at all, it will be on a very _unusual_
business, and one that may make all our fortunes--your'n, as well as his'n
and mine, Mary."

"I hope that sealers never meddle with the transportation of slaves,
uncle!" the girl exclaimed, with a face filled with apprehension. "I would
rather live and die poor, than have anything to do with them!"

"I see no such great harm in the trade, gal; but such is not Roswell's
ar'nd in the West Ingees. It's a great secret, the reason of his call
there; and I will venture to foretell that, should he make it, and should
it turn out successful, you will marry him, gal."

Mary made no reply. Well was she assured that Roswell had an advocate in
her own heart, that was pleading for him, night and day; but firm was her
determination not to unite herself with one, however dear to her, who set
up his feeble understanding of the nature of the mediation between God
and man, in opposition to the plainest language of revelation, as well as
to the prevalent belief of the church, since the ages that immediately
succeeded the Christian era.

Chapter XIX.

"Poor child of danger, nursling of the storm,
Sad are the woes that wreck thy manly form!
Rocks, waves, and winds the shatter'd bark delay;
Thy heart is sad, thy home is far away."

Campbell.

It was about midday, when the two Sea Lions opened their canvass, at the
same moment, and prepared to quit Sealer's Land. All hands were on board,
every article was shipped for which there was room, and nothing remained
that denoted the former presence of man on that dreary island, but the
deserted house, and three or four piles of cord-wood, that had grown on
Shelter Island and Martha's Vineyard, and which was now abandoned on the
rocks of the antarctic circle. As the topsails were sheeted home, and the
heavy fore-and-aft mainsails were hoisted, the songs of the men sounded
cheerful and animating. 'Home' was in every tone, each movement, all the
orders. Daggett was on deck, in full command, though still careful of his
limb, while Roswell appeared to be everywhere. Mary Pratt was before his
mind's eye all that morning; nor did he even once think how pleasant it
would be to meet her uncle, with a "There, deacon, is your schooner, with
a good cargo of elephant-oil, well chucked off with fur-seal skins."

The Oyster Pond craft was the first clear of the ground. The breeze was
little felt in that cove, where usually it did not seem to bl