“I have no doubt, now,” resumed Adams. “You have got just the qualities that are wanted. Regularly stored and victualled for the cruise. They’ll be far better off than ever they were before. If I had only trusted more I should have suffered less. But I was always thinking of John Adams. Ah! that has been the great curse of my life—John Adams!—as if everything depended on him. Why,” continued the old man, kindling with a sudden burst of indignation, “could I have saved these souls by merely teaching ’em readin’ and writin’, or even by readin’ God’s book to ’em? Isn’t it read every day by thousands to millions, against whom it falls like the sea on a great rock? Can the absence of temptation be pleaded, when here, in full force, there have been the most powerful temptations to disobedience continually? If that would have done, why were not all my brother mutineers saved from sin? It was not even when we read the Bible that deliverance came. I read it for ten years as a sealed book. No, George, no; it was when God’s Holy Spirit opened the eyes and the heart, that I an’ the dear women an’ child’n became nothin’, and fell in with His ways.”
He stopped suddenly, as if exhausted, and his new friend led him gently to his house. Many loving eyes watched him as he went along, and many tender hearts beat for him, but better still, many true hearts prayed for him.
That night he became weaker, and next day he did not rise.
When this became known, all the settlement crowded to his house, while from his bed there was a constant coming and going of those who had the right to be nearest to him. Nursed by the loving women whom he had led—and whose children’s children he had led—to Jesus, and surrounded by men whom he had dandled, played with, reared, and counselled, he passed into the presence of God, to behold “the King in his beauty,” to be “for ever with the Lord.”
May we join him, reader, you and I, when our time comes!
On a tombstone over a grave under the banyan-tree near his house, is the simple record, “John Adams, died 5th March 1829, aged 65.”
And here our tale must end, for the good work which we have sought to describe has no end. Yet, for the sake of those who have a regard for higher things than a mere tale, we would add a few words before making our farewell bow.
The colony of Pitcairn still exists and flourishes. But many changes have occurred since Adams left the scene, though the simple, guileless spirit of the people remains unchanged.
Here is a brief summary of its history since 1829.