No wonder that there was wild excitement on the lonely island at the sight of this sail, for, with the exception of the ship that had been seen years before, and only for a few minutes, by Sally and Matt Quintal, no vessel of any kind had visited them during the space of nineteen years.
“I’ve longed for it, old ’ooman, as nobody but myself can understand,” said Adams, in a low, earnest voice to his wife, who stood on the cliffs beside him. Although nearly blind, Mrs Adams was straining her eyes in the direction of the strange sail. “And now that it’s come,” continued her husband, “I confess to you, lass, I’m somewhat afeared to face it. It’s not that I fear to die more than other men, but I’d feel it awful hard to be took away from you an’ all them dear child’n. But God’s will be done.”
“They’d never take you from us, father,” exclaimed Dinah Adams, who overheard this speech.
“There’s no sayin’, Di. I’ve forfeited my life to the laws of England. I tell ’ee what it is, Thursday,” said Adams, going up to the youth, who was gazing wistfully like the others at the rapidly approaching vessel, “it may be a man-o’-war, an’ they may p’r’aps want to ship me off to England on rather short notice. If so, I must go; but I’d rather not. So I’ll retire into the bushes, Toc, while you go aboard in the canoe. I’ll have time to think over matters before you come back with word who they are, an’ where they hail from.”
While Thursday went down to the beach, accompanied by Charlie, to prepare a canoe for this mission, the ship drew rapidly near the island, and soon after hove to, just outside of Bounty Bay. As she showed no colours, and did not look like a man-of-war, Adams began to feel easier in his mind, and again going out on the cliffs, watched the canoe as it dashed through the surf.
Under the vigorous strokes of Thursday and Charlie Christian, it was soon alongside the strange ship. To judge from the extent to which the men opened their eyes, there is reason to believe that those on board of that strange ship were filled with unusual surprise; and well they might be, for the appearance of our two heroes was not that which voyagers in the South Pacific were accustomed to expect. The remarks of two of the surprised ones, as the canoe approached, will explain their state of mind better than any commentary.
“I say, Jack, it ain’t a boat; I guess it’s a canoe.”
“Yes, Bill, it’s a canoe.”
“What d’ye make ’em out to be, Jack?”
“Men, I think; leastwise they’re not much like monkeys; though, of coorse, a feller can’t be sure till they stand up an’ show their tails,—or the want of ’em.”
“Well, now,” remarked Bill, as the canoe drew nearer, “that’s the most puzzlin’ lot I’ve seen since I was raised. They ain’t niggers, that’s plain; they’re too light-coloured for that, an’ has none o’ the nigger brick-dust in their faces. One on ’em, moreover, seems to have fair curly hair, an’ they wears jackets an’ hats with something of a sailor-cut about ’em. Why, I do b’lieve they’re shipwrecked sailors.”
“No,” returned Jack, with a critical frown, “they’re not just the colour o’ white men. Mayhap, they’re a noo style o’ savage, this bein’ raither an out-o’-the-way quarter.”
“Stand by with a rope there,” cried the captain of the vessel, cutting short the discussion, while the canoe ranged longside.
“Ship ahoy!” shouted Thursday, in the true nautical style which he had learned from Adams.
If the eyes of the men who looked over the side of the ship were wide open with surprise before, they seemed to blaze with amazement at the next remark by Thursday.
“Where d’ye hail from, an’ what’s your name?” he asked, as Charlie made fast to the rope which was thrown to them.
“The Topaz, from America, Captain Folger,” answered the captain, with a smile.
With an agility worthy of monkeys, and that might have justified Jack and Bill looking for tails, the brothers immediately stood on the deck, and holding out their hands, offered with affable smiles to shake hands. We need scarcely say the offer was heartily accepted by every one of the crew.
“And who may you be, my good fellows?” asked Captain Folger, with an amused expression.
“I am Thursday October Christian,” answered the youth, drawing himself up as if he were announcing himself the king of the Cannibal Islands. “I’m the oldest son of Fletcher Christian, one of the mutineers of the Bounty, an’ this is my brother Charlie.”
The sailors glanced at each other and then at the stalwart youths, as if they doubted the truth of the assertion.
