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