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- the offices in South-street, where men are shipped for the Nantucket
whalers, and made inquiries among them; but without success. And this,_
I _am heartily grieved to say, is all I know of our friend. I can not
believe that his melancholy could bring him to the insanity of throwing
himself away in a whaler; and I still think, that he must be somewhere
in the city. You must come down yourself, and help me seek him out.”_
This letter gave me a dreadful shock. Remembering our adventure in
London, and his conduct there; remembering how liable he was to yield
to the most sudden, crazy, and contrary impulses; and that, as a
friendless, penniless foreigner in New York, he must have had the most
terrible incitements to committing violence upon himself; I shuddered
to think, that even now, while I thought of him, he might no more be
living. So strong was this impression at the time, that I quickly
glanced over the papers to see if there were any accounts of suicides,
or drowned persons floating in the harbor of New York.
I now made all the haste I could to the seaport, but though I sought
him all over, no tidings whatever could be heard.
To relieve my anxiety, Goodwell endeavored to assure me, that Harry
must indeed have departed on a whaling voyage. But remembering his
bitter experience on board of the Highlander, and more than all, his
nervousness about going aloft, it seemed next to impossible.
At last I was forced to give him up.
Years after this, I found myself a sailor in the Pacific, on board of a
whaler. One day at sea, we spoke another whaler, and the boat’s crew
that boarded our vessel, came forward among us to have a little
sea-chat, as is always customary upon such occasions.
Among the strangers was an Englishman, who had shipped in his vessel at
Callao, for the cruise. In the course of conversation, he made allusion
to the fact, that he had now been in the Pacific several years, and
that the good craft Huntress of Nantucket had had the honor of
originally bringing him round upon that side of the globe. I asked him
why he had abandoned her; he answered that she was the most unlucky of
ships.
“We had hardly been out three months,” said he, “when on the Brazil
banks we lost a boat’s crew, chasing a whale after sundown; and next
day lost a poor little fellow, a countryman of mine, who had never
entered the boats; he fell over the side, and was jammed between the
ship, and a whale, while we were cutting the fish in. Poor fellow, he
had a hard time of it, from the beginning; he was a gentleman’s son,
and when you could coax him to it, he sang like a bird.”
“What was his name?” said I, trembling with expectation; “what kind of
eyes did he have? what was the color of his hair?”
“Harry Bolton was not your brother?” cried the stranger, starting.
_Harry Bolton!_ it was even he!
But yet, I, Wellingborough Redburn, chance to survive, after having
passed through far more perilous scenes than any narrated in this, _My
First Voyage_—which here I end.
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