I call a craft at sea.
Eight-and-forty hours more of this wind would just about carry us there.
Waal, sir, as we're bound on the same sort of v'y'ge, I'm happy to have
fallen in with you; and I see no reason why we should not be neighbourly,
and 'gam' it a little, when we've nothing better to do. I like that
schooner of yours so well, that I've made my own to look as nearly
resembling her as I could. You see our paint is exactly the same."

"I have observed that, Captain Daggett; and you might say the same of the
figure-heads."

"Ay, ay; when I was over on the P'int, they told me the name of the
carver, in Boston, who cut your seal, and I sent to him to cut me a twin.
If they lay in a ship-yard, side by side, I don't think you could tell
one from the other."

"So it seems, sir. Pray haven't you a man aboard there of the name of
Watson?"

"Ay, ay--he's my second-mate. I know what you mean, Captain Gar'ner--
you 're right enough, 'tis the same hand who was aboard you; but wanting
a second officer, I offered him the berth, and he thought that better than
taking a foremast lay in your craft."

This explanation probably satisfied all who heard it, though the truth was
not more than half told. In point of fact, Watson was engaged as Daggett's
second mate _before_ he had ever laid eyes on Roswell Gardiner, and had
been sent to watch the progress of the work on Oyster Pond, as has been
previously stated. It was so much in the natural order of events for a man
to accept preferment when offered, however, that even Gardiner himself
blamed the delinquent for the desertion far less than he had previously
done. In the mean time the conversation proceeded.

"You told us nothing of your having that schooner fitting, when you were
on the Point," observed Roswell Gardiner, whose thoughts just then
happened to advert to this particular fact.

"My mind was pretty much taken up with the affairs of my poor uncle, I
suppose, Captain Gar'ner. Death must visit each of us, once; nevertheless,
it makes us all melancholy when he comes among friends."

Now, Roswell Gardiner was not in the least sentimental, nor had he the
smallest turn towards indulging in moral inferences, from ordinary events;
but, this answer seemed so proper, that it found no objection in his mind.
Still, the young man had his suspicions on the subject of the equipment of
the other schooner, and suspicions that were now active and keen, and
which led him directly to f