You admit, I suppose, the existence of the Poe family, although you deny that of the Pym family ?" I said nothing, and the captain continued, with a dark glance at me,-- "I inquired into certain matters relating to Edgar Poe.

His abode was pointed out to me and I called at the house.

A first disappointment! He had left America, and I could not see him.
Unfortunately, being unable to see Edgar Poe, I was unable to refer to Arthur Gordon Pym in the case.

That bold pioneer of the Antarctic regions was dead! As the American poet had stated, at the close of the narrative of his adventures, Gordon's death had already been made known to the public by the daily press." What Captain Len Guy said was true; but, in common with all the readers of the romance, I had taken this declaration for an artifice of the novelist.

My notion was that, as he either could not or dared not wind up so extraordinary a work of imagination, Poe had given it to be understood that he had not received the last three chapters from Arthur Pym, whose life had ended under sudden and deplorable circumstances which Poe did not make known.
"Then," continued the captain, "Edgar Poe being absent, Arthur Pym being dead, I had only one thing to do; to find the man who had been the fellow-traveller of Arthur Pym, that Dirk Peters who had followed him to the very verge of the high latitudes, and whence they had both returned--how?
This is not known.