"had I
but been born with the graundee, I need not be now racking my brains to
get my child clothes."--"What do you mean by that?" says she.--"Why,"
says I, "I would have flown to my ship (for I had long before related
to her all my sea adventures, till the vessel's coming to the magnetical
rock), and have brought some such things from thence, as you, not
wanting them in this country, can have no notion of." She seemed mighty
inquisitive to understand how a ship was made, what it was most like to,
how a person who never saw one might know it only by the description,
and how one might get into it; with abundance of the like questions.
She then inquired what sort of things those needles and several other
utensils were, which I had at times been speaking of; and in what
part of a ship they usually kept such articles. And I, to gratify her
curiosity, as I perceived she took a pleasure in hearing me, answered
all her questions to a scruple; not then conceiving the secret purpose
of all this inquisitiveness.

About two days after this, having been out two or three hours in the
morning, to cut wood, at coming home I found Pedro crying, ready
to break his heart, and his little brother Tommy hanging to him and
crawling about the floor after him: the youngest pretty baby was fast
asleep upon one of the beast-fish skins, in a corner of the room. I
asked Pedro for his mother; but the poor infant had nothing farther to
say to the matter, than "Mammy run away, I cry! mammy run away, I
cry!" I wondered where she was gone, never before missing her from our
habitation. However, I waited patiently till bed-time, but no wife.
I grew very uneasy then; yet, as my children were tired and sleepy, I
thought I had best go to bed with them, and make quiet; so, giving all
three their suppers, we lay down together. They slept; but my mind was
too full to permit the closure of my eyes. A thousand different chimeras
swam in my imagination relating to my wife. One while I fancied her
carried away by her kinsfolks; then, that she was gone of her own accord
to make peace with her father. But that thought would not fix, being put
aside by her constant tenderness to her children and regard to me, whom
I was sure she would not have left without notice. "But alas!" says I,
"she may even now be near me, but taken so ill she cannot get home, or
she may have died suddenly in the wood." I lay tumbling and tossing in
great anxiety, not able to find out any exc