Summary

The narrative returns to New Bedford and follows Sarah Ashley as she tries to escape the oppressive atmosphere of her family’s house by walking to the waterfront. She sits among the unloading whaling ships and learns that no one has seen the Esther, which has begun to seem like a ghost ship (151). Carrying Arnold Lovejoy’s letter, she asks for directions to the Sophie and finds the old whaleship rotting at a dead corner of the quay, her waterline green with growth, barnacles jeweled on her stem, and her figurehead maimed (152). Standing before the ruined vessel, Sarah rereads Lovejoy’s flowery description of the Sophie and overlays his words with her memories of her husband Leander, imagining him so vividly that he appears before her and hearing herself say, “You shouldn’t have left,” even as the vision remains mute (153). She remembers how...