order to obtain an answer.
"He's in a bad way, certainly, young lady," observed the doctor, taking a seat on one of the benches, "and I can give no hope. How long he may live, is another matter. If he has friends whom he wishes to see, or if he has any affairs to settle, the truth should be told him at once, and no time lost."
"He knows nothing of his friends," interrupted the deacon, quite thrown off his guard by his own eagerness, and unconscious, at the moment, of the manner in which he was committing himself on the subject of a knowledge of the sick man's birth-place, "not having been on the Vineyard, or heard from there, since he first left home, quite fifty years since."
The doctor saw the contradiction, and it set him thinking, and conjecturing, but he was too discreet to betray himself. An explanation there probably was, and he trusted to time to ascertain it.
"What has become of captain Gar'ner?" he asked, looking curiously around, as if he expected to find him tied to the niece's apron-string.
Mary blushed, but she was too innocent to betray any real confusion.
"He has gone back to the schooner, in order to have the boat ready for your return."
"And that return must take place, young lady, as soon as I have drunk two cups of your tea. I have patients at the Harbour who must yet be visited this evening, and the wind goes down with the sun. Let the poor man take the draughts I have left for him--they will soothe him, and help his breathing--more than this my skill can do nothing for him. Deacon, you need say nothing of this visit--I am sufficiently repaid by the air, the sail, and Miss Mary's welcome. I perceive that she is glad to see me, and that is something, between so young a woman and so old a man. And now for the two cups of tea."
The tea was drunk, and the doctor took his leave, shaking his head as he repeated to the niece, that the medical science could do nothing for the sick man.
"Let his friends know his situation at once, deacon," he said, as they walked towards the wharf, where the whale-boat was all ready for a start. "There is not an hour to lose. Now I think of it, the Flash, captain Smith, is to take a cargo of oil to Boston, and sails to-morrow. I can write a line by her, as it is ten to one she will go into the Hole. All our craft get into that Hole, or into Tarpaulin Cove, before they venture across the Shoals; and a letter addressed to any person of the name of Daggett might find the right man. I'll write it this very evening."
The announcement of this intention threw the deacon into a cold-sweat, but he did not think it prudent to say aught against it. He had bought the Sea Lion, engaged Roswell Gardiner, and otherwise expended a large sum of money, in the expectation of handling those doubloons, to say nothing of the furs; and here was a chance of all his calculations being defeated by the interference of impertinent and greedy relatives! There was no remedy but patience, and this the deacon endeavoured to exercise.
Deacon Pratt did not accompany the doctor beyond the limits of his own orchard. It was not deemed seemly for a member of the meeting to be seen walking out on the Sabbath, and this was remembered in season to prevent neighbourly comments. It is true, the doctor might furnish an apology; but, your strictly religious people, when they undertake the care of other people's consciences, do not often descend to these particulars.
No sooner had Gardiner and the physician re-embarked than the deacon returned to the cottage of the Widow White. Here he had another long and searching discourse with the sick mariner. Poor Daggett was wearied with the subject; but Dr. Sage's predictions of an early termination of the case, and the possibility that kinsmen might cross over from the 'Vineyard,' in order to learn what the long absent man had in his possession, acted on him as keen incentives. By learning the most material facts now, the Sea Lion might get so far ahead of all competitors as to secure the prizes, even should Daggett let others into the secret, and start another vessel on the same expedition. His own schooner was nearly ready for sea, whereas time would be needed in order to make an entire outfit.
But Daggett did not appear to be disposed to be more communicative than heretofore. He went over the narrative of the discovery of the sealing-island, and gave a graphic account of the number and tame condition of the animals who frequented it. A man might walk in their midst without giving the smallest alarm. In a word, all that a gang of good hands would have to do, would be to kill, and skin, and secure the oil. It would be like picking up dollars on a sea-beach. Sadly! sadly! indeed, was the deacon's cupidity excited by this account; a vivid picture of whales, or seals, having some such effect on the imagination of a true Suffolk county man, or more properly on that of an East-ender, as those who live beyond Riverhead are termed, as a glowing account of a prairie covered with wheat has on that of a Wolverine or a Buck eye; or an enumeration of cent per cent. has on the feelings of a Wall-street broker. Never before had Deacon Pratt been so much "exercised" with a love of Mammon. The pirate's tale, which was also recapitulated with much gusto, scarce excited him as much as Daggett's glowing account of the number, condition, and size of the seals.
Nothing was withheld but the latitudes and longitudes. No art of the deacon's, and he practised many, could extort from the mariner these most material facts, without which all the rest were useless; and the old man worked himself into a fever almost as high as that which soon came over Daggett, in the effort to come at these facts--but all in vain.
At that hour the pulse of the sick man usually quickened; but, on this occasion, it fairly thumped. He had excited himself, as well as his listener; and the inconsiderate manner in which both had yielded up their energies to these enticing images of wealth, contributed largely to increase the evil. At length, exhaustion came to put an end to the scene, which was getting to be dramatic as well as revolting.
So conscious was the deacon, on returning home that evening, that his mind was not in such a condition as it behoved him to keep it in on the Lord's Day, that he was afraid to encounter the placid eye of his devout and single-minded niece. Instead of joining her, and uniting in the services that were customary at that hour, he walked in the adjoining orchard until near nine o'clock. Mammon was uppermost in the place of the Deity, and habit offered too strong a barrier to permit him to bring, as it were, the false god openly into the presence of the true.
Chapter IV.
"Oh! mourn not for them, their grief is o'er,
Oh! weep not for them, they weep no more;
For deep is their sleep, though cold and hard
Their pillow may be in the old kirk-yard."
Bayly.
Early on the succeeding morning, the whole household of deacon Pratt, himself included, were up and doing. It was as the sun came up out of the waters that Mary and her uncle met in the porch, as if to greet each other.
"Yonder comes the Widow White, and seemingly in a great hurry," said the niece, anxiously; "I am afraid her patient is worse!"
"He seemed better when I left him last evening, though a little tired with talking," returned the uncle. "The man would talk, do all I could to stop him. I wanted to get but two or three words from him, and he used a thousand, without once using the few I wished most to hear. A talking man is that Daggett, I can tell you, Mary!"
"He'll never talk ag'in, deacon!" exclaimed the Widow White, who had got so near as to hear the concluding words of the last speaker--"He'll never say good or evil more!"
The deacon was so confounded as to be
