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PART SECOND.

CHAPTER I.

Position of the Mutineers.-Arrival at Pitcairn Island.-Destruction of the Bounty.-Death of Fletcher Christian, Edward Young, and others. -Alexander Smith (John Adams), sole Survivor.

In a foregoing chapter we have recorded the legal proceedings which took place on the return of those officers and men to England who, having had the misfortune of being connected with the Bounty, were brought home prisoners, and tried by court-martial. Our narrative now requires that the reader should transfer his thoughts to that part of the globe where those events took place which are recorded in the early part of this volume, for they led to the settlement of the principal mutineers on a small island in the South Pacific Ocean. These nine men (whose names have already been given) were bound together by no principle, but only by the fact that they were brethren in crime, all of them having participated more or less in a deed of violence which amounted to piracy on the high seas. They had revolted from lawful authority, and were amenable to those Articles of War which regulate the service to which they belonged, and by that code their lives were forfeited. With reference to their leader, Fletcher Christian, it is remarkable that a feeling of respect for him was predominant among them, and this feeling, partly arising, it is probable, from habitual deference to a superior officer, and partly from his superior intellect and intelligence, no act of his appears to

have lessened, even to the close of his life. The drama in which they played so considerable a part had been commenced by tyranny, continued by violence, and (as will be seen) ended in bloodshed and death.

Sad indeed are the events now to be related, and yet they seem but a natural sequence to those which have preceded them in this tale of misery and distress. Passion and strife are as terrible in their results as the war of the elements, and in this narrative oppressors and oppressed seem to have alike suffered; some, from the proximity of death in the most appalling forms, either by famine or shipwreck; and others again from violence at the hands of their friends and associates. It is, however, consoling to reflect, in reading these and the preceding details, that the causes which led to so singular a chain of circumstances, are not likely to occur again in the improved state of naval discipline. Neither is it probable that a small band of outlaws (as the mutineers may be termed) would be able to remain long undiscovered in the South Pacific Ocean, now so well known and traversed by vessels of every description; but that period, the conclusion of the last, and the commencement of the present century, was marked by such stirring events, involving interests so important, that the attention of the public was almost entirely absorbed by the naval and military undertakings in which England was engaged. All Europe crouched beneath the foot of one individual, whose insatiable ambition made the name of Napoleon Bonaparte a word of terror in every city and country homestead.

Under these circumstances, it was not surprising that public curiosity should have subsided concerning the Bounty and the fate of a few sailors who had outraged the laws of their country and had disappeared among the islands of the Southern Ocean. Whether they were alive

or not, no one cared, perhaps not even their own relatives, upon whom their illegal act had inflicted so much sorrow and disgrace. It was otherwise, however, with regard to the relatives of Fletcher Christian. In his case, a mother and sister, to whom he had been devotedly attached, long survived to deplore his fate-whether by untimely death, or a blighted existence in some ouscure retreat—and they doubted whether his criminality had not been in some measure due to the harsh treatment of a superior officer. But by the rest of his relatives his very name was to be buried in oblivion, for, in addition to the mutinous outbreak, Lieutenant Bligh had painted his character in such dark colors, that even the able defense written by his distinguished brother* could not remove the stain from his reputation.

We shall now take up the subsequent history of the mutineers, from the point where Christian, having landed those officers and men from the Bounty who preferred remaining at Tahiti, sailed from Maatavaye Bay, standing in a northerly direction. It has been ascertained that a copy of Captain Carteret's "Voyage to the South Seas" (to which allusion has been made) was among the books left on board the Bounty, which, as it described the loneliness of Pitcairn Island, probably determined Christian to search for it, as a safe retreat for himself and his followers. From the want of correctness in latitude and longitude, as laid down by Captain Carteret in the charts, the cruise occupied several weeks, and when it began to appear hopeless, a rock was descried far distant, rising high in the midst of the ocean. In the anxiety Christian, no doubt, endured throughout the voyage from Tahiti, security from discovery being his leading object, he must have observed

* Edward Christian, editor of "Blackstone's Commentaries."

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