Of course, every one of us
officers was aloft, some forward, some aft, to look out for the boat;
but we did not see her again. What was still more extraordinary,
nothing could be seen of the ship! We kept all that day cruising
around the place, expecting to find at least the boat; but without
success.
My situation was now altogether novel to me. I had left home rather
more than a twelvemonth before, the third officer of the Crisis. From
this station, I had risen regularly to be her first officer; and now,
by a dire catastrophe, I found myself in the Pacific, solely charged
with the fortunes of my owners, and those of some forty human beings.
And this, too, before I was quite twenty years old.
Marble's scheme of attacking the ship had always seemed to me to be
wild and impracticable. This was while it was _his_ project, not
my own. I still entertained the same opinion, as regards the assault
at sea; but I had, from the first, regarded an attempt on the coast as
a thing much more likely to succeed. Then Emily, and her father, and
the honour of the flag, and the credit I might personally gain, had
their influence; and, at sunset, all hope of finding the boat being
gone, I ordered sail made on our course.
The loss of the whale-boat occurred when we were about two thousand
miles from the western coast of South America.
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