“I’m going to the cliffs to-day, Williams,” said Young one morning. “Will you come?”
Williams was busy at the forge under the pleasant shade of the great banyan-tree. Resting his hammer on the anvil, he looked up.
“No,” he answered. “I can’t go till I’ve finished this spade. It’s the last bit of iron we have left that’ll serve for such a purpose.”
“That’s no reason why you should not let it lie till the afternoon or to-morrow.”
“True, but I’ve got another reason for pushing through with it. Isaac Martin says the want of a spade keeps him idle, and you know it’s a pity to encourage idleness in a lazy fellow.”
“You are right. What is Martin about just now?”
“Working at the big water-tank. It suits him, a heavy quiet sort of job with the pick, requiring no energy or thought,—only a sleepy sort o’ perseverance, of which long-legged Isaac has plenty.”
“Come, now,” returned Young, with a laugh. “I see you are getting jealous of Martin’s superior intellect. But where are Quintal and McCoy?”
“Diggin’ in their gardens, I suppose. Leastwise, I heerd Mr Christian say to Mainmast he’d seen ’em go off in that direction. Mr Christian himself has gone to his old outlook aloft on the mountains. If he don’t see a sail at last it won’t be for want o’ keepin’ a bright look-out.”
The armourer smiled grimly as he thrust the edge of the half-formed spade into the fire, and began to blow his bellows.
“You’ve got them to work again,” said Young, referring to the bellows which had belonged to the Bounty.
“Ay, patched ’em up after a fashion, though there’s a good deal o’ windage somewheres. If them rats git hold of ’em again, the blacksmith’s occupation’ll be gone. Here comes Bill Brown; p’r’aps he won’t object to go bird-nestin’ with ’ee.”
The armourer drew the glowing metal from the fire as he spoke, and sent the bright sparks flying up into the leaves of the banyan-tree while the botanist approached.
“I’ll go, with all my heart,” said Brown, on being invited by Young to accompany him. “We’d better take Nehow with us. He is the best cliff-man among the natives.”
“That’s just what I thought of doing,” said Young, “and—ah! here comes some one else who will be glad to go.”
The midshipman’s tone and manner changed suddenly as he held out both hands by way of invitation to Sally, who came skipping forward, and ran gleefully towards him.
Sally was no longer the nude cherub which had landed on the island. She had not only attained to maturer years, but was precocious both in body and mind,—had, as we have shown, become matronly in her ideas and actions, and was clothed in a short petticoat of native cloth, and a little scarf of the same, her pretty little head being decorated with a wreath of flowers culled and constructed by herself.
“No, I can’t go,” answered Sally to Young’s invitation, with a solemn shake of her head.
“Why not?”
“’Cause I’s got to look arter babby.”
Up to this period Sally had shown a decided preference for the ungrammatical language of the seamen, though she associated freely with Young and Christian. Perhaps her particular fondness for John Adams may have had something to do with this.
“Which baby, Sall? You know your family is a pretty large one.”
“Yes, there’s a stunnin’ lot of ’em—a’most too many for me; but I said the babby.”
“Oh, I suppose you mean Charlie Christian?”
“In coorse I means Challie,” replied the child, with a smile that displayed a dazzling set of teeth, the sparkle of which was only equalled by that of her eyes.
“Well, but you can bring Charlie along with you,” said Young, “and I’ll engage to carry him and you too if you get tired. There, run away; find him, and fetch him quick.”
Little Sall went off like the wind, and soon returned with the redoubtable Charles in her arms. It was all she could do to stagger under the load; but Charlie Christian had not yet attained to facility in walking. He was still in the nude stage of childhood, and his faithful nurse, being afraid lest he should get badly scratched if dragged at a rapid pace through the bushes, had carried him.
Submitting, according to custom, in solemn and resigned surprise, Charlie was soon seated on the shoulders of our midshipman, who led the way to the cliffs. William Brown followed, leading Sally by the hand, for she refused to be carried, and Nehow brought up the rear.
