take an oath."

"An oath, deacon!--This is quite new for the sealing business--as
ceremonious as Uncle Sam's people."

"Yes, sir, an oath; and an oath that must be most religiously kept, and on
this bible. Without the oath, our whole connection must fall through,
captain Gar'ner."

"Rather than that should happen, deacon, I will cheerfully take two oaths;
one to clench the other."

"It is well. I ask you, Roswell Gar'ner, to swear on this Holy Book that
the secrets I shall now reveal to you shall not be told to any other,
except in a manner prescribed by myself; that in no other man's employment
will you profit by them and that you will in all things connected with
them be true and faithful to your engagements to me and to my
interests--so help you God!"

Roswell Gardiner kissed the book, while he wondered much, and was dying
with curiosity to know what was to follow. This great point secured, the
deacon laid aside the sacred volume, opened a drawer, and produced the two
all-important charts, to which he had transferred the notes of Daggett.

"Captain Gar'ner," resumed the deacon, spreading the chart of the
antarctic sea on the bed, "you must have known me and my ways long enough
to feel some surprise at finding me, at my time of life, first entering
into the shipping concern."

"If I've felt any surprise, deacon, it is that a man of your taste and
judgment should have held aloof so long from the only employment that I
think fit for a man of real energy and character."

"Ay, this is well enough for you to say, as a seaman yourself; though you
will find it hard to persuade most of those who live on shore into your
own ways of thinking."

"That is because people ashore think and act as they have been brought up
to do. Now, just look at that chart, deacon; see how much of it is water,
and how little of it is land. Minister Whittle told us, only the last
Sabbath, that nothing was created without a design, and that a wise
dispensation of Divine Providence was to be seen in all the works of
nature. Now, if the land was intended to take the lead of the water, would
there have been so much more of the last than of the first, deacon? That
was the idea that came into my mind when I heard the minister's words; and
had not Mary--"

"What of Mary?" demanded the deacon, perceiving that the young man paused.

"Only I was in hopes that what you had to say, deacon, might have some
connection with her."

"What I have to sa