by making large wicks of canvass, and placing them in vessels that contained oil; though it was very far from sufficing to keep life in the men during the hardest of the weather.  The utmost economy in the use of the fuel that had been so dearly obtained, was still deemed all-essential to eventual preservation.  Happily, the season advanced all this time, and the month of October was reached.  The intercourse between the crews had by no means been great during the two solemn and critical months that were just past.  A few visits had been exchanged at noon-day, and when the thermometer was a little above zero; but the snow was filling the path, and as yet there were no thaws to produce a crust on which the men might walk.

About a month previously to the precise time to which it is our intention now to advance the more regular action of the legend, Macy had come over to the house, attended by one man, with a proposal on the part of Daggett for the two crews to occupy his craft, as he still persisted in calling the wreck, and of using the house as fuel.  This was previously to beginning to break up either vessel.  Gardiner had thought of this plan in connection with his own schooner, a scheme that would have been much more feasible than that now proposed, on account of the difference in distance; but it had soon been abandoned.  All the material of the building was of pine, and that well seasoned; a wood that burns like tinder.  No doubt there would have been a tolerably comfortable fortnight or three weeks by making these sacrifices; then would have come certain destruction.

As to the proposal of Daggett, there were many objections to it.  A want of room would be one; want of provisions another; and there would be the necessity of transporting stores, bedding, and a hundred things that were almost as necessary to the people as warmth; and which indeed contributed largely to their warmth.  In addition was the objection just mentioned, of the insufficiency of the materials of the building; an objection which was just as applicable to a residence in one vessel as a residence in the other.  Of course the proposition was declined.

Macy remained a night with the Oyster Ponders, and left the house after breakfast next morning; knowing that Daggett only waited for his return with a negative, to commence breaking up the wreck.  The mate was attended by the seaman, returning as he had arrived.  Two days later, there having been a slight yielding of the snow under the warmth of the noon-day sun, and a consequent hardening of its crust in the succeeding night, Roswell and Stimson undertook to return this visit, with a view to make a last effort to persuade Daggett to quit the wreck and come over to the house altogether.  When they had got about half-way between the two places, they found the body of the seaman, stiff, frozen hard, and dead.  A quarter of a mile further on, the reckless Macy, who it was supposed greatly sustained Daggett in his obstinacy, was found