Chapter 2 - Page 2

for half price. On alighting, the uncle
approached the niece with somewhat of interest in his mariner.

"Well, Mary," said the former, "how does he get on, now?"

"Oh! my dear sir he cannot possibly live, I think, and I do most
earnestly entreat that you will let me send across to the Harbour for Dr.
Sage."

By the Harbour was meant Sag's, and the physician named was one of merited
celebrity in old Suffolk. So healthy was the country in general, and so
simple were the habits of the people, that neither lawyer nor physician
was to be found in every hamlet, as is the case to-day. Both were to be
had at Riverhead, as well as at Sag Harbour; but, if a man called out
"Squire," or "Doctor," in the highways of Suffolk, sixteen men did not
turn round to reply, as is said to be the case in other regions; one half
answering to the one appellation, and the second half to the other. The
deacon had two objections to yielding to his niece's earnest request; the
expense being one, though it was not, in this instance, the greatest;
there was another reason that he kept to himself, but which will appear as
our narrative proceeds.

A few weeks previously to the Sunday in question, a sea-going vessel,
inward bound, had brought up in Gardiner's Bay, which is a usual anchorage
for all sorts of craft. A worn-out and battered seaman had been put ashore
on Oyster Pond, by a boat from this vessel, which sailed to the westward
soon after, proceeding most probably to New York. The stranger was not
only well advanced in life, but he was obviously wasting away with
disease.

The account given of himself by this seaman was sufficiently explicit. He
was born on Martha's Vineyard, but, as is customary with the boys of that
island, he had left home in his twelfth year, and had now been absent from
the place of his birth a little more than half a century. Conscious of the
decay which beset him, and fully convinced that his days were few and
numbered, the seaman, who called himself Tom Daggett, had felt a desire to
close his eyes in the place where they had first been opened to the light
of day. He had persuaded the commander of the craft mentioned, to bring
him from the West Indies, and to put him ashore as related, the Vineyard
being only a hundred miles or so to the eastward of Oyster Pond Point. He
trusted to luck to give him the necessary opportunity of overcoming these
last hundred miles.

Daggett was poor, as he admitted, as well as friendless and unknown. He
had with him, nevertheless, a substantial sea-chest, one of those that the
sailors of that day uniformly used in merchant-vessels, a man-of-war
compelling them to carry their clothes in bags, for the