“I’ve heard of that mutiny,” said Captain Folger. “It was celebrated enough to make a noise even on our side of the Atlantic. If I remember rightly, most of the mutineers were caught on Otaheite and taken to England, being wrecked and some drowned on the way; the rest were tried, and some acquitted, some pardoned, and some hanged.”
“I know nothin’ about all that,” said Thursday, with an interested but perplexed look.
“But I do, sir,” said the man whom we have styled Jack, touching his hat to the captain. “I’m an Englishman, as you knows, an’ chanced to be in England at the very time when the mutineers was tried. There was nine o’ the mutineers, sir, as went off wi’ the Bounty from Otaheite, an’ they’ve never bin heard on from that day to this.”
“Yes, yes!” exclaimed Thursday, with sudden animation, “that’s us. The nine mutineers came to our island here, Pitcairn, an’ remained here ever since, an’ we’ve all bin born here; there’s lots more of us,—boys and girls.”
“You don’t say so!” exclaimed the captain, whose interest was now thoroughly aroused. “Are the nine mutineers all on Pitcairn still?”
Thursday’s mobile countenance at once became profoundly sad, and he shook his head slowly.
“No,” said he, “they’re all dead but one. John Adams is his name.”
“Don’t remember that name among the nine said to be lost,” remarked the Englishman.
“I’ve heard father say he was sometimes called John Smith,” said Thursday.
“Ah, yes! I remember the name of Smith,” said Jack. “He was one of ’em.”
“And is he the only man left on the island?” asked the captain.
“Yes, the only man,” replied Thursday, who had never yet thought of himself in any other light than a boy; “an’ if you’ll come ashore in our canoe, father’ll take you to his house an’ treat you to the best he’s got. He’ll be right glad to see you too, for he’s not seen a soul except ourselves for nigh twenty years.”
“Not seen a soul! D’ye mean to say no ship has touched here for that length of time?” asked the captain in surprise.
“No, except one that only touched an’ went off without discovering that we were here, an’ none of us found out she had bin here till we chanced to see her sailin’ away far out to sea. That was five years ago.”
“That’s very strange and interestin’. I’d like well to visit old Adams, lad, an’ I thank ’ee for the invitation; but I won’t run my ship through such a surf as that, an’ don’t like to risk leavin’ her to go ashore in your canoe.”
“If you please, sir, I’d be very glad to go, an’ bring off what news there is,” said Jack, the English sailor, whose surname was Brace.
At first Captain Folger refused this offer, but on consideration he allowed Jack to go, promising at the same time to keep as near to the shore as possible, so that if there was anything like treachery he might have a chance of swimming off.
“So your father is dead?” asked the captain, as he walked with Thursday to the side.
“Yes, long, long ago.”
“But you called Adams ‘father’ just now. How’s that?”
“Oh, we all calls ’im that. It’s only a way we’ve got into.”
“What made your father call you Thursday?”
“’Cause I was born on a Thursday.”
“H’m I an’ I suppose if you’d bin born on a Tuesday or Saturday, he’d have called you by one or other of these days?”
“S’pose so,” said Thursday, with much simplicity.
“Are you married, Thursday?”
“Yes, I’m married to Susannah,” said Thursday, with a pleased smile; “she’s a dear girl, though she’s a deal older than me—old enough to be my mother. And I’ve got a babby too—a splendid babby!”
Thursday passed ever the side as he said this, and fortunately did not see the merriment which him remarks created.
Jack Brace followed him into the canoe, and in less than half-an-hour he found himself among the wondering, admiring, almost awestruck, islanders of Pitcairn.
“It’s a man!” whispered poor Mainmast to Susannah, with the memory of Fletcher Christian strong upon her.
“What a lovely beard he has!” murmured Sally to Bessy Mills.
Charlie Christian and Matt Quintal chancing, curiously enough, to be near Sally and Bessy, overheard the whisper, and for the first time each received a painful stab from the green-eyed demon, jealousy.
But the children did not whisper their comments. They crowded round the seaman eagerly.
“You’ve come to live with us?” asked Dolly Young, looking up in his face with an innocent smile, and taking his rough hand.
“To tell us stories?” said little Arthur Quintal, with an equally innocent smile.
“Well, no, my dears, not exactly,” answered the seaman, looking in a dazed manner at the pretty faces and graceful forms around him; “but if I only had the chance to remain here, it’s my belief that I would.”
