“The three ships sailed in company for South America a week later. I remained on board the Britannia together with Robert Eury and six others of her original crew, the Rossiter children being taken by the Spanish lady on board the larger of the privateers, the second lieutenant of which, with about twenty men, were drafted to the prize. After keeping in close company for four or five days we lost sight of the privateers, much to the annoyance of our captain, who was a very indifferent navigator, as he soon showed by altering his course to E. by S. so as to pick up the coast of South America as soon as possible. This was a most fortunate thing for us, for at daylight on the following morning two sail were seen, not five miles distant, and to our intense delight proved to be English letters of marque—the barque Centurion of Bristol and the barque Gratitude of London. They at once closed in upon and engaged us, and although the Frenchmen made a good fight, they had to strike after a quarter of an hour's engagement, for the Centurion was a very heavily armed ship.
“Her captain was a very old man named Richard Glass. He came on board the Britannia and spoke very good-humouredly to the French lieutenant, for on neither side had any one been killed, and he saw that the Britannia was a fine ship. He told the Frenchmen to take the longboat, and as much provisions and water as they liked, and make for the coast, which was less than seventy miles distant. This was soon done, and our former captors parted from us very good friends, every one of them coming up and shaking hands with Robert Eury and calling him bon camarade.
“Captain Glass put his own chief officer in charge of the Britannia (with Robert as his mate) and ordered him to proceed to Port Jackson and await the arrival there of the Centurion and her consort. We arrived at our destination safely, and as soon as my story was known many kind people wanted to adopt me; but the agent of the Britannia took me to his own home, where I lived for many happy years as a member of his family. Robert Eury was then appointed mate of a vessel in the China trade, but I saw him every year. Then when I was seventeen years of age he asked me to marry him, and I did so gladly, for he was always present in my thoughts when he was away, and I knew he loved me.”
III
“My husband invested his savings in a small schooner, which he named the Taunton and within a month of our marriage we were at sea, bound on a trading voyage to Tahiti and the Paumotus. This first venture proved very successful, so did the two following voyages; and then, as he determined to found a business of his own in the South Seas, he bought a large piece of land on this island from the natives, with whom he was on very friendly terms. His reasons for choosing this particular island were, firstly, because of its excellent situation—midway between Port Jackson and the Spanish settlements on the South American coast, which were good markets; secondly, because great numbers of the American whaling ships would make it a place of call to refresh if there was a reputable white man living on the island; and thirdly, because he intended to go into sperm whaling himself, for it was an immensely profitable business, and he could, if he wished, sell the oil to the American ships instead of taking it to Port Jackson. The natives here in those days were a very wild set, but they really had a great friendship and respect for my husband; and when they learnt that he intended to settle among them permanently they were delighted beyond measure. They at once set to work and built us a house, and the chief and my husband exchanged names in the usual manner.
“My first child was born on the island whilst my husband was away on a voyage to Port Jackson, and, indeed, of my four children three were born here. When Robert returned in the Taunton he brought with him a cargo of European stores and comforts for our new home, and in a few months we were fairly settled down. From the first American whaleships that visited us he bought two fine whaleboats and all the necessary gear, and then later on engaged one of the best whalemen in the South Seas to superintend the business. In the first season we killed no less than six sperm whales, and could have taken more, but were short of barrels. The whaling station was at the end of the south point of the harbour, and when a whale was towed in to be cut in and tried out the place presented a scene of great activity and bustle, for we had quite two hundred natives to help. Alas, there is scarcely a trace of it left now! The great iron try-pots, built up in furnaces of coral lime, were overgrown by the green jungle thirty years ago, and it would be difficult even to find them now.
“The natives, as I have said, were very wild, savage, and warlike; but as time went on their friendship for my husband and myself and children deepened, and so when Robert made a voyage to Port Jackson or to any of the surrounding islands I never felt in the least alarmed. I must tell you that we—my husband and myself—were actually the first white people that had landed to live on the island since the time of the Bounty mutiny, when Fletcher Christian and his fellow mutineers tried to settle here. They brought the Bounty in, and anchored her just where your own schooner is now lying—opposite Randle's house. But the natives attacked Christian and his men so fiercely, and so repeatedly, though with terrible loss to themselves, that at last Christian and Edward Young abandoned the attempt to found a settlement, and the Bounty went back to Tahiti, and finally to Afitâ, as the people here call Pitcairn Islands.
“Four years passed by. My husband was making money fast, not only as a trader among the Paumotus and the Society Islands, where he had two small vessels constantly employed, but from his whale fishery. Then came a time of sorrow and misfortune. A South Seaman, named the Stirling Castle, touched here for provisions, and introduced small-pox, and every one of my poor children contracted the disease and died; many hundreds of the natives perished as well. My husband at this time was away in one of his vessels at Fakarava Lagoon in the Paumotu Group, and I spent a very lonely and unhappy seven months before he returned. Almost every morning, accompanied by one or two of my native women servants, I would ascend that rugged peak about two miles from here, from where we had a complete view of the horizon all round the island, and watch for a sail. Twice my heart gladdened, only to be disappointed again, for the ships on both occasions were Nantucket whalers. And then, as the months went by, I began to imagine that something dreadful had happened to my husband and his ship among the wild people of the Paumotus, for when he sailed he did not expect to be away more than three months.
“At last, however, when I was quite worn out and ill with anxiety, he returned. I was asleep when he arrived, for it was late at night, and his vessel had not entered the harbour, though he had come ashore in a boat. He awakened me very gently, and then, before I could speak to him and tell him of our loss, he said—