or three mornings without his warm meal and hot coffee,"
answered Stimson, shaking his head, "and he will be glad enough to come
into the scheme. A man soon gets willing to set fire to anything that
will burn in such a climate. A notion has been floating about in my mind,
Captain Gar'ner, that I've several times thought I would mention to you.
D'ye think, sir, any benefit could be made of that volcano over the bay,
should the worst get to the worst with us?"

"I have thought of the same thing, Stephen; though I fear in vain, I
suppose no useful heat can be given out there, until one gets too near the
bad air to breathe it. What you say about breaking up the other schooner,
however, is worthy of consideration; and I will speak to Captain Daggett
about it."

Roswell was as good as his word; and the Vineyard mariner met the proposal
as one repels an injury. Never were our two masters so near a serious
misunderstanding, as when Roswell suggested to Daggett the expediency of
breaking up the wreck, now that the weather was endurable, and the men
could work with reasonable comfort and tolerable advantage.

"The man who puts an axe or a saw into that unfortunate craft," said
Daggett, firmly, "I shall regard as an enemy. It is a hard enough bed that
she lies on, without having her ribs and sides torn to pieces by hands."

This was the strange spirit in which Daggett, continued to look at the
condition of the wreck! It was true that the ice prevented his actually
seeing the impossibility of his ever getting his schooner into the water
again; but no man at all acquainted with mechanics, and who knew the
paucity of means that existed on the island, could for a moment entertain
the idle expectation that seemed to have got into the Vineyard-master's
mind, unless subject to a species of one-idea infatuation. This
infatuation, however, existed not only in Daggett's mind, but in some
degree in those of his men. It is said that "in a multitude of counsellors
there is wisdom;" and the axiom comes from an authority too venerable to
be disputed. But it might, almost with equal justice, be said, that "in-a
multitude of counsellors there is folly;" for men are quite as apt to
sustain each other in the wrong as in the right. The individual who would
hesitate about advancing his fallacies and mistakes with a single voice,
does not scruple to proclaim them on the hill-tops, when he finds other
tongues to repeat his errors. Divine wisdom, fore