir, they think that they have the same right to sail on the ocean that others have. Seals and whales are the gifts of God, and one person has no more right to them than another.
human
You forget, Mary, that one man may have a secret that another doesn't know. In that case he ought not to go prying about like an old woman in a village neighbourhood. Read on, child, read on, and let me know the worst at once.
gpt
I shall sail to-morrow, having finished all my business here, and hope to be off Cape Horn in twenty days, if not sooner. In what manner I am to get rid of Daggett, I do not yet know. He outsails me a little on all tacks, unless it be in very heavy weather, when I have a trifling advantage over him. It will be in my power to quit him any dark night; but if I let him go ahead, and he should really have any right notions about the position of the islands, he might get there first, and make havoc among the seals.
human
Awful, awful! interrupted the deacon, again;
gpt
Alas! uncle, poor Roswell is too far from us, now, to hear these words. No doubt the matter is long since decided, and he has acted according to the best of his judgment.
human
It is terrible to have one's property so far away! Government ought to have steam-boats, or packets of some sort, running between New York and Gape Horn, to carry orders back and forth.--But we shall never have things right, Mary, so long as the democrats are uppermost.
gpt
Whig Principles. We are no great politician, but time has given us the means of comparing; and we often smile when we hear the disciples of Hamilton, and of Adams, and of all that high-toned school, declaiming against the use of the veto, and talking of the