“You are not taking any chances, Lloyd, are you?” laughed Mr Bligh sarcastically, as he rose to his feet. “Although all hands of you appear to be armed, you are not going to run the risk of having too many of us loose out on deck at once, for fear of what we might do, eh? Well, you are a fine, courageous lot of mutineers, I must say! You wouldn’t even chance a fight with a single one of us when you started out to take the ship, but must needs entice us for’ard, one man at a time, upon the pretence that fire had broken out in the hold. Ugh! I don’t envy Bainbridge his crew of bold buccaneers—not a little bit!” and with a scornful laugh he swaggered out on deck, followed by the second mate.
A minute later we heard his voice speaking to the passengers and calling upon them by name, one by one, to pass down the side, the women and children first. And it was pitiful to hear the low moaning and sobbing of some of the poor creatures as they reluctantly left the firm, spacious deck of the ship and fearfully clambered down the side ladder into the dancing longboat, which looked so small and dangerous a refuge in comparison with the bulk of the barque. The embarkation of the passengers proceeded slowly, because of the women and children among them, all of whom were frightened, while many of them were weeping bitterly, despite the best efforts of husbands, fathers, brothers, and male friends to encourage them. But at length the last passenger went down over the side and was assigned his place in the longboat, and then Lloyd again came forward and summoned those of us who remained in the house to follow him; and as we passed out on deck and started to walk aft to the gangway, the five armed seamen who had mounted guard over us followed at our heels.
As we cleared the galley, which formed part of the structure in which we had all been confined, the whole of the after part of the ship, from the fore end of the main hatchway, came into view, and we saw that the vessel was indeed, as we had supposed, hove-to on the starboard tack, with her mainyard laid almost square, the mainsail brailed up, and the remainder of her canvas set; and the fabric was full of the sound of a gentle creaking of timbers, trusses, and parrals, and the soft rustling of the white cloths overhead. She had no way on her, but was curtsying and rolling gently on a long, sluggish swell that came creeping up from the eastward. Apart from the swell, the sea was quite smooth, its surface being scarcely wrinkled into a pure, delicate blue tint by the easterly breeze, which had died down to so gentle a zephyr, that the lighter canvas and even the topsails flapped to the masts with every heave and dip of the hull. The sky was cloudless, save away down toward the west, where a great mass of vapour, broken up into small patches, blazed crimson and gold in the rays of the declining sun, and gilded and reddened the sleepy undulations beneath it.
Bainbridge, with his peaked cap thrust aggressively to the back of his head, his brass-buttoned blue serge jacket opening to display his white shirt and flowing black silk necktie, and also, incidentally, a brace of revolvers, suggestively stuck in the broad elastic belt which girt his waist, and with a smile of insolent triumph upon his dark, saturnine, but otherwise rather good-looking face, stood alone at the break of the poop, with both hands thrust deep into his trousers pockets and his white-canvas-shod feet planted wide apart, watchfully regarding the proceedings on the main deck beneath him; while the whole of the crew, with the exception of the cook and the five men who constituted our especial bodyguard, were drawn up athwart the deck and along the face of the poop structure, each man armed with a rifle, and with a sheathed cutlass girt about his waist. Captain Roberts and Mr Bligh stood together at the open lee gangway, through which and above the lee rail could be seen the tossing masts of the longboat.
As our little party approached him the skipper turned, and, after running his eye over us for a moment, said:
“Mr Temple, I shall be obliged to ask you, the carpenter, and Sails to go with Mr Johnson in the gig. The longboat is already pretty well crowded, considering that part of her complement consists of women and children. You will find that the gig already has four breakers of fresh water in her, which will serve for ballast, but you will have to provision her from the longboat, as Bainbridge absolutely refuses to give us so much as another biscuit. You will find Mr Johnson already in her. Just jump down and lend him a hand, if you please.”
The gig, with her mast already stepped, was lying outside the longboat, with Mr Johnson in her, while Chips, in the longboat, was overhauling the stock of provisions in the latter and passing a certain portion into the gig according to the second mate’s instructions. It was a bit of a job to get to her across the crowded longboat, but I had just stepped into her and was about to address Johnson when I stopped short, for I heard Captain Roberts’s voice raised in a final appeal to the men.
“My lads,” he said in a loud, clear voice, “before I quit the ship I want to give you a last chance to undo the evil that you have this day done, and to avert from yourselves the punishment that most surely awaits you if you persist in following the path into which you have been beguiled by a plausible young scoundrel—”
“Meaning me, eh, Skipper?” jeered Bainbridge, with a harsh laugh, from the poop above.
“Even now, men,” continued the captain, ignoring Bainbridge’s interruption, “at this last moment, it is not too late for you to withdraw from your unholy compact and return to your duty. You are not to blame for what has happened; you have simply been deceived and led astray by one who ought to have known better than to tempt you to a step which can only end in your destruction. I ask you to lay down those arms and place yourselves at my mercy; and I promise you, upon my honour as a seaman and a gentleman, that if you will do so not one of you except your ringleader shall ever hear another word about the matter—”