Chapter 19

"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 blow at all,
but there was wind enough to serve to cast the schooner, and she went
slowly out of the rocky basin, under her mainsail, foretopsail, and jib.
The wind was at south-west,--the nor-wester of that hemisphere,--and it
was fresh and howling enough, on the other side of the island. After
Roswell had made a stretch out into the bay of about a mile, he laid his
foretopsail flat aback, hauled over his jib-sheet, and put his helm hard
down, in waiting for the other schooner to come out and join him. In a
quarter of an hour, Daggett got within hail.

"Well," called out the last, "you see I was right, Garner; wind enough out
here, and more, still further from the land. We have only to push in among
them bergs while it is light, pick out a clear spot, and heave-to during
the night. It will hardly do for us to travel among so much ice in the
dark."

"I wish we had got out earlier, that we might have made a run of it by
day-light," answered Roswell. "Ten hours of such a wind, in my judgment,
would carry us well towards clear water."

"The delay could not be helped. I had so many traps ashore, it took time
to gather them together. Come, fill away, and let us be moving. Now we are
under way, I'm in as great haste as you are yourself."

Roswell complied, and away the two schooners went, keeping quite