Henry obeyed, and their voices sank into low tones as they mingled in earnest converse about their future plans.

Thus did Gascoyne, with his family and friends, leave Sandy Cove in the dead of that dark night, and sail away over the wide waste of the great Pacific Ocean.

* * * * *

Reader, our tale is nearly told.  Like a picture it contains but a small portion of the career of those who have so long engaged your attention, and, I would fain hope, your sympathy.  The life of man may be comprehensively epitomized almost to a point, or expanded out ad infinitum.  He was born, he died, is its lowest term.  Its highest is not definable.

Innumerable tomes, of encyclopedic dimensions, could not contain, much less exhaust, an account of all that was said and done, and all that might be said about what was said and done, by our ci-devant sandal-wood trader and his friends.  Yet there are main points, amid the little details of their career, which it would be unpardonable to pass over in silence.  To these we shall briefly refer before letting the curtain fall.

There is a distant isle of the sea, a beautiful spot, an oceanic gem, which has been reclaimed by the word of God from those regions that have been justly styled “the dark places of the earth.”  We will not mention its name; we will not even indicate its whereabouts, lest we should furnish a clue to the unromantic myrmidons of the law, whose inflexible justice is only equaled by their pertinacity in tracking the criminal to his lair!

On this beautiful isle, at the time of our tale, the churches and houses of Christian men had begun to rise.  The natives had begun to cultivate the arts of civilization, and to appreciate, in some degree, the inestimable blessings of Christianity.  The plow had torn up the virgin soil, and the anchors of merchant-ships had begun to kiss the strand.  The crimes peculiar to civilized men had not yet been developed.  The place had all the romance and freshness of a flourishing infant colony.

Early one fine morning, a half-decked boat rowed into the harbor of this isle, and ran alongside the little quay, where the few natives who chanced to be lounging there were filled with admiration at the sight of five stalwart men who leaped upon the rocks, an active lad who held the boat steady, and a handsome middle-aged woman, who was assisted to land with much care by the tallest of her five companions.

There were a few small bales of merchandise in the boat.  These being quickly tossed ashore, one of the natives was asked to show the way to the nearest store, where they might be placed in safekeeping.

This done, the largest man of the party, who was clad in the rough garments of a merchant captain, offered his arm to the female, who was evidently his wife, and went off in search of the chief magistrate of the settlement, leaving his companions to look after the boat and smoke their pipes.