“Well,” I rejoined, “the last time I saw you was three years ago, when you cut a caper and were threatened with the State Reform School. Besides, I’m not Tom Haggass. My name is Homer Bleechly.”
A roar greeted the rejoinder. The captains appeared. As the boat pulled away we gave them a hearty parting. A quarrel had been averted and a good time enjoyed.
Now as to the whale. The usage was on our side and, when we reached home, we learned that it had been affirmed by the court in a case whose facts were almost identical with ours. The oil and bone of that bowhead brought forty-five hundred dollars.
CHAPTER XIV
PITCAIRN ISLAND
We left the Okhotsk in September, with twelve hundred and fifty barrels of whale oil and thirteen thousand pounds of bone, besides the sperm we had taken. When it was learned that we were bound home and, presumably, were not to call anywhere, there was discontent and grumbling among the men. The captain was condemned for two reasons. We needed a supply of vegetables and meat, and the men were now so weary of the sea that they wanted shore leave once more. Fancy, then, our satisfaction when word was passed round that the captain proposed to call at Pitcairn Island and remain there for several days. This meant that we would take on board fruit, vegetables, goats, fowl and so forth. When I was a little boy, my father told me all about the mutineers of the Bounty, and their residence on Pitcairn Island for nearly twenty years without the world knowing anything about them or they knowing anything about the world. Later I read the story of Fletcher Christian and his companions, and, in my last year in High School, and not long before shipping on the Seabird, I wrote a composition on the subject, which I now offer as a schoolboy’s narrative:
In the latter part of the eighteenth century, a vessel, named the Bounty, was sent out from England to Tahiti to obtain young breadfruit plants and carry them to the West Indies. It was thought that their cultivation would produce an excellent article of food for the negroes on the plantations. Of this vessel William Bligh was captain and Fletcher Christian was mate. The voyage was not a pleasant one, and there was great discontent because of the poor food and the cruelty of the captain. The vessel arrived at Tahiti in October, 1788, and remained there several months, while officers and crew were engaged in gathering breadfruit plants and stowing them away on the vessel. On April 4, the vessel set sail. There was no abatement of Bligh’s tyranny, his treatment of Christian being particularly harsh and abusive. The accusations of falsehood and theft, and the recollection of the indignities he had been compelled to bear with patience and forbearance during the voyage forced Christian to mutiny, as he knew that it would be fruitless, as a junior officer, to bring his superior to a court martial. Bligh and eighteen others were put in a boat and cut adrift. A landing was effected by them at an island about thirty miles distant, where one of their number was killed by the natives. Thence they set out on the open sea and, after a voyage of over thirty-six hundred miles, and encountering all kinds of weather, and enduring great sufferings from hunger and thirst, they reached a Dutch settlement on the island of Timor. They eventually reached England.
Christian, having become captain of the Bounty, took the vessel to the small island of Toubouai and then to Tahiti. There all the mutineers preferred to remain except Christian, Alexander Smith and seven others. These last took wives at Tahiti and six men as servants, and embarked and set sail. When Bligh and his associates reached England, much interest was manifested in his adventure, and the British Government took steps to apprehend the members of the Bounty’s crew who had remained at Tahiti. A number of them were brought back to England and tried, and three of them were found guilty, and executed.
We now return to the Bounty. Fletcher Christian belonged to an English family of repute and prominence. A brother was a learned man and a college professor.
The design of Fletcher was to seek some island where he and his companions would be safe from discovery. Captain Cartaret, in 1767, discovered a solitary island in the Pacific Ocean between Australia and South America and named it Pitcairn after a midshipman who was the first to observe it. A copy of Captain Cartaret’s “Voyage to the South Seas” was among the books left on board the Bounty, and its description of this lovely island, it is thought, determined Christian to seek it as a probably safe retreat for himself and companions. Because of the want of correctness in the latitude and longitude, laid down by Cartaret in the charts, the cruise lasted several weeks. At last they sighted what was apparently a rock, rising high in the ocean. It was a welcome sight, although there was nothing to indicate that there was a beautiful interior with fertile valleys and mountain sides clothed with palms. The Bounty was beached at a bend in the shore, which has ever since borne the name of “Bounty Bay.”
On landing, Christian divided the island into nine portions, one for himself and the remainder for his companions. Then everything was removed from the vessel—planks from her sides, nails, bolts, masts, spars, sails, and her cargo of provisions, tools, guns, ammunition, implements, goats, pigs and hens. Then they set fire to the hull and it was completely burned up.