On getting on board, I had no little difficulty at first in speaking English, and I found that I had almost entirely forgotten how to read and write. Newman, however, used to have me every day into his cabin, and I very soon recovered the knowledge I had lost. Indeed, he took as much pains to instruct me as he had done on board the whaler, and he encouraged me with the hope that he might get me appointed as one of his mates while he remained in the schooner. But alas! I found that in one point he was still unchanged. Religion was yet a stranger to his soul.
At length we reached Batavia. He went on shore in high spirits, telling me that he was going to visit the lady to whom he was engaged; but he let me know that he must call also on another who had formed an attachment for him, that he might pacify her respecting his intended marriage. I feared from what he said that all was not right. I expected him on board again that night, but he did not return.
In the morning he did not come, so with some anxiety I went on shore to inquire for him. For a long time I searched in vain. At last I met a person whom I guessed to be an Englishman.
“Your captain do you ask for?” he answered. “Look there!”
Some police-officers stood at the door of a house. They allowed me to enter. On the floor of a room at the side lay a body. A cloth covered the face. I lifted it up. There I beheld all that remained of the highly endowed Edward Newman, for by no other name did I know him. He had been poisoned through fiery jealousy. A cup, in pretended friendship, had been laughingly offered him. Unsuspiciously he had drunk of it. The Government seized the murderess, who paid the penalty of her crime with her life.
Thus died one who was well calculated to shine in the higher walks of life. Who he was, whence he came, or even the slightest clue to his previous history, I was never able to ascertain. In a strange land he died, far away from kindred and friends—if, indeed, he had any—his fate for ever unknown to them. Let this be a warning to those who hear the sad conclusion of his history. The highest talents, and the most undaunted courage and perseverance, will avail a man nothing, unless at the same time he be under the guidance of principle.
The death of my friend threw me completely adrift, and I was glad to find an opportunity of working my passage to England on board a ship just going to sail for Liverpool.
Once more I stood on my native shore, a care-worn, weather-beaten man, well advanced in years. On inquiring for the bank in which I had invested the savings of my former voyage, I found that it had failed, and that I was as poor as when I began the world, with this difference, that I had a profession, and had bought a large amount of experience with the money I had squandered—which is not always the case with spend-thrifts.
I made inquiries for Captain Carr, but could hear nothing of him. As I concluded that he had invested the money made by my last voyage in the Drake, I supposed that also to have been lost by the bank. I thought this a very great misfortune, as I wished to have settled on shore in some business or other. Perhaps I might have chosen that of a publican, as many sailors do. However, I had now no resource but to go to sea again.
While in this humour I fell in with an old shipmate. We had been together in the Glutton, and one or two other ships, so we knew each other directly. He told me that he belonged to a revenue-cutter then stationed in the Mersey, and that she was short of hands, especially of three or four steady men; and when I mentioned to him that I had been boatswain of a man-of-war schooner, he said that he was certain I would get a berth on board. I was weary of foreign voyages, so I accompanied him at once, as he proposed, to the commander, and was entered immediately.