This, the second death in as many paragraphs, almost slips by without notice. But
surely Walton might have been left a patrimony by his father and thus need not have
been granted freedom from financial constraints by the death of a youth whom we may
assume was of an age comparable to his. This unexpected source of his independence,
means sufficiently ample to allow him to hire a crew and outfit an ocean-going vessel
for a lengthy voyage, testifies to the instability of fortune, the constant threat
of mortality, and even to how important are extended families in this narration. It
also rather foreshadows later events in the novel, since Victor Frankenstein's cousin
Elizabeth will also bear the cost of his success.