"Men differ in their tastes and habits," answered Roswell Gardiner,
carelessly. "Some navigators are for ever finding rocks, and white water,
and scribbling on their charts, or in the newspapers, when they get back;
but I never knew any good come of it. The men who make the charts are most
to be trusted. For my part, I would not give a sixpence for a note made by
a man who passes a shoal or a rock, in a squall or a gale."

"What would you say to the note of a sealer who should lay down an island
where the seals lie about on the beach like pigs in a pen, sunning
themselves? Would you not call a chart so noted a treasure?"

"That would alter the case, sure enough," returned Gardiner, laughing;
"though I should not think of looking into this chest for any such riches.
Most of our masters navigate too much at random to make their charts of
any great value. They can find the places they look for themselves, but
don't seem to know how to tell other people the road. I have known my old
man lay down a shoal that he fancied he saw, quite a degree out of the
way. Now such a note as that would do more harm than good. It might make a
foul wind of a fair one, and cause a fellow to go about, or ware ship,
when there was not the least occasion in the world for doing anything of
the sort."

"Ay, ay; this will do for nervous men, who are always thinking they see
danger ahead; but it is different with islands that a craft has actually
visited. I do not see much use, Deacon Pratt, in your giving yourself any
further trouble. My uncle was not a very rich man, I perceive, and I must
go to work and make my own fortune if I wish more than I've got already.
If there is any demand against the deceased, I am ready to discharge it."

This was coming so much to the point that the deacon hardly knew what to