Further remark was stopped by the appearance of John Adams coming towards the group. He walked slowly, and kept his eyes steadily, yet wistfully, fastened on the seaman. Holding out his hand, he said in a low tone, as if he were soliloquising, “At last! It’s like a dream!” Then, as the sailor grasped his hand and shook it warmly, he added aloud a hearty “Welcome, welcome to Pitcairn.”
“Thank ’ee, thank ’ee,” said Jack Brace, not less heartily; “an’ may I ax if you are one o’ the Bounty mutineers, an’ no mistake?”
“The old tone,” murmured Adams, “and the old lingo, an’ the old cut o’ the jib, an’—an’—the old toggery.”
He took hold of a flap of Jack’s pea-jacket, and almost fondled it.
“Oh, man, but it does my heart good to see you! Come, come away up to my house an’ have some grub. Yes, yes—axin’ your pardon for not answerin’ right off—I am one o’ the Bounty mutineers; the last one—John Smith once, better known now as John Adams. But where do you hail from, friend?”
Jack at once gave him the desired information, told him on the way up all he knew about the fate of the mutineers who had remained at Otaheite, and received in exchange a brief outline of the history of the nine mutineers who had landed on Pitcairn.
The excitement of the two men and their interest in each other increased every moment; the one being full of the idea of having made a wonderful discovery of, as it were, a lost community, the other being equally full of the delight of once more talking to a man—a seaman—a messmate, he might soon say, for he meant to feed him like a prince.
“Get a pig cooked, Molly,” he said, during a brief interval in the conversation, “an’ do it as fast as you can.”
“There’s one a’most ready-baked now,” replied Mrs Adams.
“All right, send the girls for fruit, and make a glorious spread—outside; he’ll like it better than in the house—under the banyan-tree. Sit down, sit down, messmate.” Turning to the sailor, “Man, what a time it is since I’ve used that blessed word! Sit down and have a glass.”
Jack Brace smacked his lips in anticipation, thanked Adams in advance, and drew his sleeve across his mouth in preparation, while his host set a cocoa-nut-cup filled with a whitish substance before him.
“That’s a noo sort of a glass, John Adams,” remarked the man, as he raised and smelt it; “also a strange kind o’ tipple.”
He sipped, and seemed disappointed. Then he sipped again, and seemed pleased.
“What is it, may I ax?”
“It’s milk of the cocoa-nut,” answered Adams.
“Milk o’ the ko-ko-nut, eh? Well, now, that is queer. If you’d ’a called it the milk o’ the cow-cow-nut, I could have believed it. Hows’ever, it ain’t bad, tho’ raither wishy-washy. Got no stronger tipple than that?”
“Nothin’ stronger than that, ’xcept water,” said John, with one of his sly glances; “but it’s a toss up which is the strongest.”
“Well, it’ll be a toss down with me whichever is the strongest,” said the accommodating tar, as he once more raised the cup to his lips, and drained it.
“But, I say, you unhung mutineer, do you mean for to tell me that all them good-lookin’ boys an’ girls are yours?”
He looked round on the crowd of open-mouthed young people, who, from six-foot Toc down to the youngest staggerer, gazed at him solemnly, all eyes and ears.
“No, they ain’t,” answered Adams, with a laugh. “What makes you ask?”
“’Cause they all calls you father.”
“Oh!” replied his host, “that’s only a way they have; but there’s only four of ’em mine, three girls an’ a boy. The rest are the descendants of my eight comrades, who are now dead and gone.”
“Well, now, d’ye know, John Adams, alias Smith, mutineer, as ought to have bin hung but wasn’t, an’ as nobody would have the heart to hang now, even if they had the chance, this here adventur is out o’ sight one o’ the most extraor’nar circumstances as ever did happen to me since I was the length of a marlinspike.”
As Mainmast here entered to announce that the pig was ready for consumption, the amazed mariner was led to a rich repast under the neighbouring banyan-tree. Here he was bereft of speech for a considerable time, whether owing to the application of his jaws to food, or increased astonishment, it is difficult to say.
Before the repast began, Adams, according to custom, stood up, removed his hat, and briefly asked a blessing. To which all assembled, with clasped hands and closed eyes, responded Amen.
This, no doubt, was another source of profound wonder to Jack Brace, but he made no remark at the time. Neither did he remark on the fact that the women did not sit down to eat with the males of the party, but stood behind and served them, conversing pleasantly the while.
