218 THE WHALEMAN J OR, 



his officers, none to relatives, none to the owners 

 of the ship. Other families had heard from ab- 

 sent ones, and were made to rejoice ; those inter- 

 ested in the fate of the Citizen, however, were 

 filled w T ith sadness and sorrow. 



The absence of letters was ominous of some- 

 thing fearful and distressing. Captain Clough 

 spoke with Captain Norton on the 23d of Sep- 

 tember, in the Arctic Ocean, lat. 68° or 69° N. ; 

 and this was the last and only intelligence from 

 the missing ship. This occurred, as it appeared, 

 only two days before the wreck of the Citizen. 

 Not having arrived at the islands, nor reported 

 from any other place, the conclusion to which all 

 came was at once reasonable and just — either 

 that the ship was frozen up in the Arctic, or cast 

 away on the coast, and her officers and crew T , if 

 living, among the natives. 



Reflections of this sort gave confirmation to 

 the worst of fears, and wrought in the minds of 

 relatives and friends, and the community at large, 

 an alternation of some slight hope, on the one 

 hand, that they might after all be safe, and, on 

 the other, the distressing fear that they had com- 

 pleted their last voyage on earth, or perhaps were 

 lingering out a miserable existence amid the rig- 

 ors of an arctic winter. 



How little there was upon which to build a 



