y is better worth hearing than fifty Marys. As to my
niece, Gar'ner, you are welcome to her, if she will have you; and why she
does not is to me unaccountable. But, you see that chart--look at it well,
and tell me if you find anything new or remarkable about it."

"It looks like old times, deacon, and here are many places that I have
visited and know. What have we here? Islands laid down in pencil, with the
latitude and longitude in figures! Who says there is land, thereaway,
Deacon Pratt, if I may be so free as to ask the question?"

"I do--and capital good land it is, for a sealing craft to get alongside
of. Them islands, Gar'ner, may make your fortune, as well as mine. No
matter how I know they are there--it is enough that I _do_ know it, and
that I wish you to carry the Sea Lion to that very spot, as straight as
you can go; fill her up with elephant's oil, ivory, and skins, and bring
her back again as fast as she can travel."

"Islands in that latitude and longitude!" said Roswell Gardiner, examining
the chart as closely as if it were of very fine print indeed--"I never
heard of any such land before!"

"'Tis there, notwithstanding; and like all land in distant seas that men
have not often troubled, plentifully garnished with what will pay the
mariner well for his visit."

"Of that I have little doubt, should there be actually any land there. It
may be a Cape Fly Away that some fellow has seen in thick weather. The
ocean is full of such islands!"

"This is none of them. It is bony fidy 'arth, as I know from the man who
trod it. You must take good care, Gar'ner, and not run the schooner on
it"--with a small chuckling laugh, such as a man little accustomed to this
species of indulgence uses, when in high good-humour. "I am not rich
enough to buy and fit out Sea Lions for you to cast 'em away."

"That's a high latitude, deacon, to carry a craft into. Cook, himself,
fell short of _that_, somewhat!"

"Never mind Cook--he was a king's navigator--my man was an American
sealer; and what he has once seen he knows where to find again. There are
the islands--three in number and there you will find 'em, with animals on
their shores as plenty as clam-shells on the south beach."

"I hope it may be so. If land is there, and you'll risk the schooner,
I'll try to get a look at it. I shall want you to put it down in black and
white, however, that I'm to go as high as this."

"You shall have any authority a man may ask. On th