140 NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SEALER 



Mariner Small prophetically so dubbed in his christening, and, 

 despite his surname, one of the mightiest of men. He was an 

 oldish fellow, who had made his comfortable retiring fortune 

 on the far seas, where he won also fame as a navigator and for 

 divers other qualities. I fell in love with him at sight, and though 

 we had many bad quarter-hours together, he is still near my 

 heart. On shore I found him almost ridiculously urbane, a 

 mild-mannered, soft-voiced giant. It was told that he was a 

 deacon and uncommonly pious since he had given up the sea. 

 All this interested me vastly, for I thought I saw else in Mariner 

 Small. We learned that he was going with us for a little vaca- 

 tion and for our good company, to a corner of the seas one 

 of the few where he had not set keel. There was one able sea- 

 man, named Upton Treat, a good fellow of the seafaring class, 

 but of rather better standing than the most of those who go 

 before the mast, whom we found most helpful and companion- 

 able; and there was a cook, a chap known as George, to make 

 a fair number for a crew. The passengers were to act as hands 

 and were to make out the watches and at times when the 

 need came to keep the craft afloat by steady pumping. 



As we did not know where else we might seek to go after 

 Anticosti in the four months we expected to be away, and hav- 

 ing some designs even on Greenland and Iceland, we provi- 

 sioned the craft largely, so that if seabound we could have man- 

 aged to feed for a year. Though we had to be economical, we 

 were well found in such matters as guns and ammunition, as 

 well as in enthusiasm enough of that, indeed, to have dared 

 for the North Pole. Among our miscellaneous stores I had as a 

 private venture, on the recommendation of a friend who had 

 summered in Labrador, a gross of clay pipes and a keg of to- 

 bacco and also a lot of sugar, and remedies for scurvy, a disease 

 which, I was told and truly enough I should find rife 

 among the sailors we should encounter. We had no whiskey or 

 other spirits, but, oddly enough, my father had sent me a ten- 

 gallon keg of wine from the Kentucky vineyards, which we took 



