CHAPTER SIXTEEN.
MATT QUINTAL MAKES A TREMENDOUS DISCOVERY.
Upwards of four years had now elapsed since the mutiny of the _Bounty_,and of the nine mutineers who escaped to Pitcairn Island, only fourremained, with eleven women and a number of children.
These latter had now become an important and remarkably noisy element inthe colony. They and time together did much to efface the saddeningeffects of the gloomy epoch which had just come to a close. Time,however, did more than merely relieve the feelings of the survivingmutineers and widows. It increased the infantry force on the islandconsiderably, so that in the course of a few years there were added toit a Robert, William, and Edward Young, with a little sister named DollyYoung, to keep them in countenance. There also came a Jane Quintal andan Arthur Quintal, who were closely followed by a Rebecca Adams and aJames Young. So that the self-imposed cares and burdens of that pretty,active, and self-denying little creature, Otaheitan Sally, increasedwith her years and stature.
Before the most of these made their appearance, however, the poorOtaheitan wives and widows became downcast and discontented. One cannotwonder at this. Accustomed though they no doubt had been to war andbloodshed on their native island, they must have been shocked beyondmeasure by the scenes of brutality and murder through which they hadpassed. The most of them being now without husbands, and the men whoremained being not on very amicable terms among themselves, these poorcreatures seem to have been driven to a state of desperation, for theybegan to pine for their old home, and actually made up their minds toquit the island in one of the _Bounty's_ old boats, and leave the whitemen and even the children behind them. See Note 1.
The old boat turned out to be so leaky, however, that they werecompelled to return. But they did not cease to repine and to desiredeliverance. Gentle-spirited and tractable though they undoubtedlywere, they had evidently been tried beyond their powers of endurance.They were roused, and when meek people are roused they not unfrequentlygive their friends and acquaintances, (to say nothing of those nearer),a considerable surprise.
Matthew Quintal, who had a good deal of sly humour about him, eventuallyhit on a plan to quiet them, at least for a time.
"What makes you so grumpy, old girl?" he said one day to his wife, whileeating his dinner under the shade of a palm-tree.
"We wiss to go home," she replied, in a plaintive tone.
"Well, well, you _shall_ go home, so don't let your spirits go down. Ifyou've got tired of me, lass, you're not worth keeping. We'll set towork and build you a new boat out o' the old un. We'll begin this veryday, and when it's finished, you may up anchor and away to Otaheite, orTimbuctoo for all that I care."
The poor woman seemed pleased to hear this, and true to his word,Quintal set to work that very day, with McCoy, whom he persuaded toassist him. His friend thought that Quintal was only jesting about thewomen, and that in reality he meant to build a serviceable boat forfishing purposes. Young and Adams took little notice of what the othertwo were about; but one day when the former came down to the beach onBounty Bay, he could not help remarking on the strange shape of theboat.
"It'll never float," he remarked, with a look of surprise.
"It's not wanted to float," replied Quintal, "at least not just yet. Wecan make it float well enough with a few improvements afterwards."
Young looked still more surprised, but when Quintal whispered somethingin his ear, he laughed and went away.
The boat was soon ready, for it was to some extent merely a modificationof the old boat. Then all the women were desired to get into it andpush off, to see how it did.
"Get in carefully now, old girls," said Quintal, with a leer. "Lay holdof the oars and we'll shove you through the first o' the surf. Lend ahand, McCoy. Now then, give way all--hi!"
With a vigorous shove the two men sent the boat shooting through thesurf, which was unusually low that day. Young and Adams, with some ofthe children, stood on the rocks and looked on. The women lay to theiroars like men, and the boat leaped like a flying-fish through the surfinto deep water. Forgetting, in the excitement of the moment, theobject they had in view, the poor things shouted and laughed with glee;but they dipped their oars with sad irregularity, and the boat began torock in a violent manner. Then Young's wife, Susannah, caught what innautical parlance is called "a crab;" that is, she missed her stroke andfell backwards into the bottom of the boat.
With that readiness to render help which was a characteristic of thesewomen, Christian's widow, Mainmast, leaped up to assist the fallenSusannah. It only wanted this to destroy the equilibrium of the boataltogether. It turned bottom up in a moment, and left the female crewfloundering in the sea.
