, but, as is customary with the boys of that
island, he had left home in his twelfth year, and had now been absent from
the place of his birth a little more than half a century. Conscious of the
decay which beset him, and fully convinced that his days were few and
numbered, the seaman, who called himself Tom Daggett, had felt a desire to
close his eyes in the place where they had first been opened to the light
of day. He had persuaded the commander of the craft mentioned, to bring
him from the West Indies, and to put him ashore as related, the Vineyard
being only a hundred miles or so to the eastward of Oyster Pond Point. He
trusted to luck to give him the necessary opportunity of overcoming these
last hundred miles.

Daggett was poor, as he admitted, as well as friendless and unknown. He
had with him, nevertheless, a substantial sea-chest, one of those that the
sailors of that day uniformly used in merchant-vessels, a man-of-war
compelling them to carry their clothes in bags, for the convenience of
compact stowage. The chest of Daggett, however, was a regular inmate of
the forecastle, and, from its appearance, had made almost as many voyages
as its owner. The last, indeed, was heard to say that he had succeeded in
saving it from no less than three shipwrecks. It was a reasonably heavy
chest, though its contents, when opened, did not seem to be of any very
great value.

A few hours after landing, this man had made a bargain with a middle-aged
widow, in very humble circumstances, and who dwelt quite near to the
residence of Deacon Pratt, to receive him as a temporary inmate; or, until
he could get a "chance across to the Vineyard." At first, Daggett kept
about, and was much in the open air. While able to walk, he met the
deacon, and singular, nay, unaccountable as it seemed to the niece, the
uncle soon contracted a species of friendship for, not to say intimacy
with, this stranger. In the first place, the deacon was a little
particular in not having intimates among the necessitous, and the Widow
White soon let it be known that her guest had not even a "red cent." He
had chattels, however, that were of some estimation among seamen; and
Roswell Gardiner, or "Gar'ner," as he was called, the young seaman _par
excellence_ of the Point, one who had been not only a whaling, but who had
also been a sealing, and who at that moment was on board the deacon's
schooner, in the capacity of master, had been applied to for advice and
a