220 THE WHALEMAN J OR, 



For years, until all hope has at length been 

 abandoned, the civilized world, and especially 

 the commercial part of it, was in a state of 

 profound suspense respecting the fate of Sir 

 John Franklin and his companions, entombed in 

 the Arctic. How much sympathy there was felt 

 and expressed for the distinguished lady of the 

 explorer, who was unwilling to withhold any rea- 

 sonable and even extraordinary efforts for his de- 

 liverance while the faintest color of encourage- 

 ment existed in his favor ! Wealth w T as poured 

 out like water ; and strong, self-denying, adven- 

 turous men started up and volunteered their ser- 

 vices to traverse again the inhospitable regions 

 of the north ; perad venture they might find some 

 traces of the explorers, whether living or dead. 

 Through scores of months of hope and fear, dis- 

 tracting anxiety and painful apprehensions, she 

 suffered for her husband a thousand times more 

 than the certainty which his death would have 

 caused. 



It was precisely this state of mind which ex- 

 cited and agitated many families in Edgartown 

 in relation to the uncertainty which surrounded 

 the fate of the Citizen and those who sailed in 

 her. 



There was a remote, and yet very slender 

 clinging to a bare possibility that they might be 