To women of civilised lands this might have been a serious accident, butto these Otaheitan ladies it was a mere trifle. Each had been able toswim like a duck from earliest childhood. Indeed, it was evident thatsome of their own little ones were equally gifted, for several of them,led by Sally, plunged into the surf and went out to meet their parentsas they swam ashore.
The men laughed heartily, and, after securing the boat and hauling it upon the beach, returned to the settlement, whither the women had gonebefore them to change their garments.
This incident effectually cured the native women of any intention toescape from the island, at least by boat, but it did not tend to calmtheir feelings. On the contrary, it seemed to have the effect offilling them with a thirst for vengeance, and they spent part of thatday in whispered plottings against the men. They determined to taketheir lives that very night.
While they were thus engaged, their innocent offspring were playingabout the settlement at different games, screaming at times withvehement delight, and making the palm-groves ring with laughter. Thebright sun shone equally upon the heads that whirled with merriment andthose that throbbed with dark despair.
Suddenly, in the midst of her play, little Sally came to an abruptpause. She missed little Matt Quintal from the group.
"Where's he gone, Charlie?" she demanded of her favourite playmate,whose name she had by that time learned to pronounce.
"I dunno," answered Charlie, whose language partook more of the nauticaltone of Quintal than of his late father.
"D'you know, Dan'l?" she asked of little McCoy.
"I dunno nuffin'," replied Dan, "'xcep' he's not here."
"Well, I must go an' seek 'im. You stop an' play here. I leave 'em inyour care, Toc. See you be good."
It would have amused you, reader, if you had seen with your bodily eyesthe little creatures who were thus warned to be good. Even Dan McCoy,who was considered out and out the worst of them, might have sat toRubens for a cherub; and as for the others, they were, we might almostsay, appallingly good. Thursday October, in particular, was the verypersonification of innocence. It would have been much more appropriateto have named him Sunday July, because in his meek countenance goodnessand beauty sat enthroned.
Of course we do not mean to say that these children were good fromprinciple. They had no principle at that time. No, their actuatingmotive was selfishness; but it was not concentrated, regardlessselfishness, and it was beautifully counteracted by natural amiabilityof temperament.
But they were quite capable of sin. For instance, when Sally had leftthem to search for her lost sheep, little Dan McCoy, moved by a desirefor fun, went up behind little Charlie Christian and gave him anunmerited kick. It chanced to be a painful kick, and Charlie, without athought of resentment or revenge, immediately opened his mouth, shut hiseyes, and roared. Horrified by this unexpected result, little Dan alsoshut his eyes, opened his mouth, and roared.
The face that Charlie made in these circumstances was so ineffablyfunny, that Toc burst into uncontrollable laughter. Hearing this, theroarers opened their eyes, slid quickly into the same key, and tumbledhead over heels on the grass, in which evolutions they were imitated bythe whole party, except such as had not at that time passed beyond thestaggering age.
Me
anwhile Sally searched the neighbouring bush in vain; then bethinkingher that Matt Quintal, who was fond of dangerous places, might haveclambered down to the rocks to bathe, she made the best of her way tothe beach, at a place which, being somewhat difficult of access fromabove, was seldom visited by any save the wild and venturesome.
She had only descended a few yards when she met the lost one clamberingup in frantic haste, panting violently, his fat cheeks on fire, and hislarge eyes blazing.
"Oh, Matt, what is it?" she exclaimed, awestruck at the sight of him.
"Sip!--sip!" he cried, with labouring breath, as he pointed with onehand eagerly to the sea and with the other to the shore; "bin men downdare!--look, got suffin'! Oh!"
A prolonged groan of despair escaped the child as he fumbled in atrousers-pocket and pushed three fingers through a hole in the bottom ofit.
"It's hoed through!"
"What's hoed through?" asked Sally, with quick sympathy, trying toconsole the urchin for some loss he had sustained.
"De knife!" exclaimed little Dan, with a face of blank woe.
"The knife! what knife? But don't cry, dear; if you lost it throughthat hole it must be lying on the track, you know, somewhere between usand the beach."
This happy thought did not seem to have occurred to Matt, whose cheeksat once resumed their flush and his eyes their blaze.
