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palm-tops. Strange to say, that the mutinous spirit, which had been satisfactorily absent before, broke out in one or two of the men, and Bligh had, in one instance, to seize a cutlass and order the man to defend himself. The threatened outbreak ended quietly.
But although the worst of their voyage was over, their troubles in other ways were serious. While among the islands off the coast of Australia several of them were seriously affected with weakness, dizziness, and violent pains in their bowels. Infinitesimal quantities of wine were administered, to their great benefit. A party was sent out on one of the islands to catch birds, and they returned with a dozen noddies; these and a few clams were all they obtained. On the 3rd of June they left Cape York, and once more launched their little boat on the open ocean. On the 5th a booby was caught by the hand, the blood of which was divided among three of the men who were weakest, and the bird kept for next day’s dinner. The following day the sea ran high, and kept breaking over the boat. Mr. Ledward, the surgeon, and Lebogue, an old hardy sailor, appeared to be breaking up fast, and no other assistance could be given them than a tea-spoonful or two of wine. On the morning of the 10th there was a visible alteration for the worse in many of the people. Their countenances were ghastly and hollow, their limbs swollen, and all extremely debilitated; some seeming to have lost their reason. But next day Bligh was able to announce that they had passed the meridian of Timor, and the following morning land was sighted with expressions of universal joy and satisfaction. Forty-one days had they been on the ocean in their miserable boat, and by the log they had run 3,618 nautical miles. On the 14th they arrived at Coupang Bay, where they were received with all kinds of hospitality. The party on landing presented the appearance of spectres: their bodies skin and bones, and covered with sores; their clothing in rags. But the strain had been too much for several of them. The botanist died at Coupang, three of the men at Batavia, and one on the passage home. The doctor was left behind and not afterwards heard of. Bligh arrived in England on March 14th, and received much sympathy. He was immediately promoted, and afterwards successfully carried the bread-fruit tree to the West Indies. Meantime the Government naturally proposed to bring the mutineers to trial, whatever it might cost.
The Pandora, a frigate of twenty-four guns, and one hundred and sixty men, was selected for the service, and was placed under the command of Captain Edward Edwards, with orders to proceed to Otaheite, and if necessary the other islands. The voyage was destined to end in shipwreck and disaster, but the captain succeeded in securing a part of the mutineers, of whom ten were brought to England, and four drowned on the wreck.
The Pandora reached Matavia Bay on the 23rd of March, 1791. The armourer and two of the midshipmen, Mr. Heywood and Mr. Stewart, came off immediately, and showed their willingness to afford information. Four others soon after appeared, and from them the captain learned that the rest of the Bounty’s people had built a schooner, and sailed the day before for another part of the island. They were pursued, and the schooner secured, but the mutineers had fled to the mountains. A day or two elapsed, when they ventured down, and when within hearing were ordered to lay down their arms, which they did, and were put in irons. Captain Edwards put them into a round-house, built on the after part of the quarter-deck, in order to isolate them from the crew. According to the statement of one of the prisoners, the midshipmen were kept ironed by the legs, separate from the men, in a kind of round-house, aptly termed “Pandora’s Box,” which was entered by a scuttle in the roof, about eighteen inches square. “The prisoners’ wives visited the ship daily, and brought their children, who were permitted to be carried to their unhappy fathers. To see the poor captives in irons,” says the only narrative published of the Pandora’s visit, “weeping over their tender offspring, was too moving a scene for any feeling heart. Their wives brought them ample supplies of every delicacy that the country afforded while we lay there, and behaved with the greatest fidelity and affection to them.”126 Stewart, the midshipman, had espoused the daughter of an old chief, and they had lived together in the greatest harmony; a beautiful little girl had been the fruit of the union. When Stewart was confined in irons, Peggy, for so her husband had named her, flew with her infant in a canoe to the arms of her husband. The interview was so painful that Stewart begged she might not be admitted on board again. Forbidden to see him, she sank into the greatest dejection, and seemed to have lost all relish for food and existence; she pined away and died two months afterwards.127
MAP OF THE ISLANDS OF THE PACIFIC.
All the mutineers that were left on the island having been secured, the ship proceeded to other islands in search of those who had gone away in the Bounty. It must be mentioned, however, that two of the men had perished by violent deaths. They had made friends with a chief, and one of them, Churchill, was his tayo, or sworn friend. The chief died suddenly without issue, and Churchill, according to the custom of the country, succeeded to his property and dignity. The other, Thomson, murdered Churchill, probably to acquire his possessions, and was in his turn stoned to death by the natives. Captain Edwards learned that after Bligh had been set adrift, Christian had thrown overboard the greater part of the bread-fruit plants, and divided the property of those they had abandoned. They at first went to an island named Toobouai, where they intended to form a settlement, but the opposition of the natives, and their own quarrels, determined them to revisit Otaheite. There the leading natives were very curious to know what had become of Bligh and the rest, and the mutineers invented a story to the effect that they had unexpectedly fallen in with Captain Cook at an island he had just discovered, and that Lieutenant Bligh was stopping with him, and had appointed Mr. Christian commander of the Bounty; and, further, he was now come for additional supplies for them. This story imposed upon the simple-minded natives, and in the course of a very few days the Bounty received on board thirty-eight goats, 312 hogs, eight dozen fowls, a bull and a cow, and large quantities of fruit. They also took with them a number of natives, male and female, intending to form a settlement at Toobouai. Skirmishes with the natives, generally brought on by their own violent conduct or robberies, and eternal bickerings among themselves, delayed the progress of their fort, and it was subsequently abandoned, sixteen of the men electing to stop at Otaheite, and the remaining nine leaving finally in the Bounty, Christian having been heard frequently to say that his object was to find some uninhabited island, in which there was no harbour, that he would run the ship ashore, and make use of her materials to form a settlement. This was all that Captain Edwards could learn, and after a fruitless search of three months he abandoned further inquiry, and proceeded on his homeward voyage.
Off the east coast of New Holland, the Pandora ran on a reef, and was speedily a wreck. In an hour and a half after she struck, there were eight and a half feet of water in her hold, and in spite of continuous pumping and baling, it became evident that she was a doomed vessel. With all the efforts made to save the crew, thirty-one of the ship’s company and four mutineers were lost with the vessel. Very little notice, indeed, seems to have been taken of the latter by the captain, who was afterwards accused of considerable inhumanity. “Before the final catastrophe,” says the surgeon of the vessel, “three of the Bounty’s people, Coleman, Norman, and M’Intosh, were now let out of irons, and sent to work at the pumps. The others offered their assistance, and begged to be allowed a chance of saving their lives; instead of which, two additional sentinels were placed over them, with orders to shoot any who should attempt to get rid of their fetters. Seeing no prospect of escape, they betook themselves to prayer, and prepared to meet their fate, every one expecting that the ship would soon go to pieces, her rudder and part of the stern-post being already beaten away.” When the ship was actually sinking, it is stated that no notice was taken of the prisoners, although Captain Edwards was entreated by young Heywood, the midshipman, to have mercy on them, when he passed over their prison to make his own escape, the ship then lying on her broadside with the larboard bow completely under water. Fortunately, the master-at-arms, either by accident, or probably design, when slipping from the roof of “Pandora’s Box” into the sea, let the keys unlocking the hand-cuffs and irons fall through the scuttle, and thus enabled them to commence their own liberation, in which they were assisted by one brave seaman, William Moulter, who said he would set them free or go to the bottom with them. He wrenched away, with great difficulty, the bars of the prison. Immediately after the ship went down, leaving nothing visible but the top-mast cross-trees.
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