Chapter 62 - Page 2

employment in counting-houses. I did my best; but could not
get Harry a place. However, I cheered him. But he grew more and more
melancholy, and at last told me, that he had sold all his clothes but
those on his back to pay his board. I offered to loan him a few dollars,
but he would not receive them. I called upon him two or three times
after this, but he was not in; at last, his landlady told me that he had
permanently left her house the very day before. Upon my questioning her
closely, as to where he had gone, she answered, that she did not know,
but from certain hints that had dropped from our poor friend, she feared
he had gone on a whaling voyage. I at once went to 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