As I knew I must go to sea, as soon as the accounts were balanced, I began
to think a little seriously of my prospects. Dissipation had wearied me,
and I wanted to go a voyage of a length that would prevent my falling soon
into the same course of folly and vice. I had often bitter thoughts as to
my conduct, nor was I entirely free from reflection on the subject of my
peculiar situation. I might be said to be without a friend, or relative,
in the world. "When my hat was on, my house was thatched." Of my father, I
knew nothing; I have since ascertained he must then have been dead. My
sister was little to me, and I never expected to see her again. The
separation from all my old lakers, too, gave me some trouble, for I never
met with one of them after parting from Barnet and Mallet, with the
exception of Tom Goldsmith and Jack Reilly. Tom and I fell in with each
other, on my return from St. Domingo, in the streets of New York, and had
a yarn of two hours, about old times. This was all I ever saw of Tom. He
had suffered a good deal with the English, who kept him in Kingston, Upper
Canada, until the peace, when they let him go with the rest. As for
Reilly, we have been in harbour together, in our old age, and I may speak
of him again.
Under the feelings I have mentioned, as soon as the looks of my landlord
let me know that there were no more shot in the locker, I shipped in a
South Sea whaler, named the Edward, that was expected to be absent
between two and three years.
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