The Lonely Island: The Refuge of the Mutineers, R. M. Ballantyne [books successful people read TXT] 📗
- Author: R. M. Ballantyne
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“Well, I’ve heerd of many a thing, but never fried water,” remarked McCoy.
“I should think it indigestible,” said Christian, coming up at the moment.
Whether the natives understood the jest or not we cannot say, but certain it is that all of them, men and women, burst into a fit of laughter at this, in which they were joined by Otaheitan Sally from mere sympathy.
“Well, what is to be the order of the day?” asked Christian, turning to Young. “Shall we proceed with our dwellings, or divide the island into locations?”
“I think,” answered the midshipman, “that some of us at least should set up the forge. I know that Williams’s fingers are tingling to grasp the sledge-hammer, and the sooner he goes at it, too, the better, for we’re badly off for tools.”
“If you don’t require my services,” said Brown, “I’ll go plant some breadfruits and other things at that sheltered spot we fell upon yesterday.”
“I intend to finish the thatching of my hut,” said Quintal, in that off-hand tone of independence and disregard of the wishes of others which was one of his characteristics.
“Well, there are plenty of us to do all the work,” said Christian. “Let every man do what pleases himself. I would only ask for one or two volunteers to cut the water-tanks I spoke of yesterday. The water we have discovered, although a plentiful supply for present needs, may run short or cease altogether if drought comes. So we must provide against a dry instead of a rainy day, by cutting a tank or two in the solid rock to hold a reserve.”
Adams and Mills at once volunteered for this duty. Other arrangements were soon made, and they sat down to breakfast, some using plates saved from the Bounty, others flat stones as substitutes, while empty cocoa-nut shells served for drinking-cups.
“Your water pancake should be done brown by this time,” said Young, as he sat down on the turf tailor-wise.
“Not quite, but nearly,” returned Martin, as he stirred the furiously-boiling contents of the frying-pan.
In a few minutes more the sea water had boiled quite away, leaving a white residuum, which Martin scraped carefully off into a cocoa-nut cup.
“You see, boys,” he said, setting down the salt thus procured, “I never could abide fresh meat without a pick o’ salt to give it a relish. It may be weakness perhaps, but—”
“Being the weakness of an old salt,” interrupted Christian, “it’s excusable. Now, boys, fall-to with a will. We’ve got plenty of work before us, an’ can’t afford to waste time.”
This exhortation was needless. The savoury smell of the roast pig, when it had been carefully disentombed, might have given appetite to a seasick man. They ate heartily, and for some time in silence.
The women, however, did not join in the feast at that time. It was the custom among the Otaheitans that the men should eat first, the women afterwards; and the mutineers, having become habituated to the custom, did not see fit to change it. When the men had finished and discussed the day’s proceedings, the remainder of the pig, fruits, and vegetables, were consumed by the females, among whom, we are bound to state, Sally was the greatest gourmand.
When pipes were finished, and the digestion of healthy young men had been thus impaired as far as was possible in the circumstances, the party went off in several groups about their various avocations.
Among other things removed from the Bounty were a smith’s anvil and bellows, with various hammers, files, etcetera, and a large quantity of iron-work and copper. One party, therefore, under Young and Williams the armourer, busied themselves in setting up a forge near their settlement, and preparing charcoal for the forge fire.
Another party, under Christian, proceeded to some neighbouring rocks, and there, with sledge-hammer and crowbars, which they used as jumpers, began the laborious task of boring the solid rock, intending afterwards to blast, and partly to cut it, into large water-tanks. Quintal continued the thatching of his hut, in which work his humble wife aided him effectively. Brown proceeded with the planting operations which he had begun almost immediately after landing; and the women busied themselves variously, some in preparing the mid-day meal, some in gathering fruits and roots for future use, and others in improving the internal arrangements of their various huts, or in clearing away the débris of the late feast. As for little Sally, she superintended generally the work of the home department, and when she tired of that, went further afield in search of adventures.
There was no difficulty in apportioning the new possessions to which the mutineers had served themselves heirs. In that free-and-easy mode in which men in power sometimes arrange matters for their own special behoof, they divided the island into nine equal parts, of which each appropriated one part. The six native men were not only ignored in this arrangement, but they were soon given to understand, by at least several of their captors, that they were to be regarded as slaves and treated as such.
It is, however, but just to Edward Young to say that he invariably treated the natives well and was much liked by them, from which it is to be supposed that he did not quite fall in with the views of his associates, although he made no objection to the unjust distribution of the land. John Adams, being an amiable and kindly man, also treated the natives well, and so did Fletcher Christian; but the others were more or less tyrannical, and those kindred spirits, Matthew Quintal and William McCoy, treated them with great severity, sometimes with excessive cruelty.
At first, however, things went well. The novelty and romance of their situation kept them all in good spirits. The necessity for constant activity in laying out their gardens, clearing the land around the place of settlement, and erecting good log-houses,—all this, with fresh air and abundance of good food, kept them in excellent health and spirits, so that even the worst among them were for a time amiably disposed; and it seemed as if those nine men had, by their act of mutiny, really introduced themselves into a terrestrial paradise.