The cliffs to which their steps were directed were not more than an hour’s walk from the settlement at Bounty Bay, though, for Sally’s sake, the time occupied in going was about half-an-hour longer. It was a wild spot which had been selected. The towering walls of rock were rugged with ledges, spurs, and indentations, where sea-birds in myriads gave life to the scene, and awakened millions of echoes to their plaintive cries. There was a pleasant appearance of sociability about the birds which was powerfully attractive. Even Nehow, accustomed as he was to such scenes, appeared to be impressed. The middy and the botanist were excited. As for Sally, she was in ecstasies, and the baby seemed lost in the profoundest fit of wonder he had experienced since the day of his birth.
“Oh, Challie,” exclaimed his nurse in a burst of laughter, “what a face you’s got! Jis’ like de fig’r’ead o’ the Bounty.” (Sall quoted here!) “Ain’t they bootiful birds?”
She effectually prevented reply, even if such had been intended, by suddenly seizing her little charge round the neck and kissing his right eye passionately. Master Charlie cared nothing for that. He gazed past her at the gulls with the unobliterated eye. When she kissed him on the left cheek, he gazed past her at the gulls with the other eye. When she let him go, he continued to gaze at the gulls with both eyes. He had often seen the same gulls at a distance, from the lower level of Bounty Bay, but he had never before stood on their own giddy cliffs, and watched them from their own favourite bird’s-eye-view point; for there were thousands of them sloping, diving, and wheeling in the airy abyss, pictured against the dark blue sea below, as well as thousands more circling upwards, floating and gyrating in the bright blue sky above. It seemed as if giant snowflakes were trembling in the air in all directions. Some of the gulls came so near to those who watched them that their black inquiring eyes became distinctly visible; others swept towards them with rustling wings, as if intending to strike, and then glanced sharply off, or upwards, with wild cries.
“Wouldn’t it be fun to have wings?” asked Brown of Sally, as she stood there open-mouthed and eyed.
“Oh, wouldn’t it?”
“If I had wings,” said Young, with a touch of sadness in his tone, “I’d steer a straight course through the air for Old England.”
“I didn’t know you had such a strong desire to be hanged,” said Brown.
“They’d never hang me,” returned Young. “I’m innocent of the crime of mutiny, and Captain Bligh knows it.”
“Bligh would be but a broken reed to lean on,” rejoined Brown, with a shrug of contempt. “If he liked you, he’d favour you; if he didn’t, he’d go dead against you. I wouldn’t trust myself in his hands whether innocent or guilty. Depend upon it, Mr Young, Fletcher Christian would have been an honour to the service if he had not been driven all but mad by Bligh. I don’t justify Mr Christian’s act—it cannot be defended,—but I have great sympathy with him. The only man who deserves to be hanged for the mutiny of the Bounty, in my opinion, is Mr Bligh himself; but men seldom get their due in this world, either one way or another.”
“That’s a powerfully radical sentiment,” said Young, laughing; “it’s to be hoped that men will at all events get their due in the next world, and it is well for you that Pitcairn is a free republic. But come, we must go to work if we would have a kettle of fresh eggs. I see a ledge which seems accessible, and where there must be plenty of eggs, to judge from the row the gulls are making round it. I’ll try. See, now, that you don’t get yourself into a fix that you can’t get out of. You know that the heads of you landsmen are not so steady as those of seamen.”
“I know that the heads of landsmen are not stuffed with such conceit as the heads of you sailors,” retorted Brown, as he went off to gather eggs.
“Now, Sally, do you stop here and take care of Charlie,” said Young, leading the little girl to a soft grassy mound, as far back from the edge of the cliff as possible. “Mind that you don’t leave this spot till I return. I know I can trust you, and as for Charlie—”
“Oh, he never moves a’most, ’xcept w’en I lifts ’im. He’s so good!” interrupted Sally.
“Well, just keep a sharp eye on him, and we’ll soon be back with lots of eggs.”
While Edward Young was thus cautioning the child, William Brown was busy making his way down the cliffs to some promising ledges below, and Nehow, the Otaheitan, clambered up the almost perpendicular face of the part that rose above them. (See frontispiece.)
