Although the season was that of summer, and the weather was such as is
deemed propitious in the neighbourhood of Cape Horn, a feeling of
uncertainty prevailed over every other sensation. To the southward a cold
mistiness veiled the view, and every mile the schooner advanced appeared
like penetrating deeper and deeper into regions that nature had hitherto
withheld from the investigation of the mariner. Ice, and its dangers, were
known to exist a few degrees farther in that direction; but islands also
had been discovered, and turned to good account by the enterprise of the
sealers.
It was truly a great thing for the Sea Lion of Oyster Pond to have thrown
off her namesake of the Vineyard. It is true both vessels were still in
the same sea, with a possibility of again meeting; but, Roswell Gardiner
was steering onward towards a haven designated in degrees and minutes,
while the other craft was most probably left to wander in uncertainty in
that remote and stormy ocean. Our hero thought there was now very little
likelihood of his again falling in with his late consort, and this so much
the more, because the islands he sought were not laid down in the vicinity
of any other known land, and were consequently out of the usual track of
the sealers.
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