“Now, if we were under the protection o’ the British flag—only just recognised, as it were,—that would go a long way to help us, and prevent mischief.”
At this point the importunities of some of the young people to hear about the outside world prevailed, and Folger began, as Jack Brace had done the day before, to tell them some of the most stirring events in the history of his own land.
But he soon found out that the mental capacity of the Pitcairners was like a bottomless pit. However much they got, they wanted more. Anecdote after anecdote, story after story, fact after fact, was thrown into the gulf, and still the cry was, “More! more!”
At last he tore himself away.
“Good-bye, and God bless you all,” he said, while stepping into the canoe which was to carry him off. “I won’t forget my promise.”
“And tell ’em to send us story-books,” shouted Daniel McCoy, as the canoe rose on the back of the breakers.
The Captain waved his hand. Most of the women and children wiped their eyes, and then they all ran to the heights to watch the Topaz as she sailed away. They watched her till she vanished over that mysterious horizon which seemed to the Pitcairners the utmost boundary of the world, and some of them continued to gaze until the stars came out, and the gulls retired to bed, and the soft black mantle of night descended like a blessing of tranquillity on land and sea.
Before bidding the Topaz farewell, we may remark that Captain Folger faithfully fulfilled his promise. He wrote a letter to England giving a full account of his discovery of the retreat of the mutineers, which aroused much interest all over the land; but at that time the stirring events of warfare filled the minds of men in Europe so exclusively, that the lonely island and its inhabitants were soon forgotten—at least no action was taken by the Government—and six years elapsed before another vessel sailed out of the great world into the circle of vision around Pitcairn.
Meanwhile the Pitcairners, knowing that, even at the shortest, a long, long time must pass before Folger could communicate with the “old country,” continued the even tenor of their innocent lives.
The school prospered and became a vigorous institution. The church not less so. More children were born to Thursday October, insomuch that he at last had one for every working-day in the week; more yam-fields were cultivated, and more marriages took place—but hold, this is anticipating.