After dinner was concluded, and thanks had been returned, Jack Brace leaned his back against one of the descending branches of the banyan-tree, and with a look of supreme satisfaction drew forth a short black pipe.
At sight of this the countenance of Adams flushed, and his eyes almost sparkled.
“There it is again,” he murmured; “the old pipe once more! Let me look at it, Jack Brace; it’s not the first by a long way that I’ve handled.”
Jack handed over the pipe, a good deal amused at the manner of his host, who took the implement of fumigation and examined it carefully, handling it with tender care, as if it were a living and delicate creature. Then he smelt it, then put it in his mouth and gave it a gentle draw, while an expression of pathetic satisfaction passed over his somewhat care-worn countenance.
“The old taste, not a bit changed,” he murmured, shutting his eyes. “Brings back the old ships, and the old messmates, and the old times, and Old England.”
“Come, old feller,” said Jack Brace, “if it’s so powerful, why not light it and have a real good pull, for old acquaintance sake?”
He drew from his pocket flint and tinder, matches being unknown in those days, and began to strike a light, when Adams took the pipe hastily from his mouth and handed it back.
“No, no,” he said, with decision, “it’s only the old associations that it calls up, that’s all. As for baccy, I’ve bin so long without it now, that I don’t want it; and it would only be foolish in me to rouse up the old cravin’. There, you light it, Jack. I’ll content myself wi’ the smell of it.”
“Well, John Adams, have your way. You are king here, you know; nobody to contradict you. So I’ll smoke instead of you, if these young ladies won’t object.”
The young ladies referred to were so far from objecting, that they were burning with impatience to see a real smoker go to work, for the tobacco of the mutineers had been exhausted, and all the pipes broken or lost, before most of them were born.
“And let me tell you, John Adams,” continued the sailor, when the pipe was fairly alight, “I’ve not smoked a pipe in such koorious circumstances since I lit one, an’ had my right fore-finger shot off when I was stuffin’ down the baccy, in the main-top o’ the Victory at the battle o’ Trafalgar. But it was against all rules to smoke in action, an’ served me right. Hows’ever, it got me my discharge, and that’s how I come to be in a Yankee merchantman this good day.”
At the mention of battle and being wounded in action, the old professional sympathies of John Adams were awakened.
“What battle might that have been?” he asked.
“Which?” said Jack.
“Traflegar,” said the other.
Jack Brace took the pipe out of his mouth and looked at Adams, as though he had asked where Adam and Eve had been born. For some time he could not make up his mind how to reply.
“You don’t mean to tell me,” he said at length, “that you’ve never heard of the—battle—of—Trafalgar?”
“Never,” answered Adams, with a faint smile.
“Nor of the great Lord Nelson?”
“Never heard his name till to-day. You forget, Jack, that I’ve not seen a mortal man from Old England, or any other part o’ the civilised world, since the 28th day of April 1789, and that’s full nineteen years ago.”
“That’s true, John; that’s true,” said the seaman, slowly, as if endeavouring to obtain some comprehension of what depths of ignorance the fact implied. “So, I suppose you’ve never heerd tell of—hold on; let me rake up my brain-pan a bit.”
He tilted his straw hat, and scratched his head for a few minutes, puffing the while immense clouds of smoke, to the inexpressible delight of the open-mouthed youngsters around him.
“You—you’ve never heerd tell of Lord Howe, who licked the French off Ushant, somewheres about sixteen years gone by?”
“Never.”
“Nor of the great victories gained in the ’95 by Sir Edward Pellew, an’ Admiral Hotham, an’ Admiral Cornwallis, an’ Lord Bridgeport?”
“No, of coorse ye couldn’t; nor yet of Admiral Duncan, who, in the ’97, (I think it was), beat the Dutch fleet near Camperdown all to sticks. Nor yet of that tremendous fight off Cape Saint Vincent in the same year, when Sir John Jervis, with nothin’ more than fifteen sail o’ the Mediterranean fleet, attacked the Spaniards wi’ their twenty-seven ships o’ the line—line-o’-battle ships, you’ll observe, John Adams—an’ took four of ’em, knocked half of the remainder into universal smash, an’ sunk all the rest?”