It was interesting to watch the movements of the three men. Each was, in his own way, venturesome, fearless, and more or less practised in cliff climbing. The midshipman ascended the perpendicular face with something of a nautical swagger, but inasmuch as the ledges, crevices, and projections were neither so well adapted to the hands nor so sure as ratlines and ropes, there was a wholesome degree of caution mingled with his confidence. When the wished-for ledge was gained, he gave relief to his feelings in a hearty British cheer that reverberated from cliff to cliff, causing the startled sea-gulls to drive the very echoes mad with their clangour.
The botanist, on the other hand, proceeded with the extreme care of a man who knew that a false step or uncertain grip might send him into the seething mass of foam and rocks below. But he did not hesitate or betray want of courage in attempting any difficulty which he had made up his mind to face.
The proceedings of Nehow, however, seemed little short of miraculous. He appeared to run up perpendicular places like a cat; to leap where the others crept, to scramble where his companions did not dare to venture, and, loosely speaking, to hang on occasionally to nothing by the point of his nose, his eyelids, or his finger-nails! We say that he appeared to do all this, but the gulls who watched and followed him in noisy indignation could have told you, if they had chosen, that his eye was quick, that his feet and hands were sure, and that he never trusted foot or hand for one moment on a doubtful projection or crevice.
For some time all went well. The three men soon returned, each with a few eggs which they laid on the grass in three little heaps, to be watched and guarded by Sally, and to be stared at in grave surprise by Charlie. They carried their eggs in three round baskets without lids, and with handles which folded over on one side, so that the baskets could be fitted into each other when not in use, or slung round the necks of the egg-collectors while they were climbing.
The last to return to the children was William Brown. He brought his basket nearly half full of fine eggs, and set it down beside the two heaps already brought in.
“Ain’t they lovely, Sall?” asked Brown, wiping the perspiration from his brow with the sleeve of his coat. That same coat, by the way, was very disreputable—threadbare and worn,—being four years old on the lowest calculation, and having seen much rough service, for Brown had an objection to the tapa cloth, and said he would stick to the old coat as long as it would stick to him. The truth is he felt it, with his worn canvas trousers and Guernsey shirt, to be in some sense a last link to “home,” and he was loath to part with them.
“Lovely!” exclaimed Sally, “they’s jus’ bootiful.” Nothing could exceed “bootiful” in Sally’s mind—she had paid the eggs the highest possible compliment.
Charlie did them, at the same moment, the greatest possible damage, by sitting down in the basket, unintentionally, with an awful crash.
From the gaze of horror that he cast upwards, it was evident that he was impressed with a strong belief that he had done something wrong, though the result did not seem to him unpleasant. The gaze of horror quickly changed into one of alarm when he observed the shocked countenance of Sally, and he burst into uncontrollable tears.
“Poor thing,” said Brown, lifting him out of the mess and setting him on his legs. “Never mind, old man, I’ll fetch you a better basketful soon. You clean him up, Sall, and I’ll be back in a jiffy.”
So saying, Brown took up his basket, emptied out the mess, wiped it with a bunch of grass, and descended the short slope to the cliff edge, laughing as he went.
Poor Sally’s shocked expression had not yet passed off when Charlie came to a sudden stop, shut his mouth tightly and opened his eyes, as though to say, “Well, how do you take it now?”
“Oh, Challie, but you is bad to-day.”
This was enough. The shades of darkest night settled down on Charlie’s miserable soul. Re-shutting his eyes and reopening his mouth, he poured forth the woe of his inconsolable heart in prolonged and passionate howling.
“No, no; O don’t!” cried the repentant Sally, her arms round his neck and fondling him. “I didn’t mean it. I’m so sorry. It’s me that’s bad—badder than you ever was.”
But Charlie refused to be comforted. He flung himself on the grass in agony of spirit, to the alarm and grief of his poor nurse.
“Me’s dood?” he cried, pausing suddenly, with a blaze of inquiry in his wet visage.
“Yes, yes, good as gold—gooder, far gooder!”
Sally did not possess an enlightened conscience at that time. She would have said anything to quiet him, but he would not be quieted.
“Me’s dood—O dood! ah-o-ee-aw-ee!”
The noise was bad enough, but the way he flung himself about was worse. There was no occasion for Sally to clean him up. Rolling thus on the green turf made him as pure, if not bright, as a new pin; but it had another effect, which gave Sally a fright such as she had never up to that time conceived of, and never afterwards forgot.
