due course. His attention was not likely to be drawn aside by the shirts
and old clothes, for the stranger began a second time to examine the
chart, and what was more, in the high latitudes at no great distance from
the very spot where the sealing-islands had been placed, and from which
they had been so carefully erased.

"It is unaccountable that a man should wear out a chart like this, and
leave so few notes on it!" said the Vineyard-man, much as one complains of
a delinquency. "Here is white water noted in the middle of the ocean,
where I dare say no other white water was seen but that which is made by a
fish, and nothing is said of any islands. What do you think of this,
captain Gar'ner?" laying his finger on the precise spot where the deacon
had been at work so long that very morning erasing the islands. "This
looks well-fingered, if nothing else, eh?"

"Its a shoal laid down in dirt," answered Roswell Gardiner,
laughing--"Let's see; that's about lat. --° --", and long. --° --". There
can be no known land thereaway, as even captain Cook did not succeed in
getting as far south. That's been a favourite spot with the skipper for
taking hold of his chart. I've known one of those old-fashioned chaps put
his hand on a chart, in that way, and never miss his holding ground for
three years on a stretch. Mighty go-by-rule people are some of our
whaling-masters, in particular, who think they know the countenances of
some of the elderly fish, who are too cunning to let a harpoon get fast to
'em."

"You've been often in them seas, I some think, captain Gar'ner?" said the
other, inquiringly.

"I was brought up in the business, and have a hankering for it yet,"