“That was splendid!” exclaimed Adams, his martial spirit rising, while the eyes of the young listeners around kept pace with their mouths in dilating.
“Splendid? Pooh!” said Jack Brace, delivering puffs between sentences that resembled the shots of miniature seventy-fours, “that was nothin’ to what followed. Nelson was in that fight, he was, an’ Nelson began to shove out his horns a bit soon after that, I tell you. Well, well,” continued the British tar with a resigned look, “to think of meetin’ a man out of Bedlam who hasn’t heerd of Nelson and the Nile, w’ich, of coorse, ye haven’t. It’s worth while comin’ all this way to see you.”
Adams smiled and said, “Let’s hear all about it.”
“All about it, John? Why, it would take me all night to tell you all about it,” (there was an audible gasp of delight among the listeners), “and I haven’t time for that; but you must know that Lord Nelson, bein’ Sir Horatio Nelson at that time, chased the French fleet, under Admiral Brueys, into Aboukir Bay, (that’s on the coast of Egypt), sailed in after ’em, anchored alongside of ’em, opened on ’em wi’ both broadsides at once, an’ blew them all to bits.”
“You don’t say that, Jack Brace!”
“Yes, I do, John Adams; an’ nine French line-o’-battle ships was took, two was burnt, two escaped, and the biggest o’ the lot, the great three-decker, the Orient, was blowed up, an’ sent to the bottom. It was a thorough-goin’ piece o’ business that, I tell you, an’ Nelson meant it to be, for w’en he gave the signal to go into close action, he shouted, ‘Victory or Westminster Abbey.’”
“What did he mean by that?” asked Adams.
“Why, don’t you see, Westminster Abbey is the old church in London where they bury the great nobs o’ the nation in; there’s none but great nobs there, you know—snobs not allowed on no account whatever. So he meant, of coorse, victory or death, d’ye see? After which he’d be put into Westminster Abbey. An’ death it was to many a good man that day. Why, if you take even the Orient alone, w’en she was blowed up, Admiral Brueys himself an’ a thousand men went up along with her, an’ never came down again, so far as we know.”
“It must have bin bloody work,” said Adams.
“I believe you, my boy,” continued the sailor, “it was bloody work. There was some of our chaps that was always for reasonin’ about things, an’ would never take anything on trust, ’xcept their own inventions, who used to argufy that it was an awful waste o’ human life, to say nothin’ o’ treasure, (as they called it), all for nothin’. I used to wonder sometimes why them reasoners jined the sarvice at all, but to be sure most of ’em had been pressed. To my thinkin’, war wouldn’t be worth a brass farthin’ if there wasn’t a deal o’ blood and thunder about it; an’, of coorse, if we’re goin’ to have that sort o’ thing we must pay for it. Then, we didn’t do it for nothin’. Is it nothin’ to have the honour an’ glory of lickin’ the Mounseers an’ bein’ able to sing ‘Britannia rules the waves?’”
John Adams, who was not fond of argument, and did not agree with some of Jack’s reasoning, said, “P’r’aps;” and then, drawing closer to his new friend with deepening interest, said, “Well, Jack, what more has happened?”
“What more? Why, I’ll have to start a fresh pipe before I can answer that.”
Having started a fresh pipe he proceeded, and the group settled down again to devour his words, and watch and smell the smoke.
“Well, then, there was—but you know I ain’t a diction’ry, or a cyclopodia, or a gazinteer—let me see. After the battle o’ the Nile there came the Irish Rebellion.”
“Did that do ’em much good, Jack?”
“O yes, John; it united ’em immediately after to Old England, so that we’re now Great Britain an’ Ireland. Then Sir Ralph Abercromby, he gave the French an awful lickin’ on land in Egypt at Aboukir, where Nelson had wopped ’em on the sea, and, last of all came the glorious battle of Trafalgar. But it wasn’t all glory, for we lost Lord Nelson there. He was killed.”
“That was a bad business,” said Adams, with a look of sympathy. “And you was in that battle, was you?”
“In it! I should just think so,” replied Jack Brace, looking contemplatively at his mutilated finger. “Why, I was in Lord Nelson’s own ship, the Victory. Come, I’ll give you an outline of it. This is how it began.”
The ex-man-of-war’s-man puffed vigorously for a few seconds, to get the pipe well alight, he remarked, and collect his thoughts.
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