Taking his hand, Sally led him down the track.
They looked carefully as they went, and had not gone far when Mattsprang forward with a scream of delight and picked up a clasp-knife. Itwas by no means a valuable one. It had a buckhorn handle, and itssolitary blade, besides being broken at the point, was affected withrust and tobacco in about equal proportions.
"Oh, Matt, where did you find it?"
"Come down and you see," he exclaimed, pointing with greater excitementthan ever to the beach below.
They were soon down, and there, on the margin of the woods, they found aheap of cocoa-nut shells scattered about.
"Found de knife dere," said Matt, pointing to the midst of the shells,and speaking in a low earnest voice, as if the subject were a solemnone.
"Oh!" exclaimed Sally, under her breath.
"An' look here," said Matt, leading the girl to a sandy spot close by.They both stood transfixed and silent, for there were _strangefoot-prints_ on the sand.
They could not be mistaken. Sally and Matt knew every foot and everyshoe, white or black, in Pitcairn. The marks before them had been madeby unknown shoes.
Just in proportion as youth is more susceptible of astonishment thanage, so was the surprise of those little ones immeasurably greater thanthat of Robinson Crusoe in similar circumstances. With awestruck facesthey traced the foot-prints down to the water's edge. Then, for thefirst time, it struck Matt that he had forgotten something.
"Oh, me forget de sip--de sip!" he cried, and pointed out to sea.
Sally raised her eyes and uttered an exclamation of fresh astonishment,as well she might, for there, like a seagull on the blue wave, was aship under full sail. It was far-off, nearly on the horizon, but quitedistinct, and large enough to be recognised.
Of course the gazers were spellbound again. It was the first real shipthey had ever seen, but they easily recognised it, being familiar withman's floating prisons from the frequent descriptions given to them byJohn Adams, and especially from a drawing made by him, years ago, on theback of an old letter, representing a full-rigged man-of-war. Thismasterpiece of fine art had been nailed up on the walls of John Adams'shut, and had been fully expounded to each child in succession, as soonafter its birth as was consistent with common-sense--sometimes sooner.
Suddenly Otaheitan Sally recovered herself.
"Come, Matt, we must run home an' tell what we've seen."
Away they went like two goats up the cliffs. Panting and blazing, theycharged down on their amazed playmates, shouting, "A sip! a sip!" butnever turning aside nor slacking their pace until they burst with thenews on the astonished mutineers.
Something more than astonishment, however, mingled with the feelings ofthe seamen, and it was not until they had handled the knife, and visitedthe sandy cove, and seen the foot-prints, and beheld the vessel herself,that they became fully convinced that she had really been close to theisland, that men had apparently landed to gather cocoa-nuts, and hadgone away without having discovered the settlement, which was hid fromtheir view by the high cliffs to the eastward of Bounty Bay.
The vessel had increased her distance so much by the time the menreached the cove, that it was impossible to make out what she was.
"A man-o'-war, mayhap, sent to search for us," suggested Quintal.
"Not likely," said Adams. "If she'd bin sent to search for us, shewouldn't have contented herself with only pickin' a few nuts."
"I should say she is a trader that has got out of her course," saidYoung; "but whatever she is, we've seen the last of her. I'm not surethat I wouldn't have run the risk of having our hiding-place found out,and of being hung, for the sake of seeing once more the fresh face of awhite man."
He spoke with a touch of sadness in his tone, which contrasted forciblywith the remark that followed.
"It's little _I_ would care about the risk o' bein' scragged," saidQuintal, "if I could only once more have a stiff glass o' grog an' apipe o' good, strong, genuine baccy!"
"You'll maybe have the first sooner than you think," observed McCoy,with a look of intelligence.
"What d'ye mean?" asked Quintal.
"Ax no questions an' you'll be told no lies," was McCoy's politerejoinder, to which Quintal returned a not less complimentary remark,and followed Young and Adams, who had already begun to reascend thecliffs.
This little glimpse of the great outer world was obtained by themutineers in 1795, and was the only break of the kind that occurredduring a residence of many years on the lonely island.
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Note 1. We are led to this conclusion in regard to the children by thefact that in the various records which tell us of these women attemptingtheir flight, no mention is made of the children being with them.