Collected Works of Poe | Page 2

Pym. My father was a respectable trader in
sea-stores at Nantucket, where I was born. My maternal grandfather
was an attorney in good practice. He was fortunate in every thing, and
had speculated very successfully in stocks of the Edgarton New Bank,
as it was formerly called. By these and other means he had managed to
lay by a tolerable sum of money. He was more attached to myself, I
believe, than to any other person in the world, and I expected to inherit
the most of his property at his death. He sent me, at six years of age, to
the school of old Mr. Ricketts, a gentleman with only one arm and of

eccentric manners -- he is well known to almost every person who has
visited New Bedford. I stayed at his school until I was sixteen, when I
left him for Mr. E. Ronald's academy on the hill. Here I became
intimate with the son of Mr. Barnard, a sea-captain, who generally
sailed in the employ of Lloyd and Vredenburgh -- Mr. Barnard is also
very well known in New Bedford, and has many relations, I am certain,
in Edgarton. His son was named Augustus, and he was nearly two years
older than myself. He had been on a whaling voyage with his father in
the John Donaldson, and was always talking to me of his adventures in
the South Pacific Ocean. I used frequently to go home with him, and
remain all day, and sometimes all night. We occupied the same bed,
and he would be sure to keep me awake until almost light, telling me
stories of the natives of the Island of Tinian, and other places he had
visited in his travels. At last I could not help being interested in what he
said, and by degrees I felt the greatest desire to go to sea. I owned a
sailboat called the Ariel, and worth about seventy-five dollars. She had
a half-deck or cuddy, and was rigged sloop-fashion -- I forget her
tonnage, but she would hold ten persons without much crowding. In
this boat we were in the habit of going on some of the maddest freaks
in the world; and, when I now think of them, it appears to me a
thousand wonders that I am alive to-day.
I will relate one of these adventures by way of introduction to a longer
and more momentous narrative. One night there was a party at Mr.
Barnard's, and both Augustus and myself were not a little intoxicated
toward the close of it. As usual, in such cases, I took part of his bed in
preference to going home. He went to sleep, as I thought, very quietly
(it being near one when the party broke up), and without saying a word
on his favorite topic. It might have been half an hour from the time of
our getting in bed, and I was just about falling into a doze, when he
suddenly started up, and swore with a terrible oath that he would not go
to sleep for any Arthur Pym in Christendom, when there was so
glorious a breeze from the southwest. I never was so astonished in my
life, not knowing what he intended, and thinking that the wines and
liquors he had drunk had set him entirely beside himself. He proceeded
to talk very coolly, however, saying he knew that I supposed him
intoxicated, but that he was never more sober in his life. He was only

tired, he added, of lying in bed on such a fine night like a dog, and was
determined to get up and dress, and go out on a frolic with the boat. I
can hardly tell what possessed me, but the words were no sooner out of
his mouth than I felt a thrill of the greatest excitement and pleasure, and
thought his mad idea one of the most delightful and most reasonable
things in the world. It was blowing almost a gale, and the weather was
very cold -- it being late in October. I sprang out of bed, nevertheless,
in a kind of ecstasy, and told him I was quite as brave as himself, and
quite as tired as he was of lying in bed like a dog, and quite as ready for
any fun or frolic as any Augustus Barnard in Nantucket.
We lost no time in getting on our clothes and hurrying down to the boat.
She was lying at the old decayed wharf by the lumber-yard of Pankey
& Co., and almost thumping her side out against the rough logs.
Augustus got into her and bailed her, for she was nearly half full of
water. This being done, we hoisted jib and mainsail, kept full, and
started boldly out to