In his rollings Charlie came to the edge of the knoll where a thick but soft bush concealed a ledge, or drop, of about two feet. Through this bush he passed in a moment. Sally leaped up and sprang to the spot, just in time to see her charge rolling helplessly down the slope to what appeared to be certain death.
There was but a short slope between the bush and the cliff. Rotund little Charlie “fetched way” as he advanced, despite one or two feeble clutches at the rocks.
If Sally had been a few years older she would have bounded after him like a goat, but she had only reached that period of life which rendered petrifaction possible. She stood ridged for a few moments with heart, head, and eyes apparently about to burst. At last her voice found vent in a shriek so awful that it made the heart of Young, high on the cliffs above, stand still. It had quite the contrary effect on the legs of Brown. That cautious man chanced to be climbing the cliff slowly with a fresh basketful of eggs. Hearing the shriek, and knowing full well that it meant imminent danger, he leaped up the last few steps of the precipice with a degree of heedless agility that equalled that of Nehow himself. He was just in time to see Charlie coming straight at him like a cannon shot. It was really an awful situation. To have received the shock while his footing was still precarious would have insured his own destruction as well as that of the child. Feeling this, he made a kangaroo-like bound over the edge of the cliff, and succeeded in planting both feet and knees firmly on a grassy foundation, just in time. Letting go his burden, he spread out both arms. Charlie came into his bosom with extreme violence, but he remained firm, while the basket of eggs went wildly downward to destruction.
Meanwhile, Sally stood there with clasped hands and glazed eyes, sending up shriek after shriek, which sent successive stabs to the heart of Edward Young, as he scurried and tumbled, rather than ran, down from the upper cliffs towards her.
In a few minutes he came in pale and panting. A minute later and Nehow ran round a neighbouring point like a greyhound.
“All right?” gasped Young.
“All right,” replied Brown.
“Wheeaow-ho!” exclaimed Nehow, expanding his cavernous mouth with a grin of satisfaction.
It is worthy of record that little Sally did not revisit these particular cliffs for several years after that exciting and eventful day, and that she returned to the settlement with a beating and grateful heart.
It must not be supposed that Charlie Christian remained for any great length of time “the babby” of that infant colony. By no means. In a short time after the event which we have just described, there came to Pitcairn a little sister to Charlie. She was named Mary, despite the earnest suggestion of Isaac Martin, that as she was “born of a Wednesday,” she ought to be called by that name.
Of course Otaheitan Sally at once devoted herself to the newcomer, but she did not on that account forsake her first love. No; her little brown heart remained true to Charlie, though she necessarily gave him less of her society than before.
Then Mrs Quintal gave her husband the additional burden, as he styled it, of a daughter, whom he named Sarah, for no other reason, that any one could make out, than the fact that his wife did not like it, and his friend McCoy had advised him on no account to adopt it. Thus was little Matthew Quintal also provided with a sister.
Shortly after that, John Adams became a moderately happy father, and called the child Dinah, because he had never had a female relation of that name; indeed, he had never possessed a relation of any kind whatever that he knew of, having been a London street-boy, a mere waif, when he first became aware, so to speak, of his own existence.
About the same time that little Dinah was born, John Mills rushed one day into the yam-field of Edward Young, where the midshipman was at work, seized his hand, and exclaimed—“I wish you joy, sir, it’s a girl!”
Not to be out-done in civility, Young carefully watched his opportunity, and, only four days later, rushed into the yam-garden of John Mills, where he was smoking, seized his hand, and exclaimed—“I congratulate you, Mills, it’s a boy!” So, Young called his daughter Folly, because he had an old aunt of that name who had been kind to him; and Mills called his son John, after himself, who, he said, was the kindest friend he ever had.
By this time poor Otaheitan Sally became overburdened with care. It became evident that she could not manage to look after so large a family of helpless infants, even though her services should only be required when the mothers were busy in the gardens. Mrs Isabella Christian, alias Mainmast, was therefore relieved of part of her field duties, and set apart for infantry drill.
Thus the rising generation multiplied and grew apace; and merry innocent laughter and gleeful childlike shouts began to resound among the cliffs and groves of the lonely refuge of the mutineers.
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