Chapter 8 - Page 2

"All places have their dangers to your sleepy navigator, deacon; but the
man who keeps his eyes open has little to fear. Had you given us a
chronometer, there would not have been one-half the risk there will be
without one."

This had been a bone of contention between the master of the Sea Lion and
his owner. Chronometers were not, by any means, in as general use at the
period of our tale as they are to-day; and the deacon abhorred the expense
to which such an article would have put him. Could he have got one at a
fourth of the customary price he might have been tempted; but it formed no
part of his principles of saving to anticipate and prevent waste by
liberality.

No sooner was the schooner released from the ground than her sails were
filled, and she went by the low spit of sand already mentioned, with the
light south-west breeze still blowing in her favour, and an ebb tide.
Everything appeared propitious, and no vessel probably ever left home
under better omens. The deacon remained on board until Baiting Joe, who
was to act as his boatman, reminded him of the distance and the
probability that the breeze would go down entirely with the sun. As it
was, they had to contend with wind and tide, and it would require all his
own knowledge of the eddies to get the whale-boat up to Oyster Pond in
anything like reasonable time. Thus admonished, the owner tore himself
away from his beloved craft, giving "young Gar'ner" as many 'last words'
as if he were about to be executed. Roswell had a last word on his part,
however, in the shape of a message to Mary.

"Tell Mary, deacon," said the young sailor, in an aside, "that I rely on
her promise, and that I shall think of her, whether it be under the
burning sun of the line, or among the ice of the antarctic."

"Yes, yes; that's as it should be," answered the deacon, heartily. "I
like your perseverance, Gar'ner, and hope the gal will come round yet, and
I shall have you for a nephew. There's nothing that takes the women's
minds like money. Fill up the schooner with skins and ile, and bring back
that treasure, and you make as sure of Mary for a wife as if the parson
had said the benediction over you."

Such was Deacon Pratt's notion of his niece, as well as of the female sex.
For months he regarded this speech as a _coup de maitre_, while Roswell
Gardiner forgot it in half an hour; so much better than the uncle did the
lover comprehend the character of the niece.

The Sea Lion, of Oyster Pond, had now cast off the last ligament which
connected her with the land. She had no pilot, none being necessary, or
usual, in those waters; all that a vessel had to do being to give Long
Island a sufficient berth