Dear Uncle Torch, dear Aunt Agatha, dearest Fran,
I write to you from the stormy North Atlantic, aboard the Pequod, headed home—which now I name Nantucket. For it is Kit’s home, and Kit is my husband. Before this letter, I hope you received my earlier letters, one sent by the Reconciliation;in the second writ aboard the Albatross, I described the terrible mishap. That letter was given over to a passing ship, the Thistle, New Bedford–bound, but I know full well that letters often lie moldering in the hulls of ships themselves sunk, without so much as a surviving scrap. I have often wondered how many fond letters sank with the Sussex.
Nonetheless, I cannot bring myself to repeat those details; I hope to see you soon, and then I will answer any question. Knowing now what I did not when I decided to run to sea, that it is agony to be anxious about the welfare of a loved one, I do want to repeat that I am sure I caused you much anxiety on my behalf, dear family; and if I prayed, I would pray that you forgive me. I have heard nothing from you or from my mother, yet for a letter to find me on the high seas would itself be a kind of miracle. I must ask my heart what your disposition toward me is. And there I find pain, but little anger. There I find your sincere hope that all has gone well. I grope within my own heart to find that you wish we may all see each other again, you three and your new babe. Perhaps if you make another trip to Boston, you will put in at Nantucket Harbor?
The Pequod arcs north, then home, for Ahab would have one more whale.
Exactly how Kit and I shall make our way, I do not know. Perhaps kit will wish to take up his mother’s trade of baking, and I will help him, yet hat requires some capital, and our wages went down with the Sussex.
I must tell you with heavy heart that Kit is not well. You may recall his saying his mother sometimes suffered mental infirmities, and with the duress of our ordeal something of that instability has surfaced in Kit. Yet, when he was able, he was, indeed, the most loving and kind of husbands to me, and I intend to see him through what is surely only a temporary indisposition.
There is a part of the first ordeal of which, even if you received my earlier letter, you have no knowledge, Giles’s accident having occurred aboard the Albatross but after my letter was taken off by the Thistle. Even now, sitting at the broad map table in the cabin lent me by Captain Ahab, my fingers grip and grip the quill but do not want to form the letters. I would give those fingers, hand, and arm to sand out what Fate has already written. Though these words appear formed with ink, my pen is really dipped into heart’s blood. Giles fell from the topgallant mast into the sea. I saw him fall. Nevermore will we see him again.
My letter to you has sat unsent a week, but now there is a west-bound clipper sail in the distance. Perhaps we will draw together, before it passes us, though the sea is rough and the wind blows very chill. So I say good-bye, with love and hope, to you whose names wring my heart—Torchy, Agatha, and Frannie.
P.S. The clipper breezed by the Pequod with just a polite dip and nod, and so I shall post this when we come to Nantucket, and you will know that Kit and I arrived safely. Ahab has sailed north to take a final whale. The cooper prepares new barrels.
I saw a strange, low, white ship in the north today and asked Mr. Starbuck, the first mate, what manner of craft she was. He replied that what I saw was an ice floe driven down from the Arctic. Tonight, he said, the Pequod would meet the first of her winter gales.