And so they had, as far as nature was concerned, but the seeds of evil in themselves began ere long to grow and bear fruit.
The fear of the avenger in the form of a man-of-war was constantly before their minds. We have said that the Bounty had been burnt, and her charred remnants sunk to remove all traces of their presence on the island. For the same end a fringe of trees was left standing on the seaward side of their clearing, and no erection of any kind was allowed upon the seaward cliffs or inland heights.
One afternoon, Christian, who had been labouring in his garden, threw down his tools, and taking up the musket which he seldom left far from his hand, betook himself to the hills. He was fond of going there, and often spent many hours in solitary watching in the cave near the precipitous mountain-peak.
On his way up he had to pass the hut of William McCoy. The others, conforming to the natural tendency of mankind to congregate together, had built their houses round the cleared space on the table-land above Bounty Bay, from which central point they were wont to sally forth each morning to their farms or gardens, which were scattered wide apart in separate valleys. McCoy, however, aspired to higher heights and grander solitudes. His dwelling, a substantial log-hut, was perched upon a knoll overlooking the particular valley which he cultivated with the aid of his Otaheitan wife and one of the native men.
“You are getting on well,” said Christian to McCoy, who was felling a tree when he came up to him.
“Ay, slowly, but I’d get on a deal faster if that lazy brown-skin Ohoo would work harder. Just look at him. He digs up that bit o’ ground as if he was paid by the number o’ minutes he took to do it. I had to give him a taste of a rope’s end this morning, but it don’t seem to have done him much good.”
“It didn’t seem to do much good to you when you got it on board the Bounty,” said Christian, gravely.
“P’r’aps not; but we’re not on board the Bounty, now,” returned McCoy, somewhat angrily.
“Depend on it, McCoy,” said Christian, softening his tone, “that the cat never made any man work well. It can only force a scoundrel to obedience, nothing more.”
“H’m, I b’lieve you’re not far wrong, sir,” returned the other, resuming his work.
Giving a friendly nod to Ohoo as he passed, and a cheerful “good-morning” to Mrs McCoy, who was busy inside the hut, Christian passed slowly on through the luxuriant herbage with which that part of the hillside was covered.
At first he walked in the shade of many-stemmed banyans and feathery-topped palms, while the leaves of tall and graceful ferns brushed his cheeks, and numerous luxuriant flowering plants perfumed the air. Then he came to a clump of bushes, into which darted one of the goats that had by this time become almost wild. The goat’s rush disturbed a huge sow with a litter of quite new pigs, the gruntings and squeakings of which gave liveliness to an otherwise quiet and peaceful scene.
Coming out on the shoulder of the mountain just above the woods, he turned round to look back. It was a splendid panorama of tropical vegetation, rounded knolls, picturesque mounds, green patches, and rugged cliffs, extending downwards to Bounty Bay with its fringe of surf, and beyond—all round—the sleeping sea.
Two or three little brown, sparrow-like birds twittered in the bushes near, and looked askance, as if they would question the man’s right to walk there. One or two active lizards ran across his path, pausing now and then, and glancing upwards as if in great surprise.
Christian smiled sadly as he looked at them, then turned to breast the hill.
It was a rugged climb. Towards the top, where he diverged to the cave, every step became more difficult.
Reaching the hole where Isaac Martin had come by his misadventure, Christian descended by means of a rude ladder which he had constructed and let down into it. Entering the cave, he rested his musket against the wall of rock, and sat down on a ledge near the opening towards the sea. It was a giddy height. As he sat there with hands clasped over one knee and eyes fixed wistfully on the horizon, his right foot, thrust a little beyond the edge of the rock, overhung a tremendous precipice, many hundred feet deep.
For a long time he gazed so steadfastly and remained so motionless as to seem a portion of the rock itself. Then he heaved a sigh that relieved the pent-up feelings of an overburdened soul.
“So early!” he muttered, in a scarcely audible voice. “At the very beginning of life, just when hope, health, manhood, and opportunity were at the flood.”
He stopped, and again remained motionless for a long time. Then, continuing in the same low, sad tone, but without altering his position or his wistful gaze.
“And now, an outlaw, an outcast, doomed, if taken, to a felon’s death! Comrades seduced to their ruin! The brand of Cain not more terrible than mine! Self-exiled for life! Never, never more to see friends, country, kindred, sisters—mother! God help me!”
He laid his face in his hands and groaned aloud. Again he was silent, and remained without motion for nearly an hour.
“Can it be true?” he cried in a voice of suppressed agony, looking up as if expecting an answer from heaven. “Shall I never, never, never awake from this hideous dream!”
The conscience-smitten young man laid strong constraint upon himself and became calmer. When the sun began to approach the horizon he rose, and with an air of stern resolution, set about making various arrangements in the cave.
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