“Of course it is,” said the midshipman, smiling, as he held his own little daughter Jane aloft. “Do you think you are to have it all to yourself? And do you imagine that yours is the only baby in the world worth looking at?”
“You are right, Young,” returned Christian, with the nearest approach to a laugh he had made for years. “Come now,” he added, sitting down on a rock, and placing little Moll tenderly in the hollow of his left arm, so as to make her face his friend, “let’s set them up, and compare notes; isn’t she a beauty?”
“No doubt of it whatever; and isn’t mine ditto?” asked the midshipman, sitting down, and placing little Poll in a similar position on his right arm.
“But, I say, if you and I are to get on amicably, we mustn’t praise our own babies. Let it be an agreement that you praise my Poll, and I’ll praise your Moll. Don’t they make lovely pendants! Come, let us change them for a bit.”
Christian agreeing to this, the infants were exchanged, and thereupon these two fathers lay down on the soft grass, and perpetrated practical jokes upon, and talked as much ineffable nonsense to, those two whitey-brown balls, as if they had been splendid specimens of orthodox pink and white. It was observed, however, by the more sagacious of the wondering gulls that circled round them, that a state of perfect satisfaction was not attained until the babies were again exchanged, and each father had become exclusively engrossed with his own particular ball.
“Now, I say, Fletcher,” remarked Young, rising, and placing himself nearer his friend, “it’s all very well for you and me to waste our time and make fools of ourselves here; but I didn’t merely come to show off my Polly. I came to ask what you think of that rumour we heard last night, that there has been some sort of plotting going on among the Otaheitan men.”
“I don’t think anything of it at all,” replied Christian, whose countenance at once assumed that look of gravity which had become habitual to him since the day of the mutiny. “They have had too good reason to plot, poor fellows, but I have such faith in their native amiability of disposition, that I don’t believe they will ever think of anything beyond a brief show of rebellion.”
“I also have had faith in their amiability,” rejoined Young; “but some of us, I fear, have tried them too severely. I don’t like the looks they sometimes give us now. We did wrong at the first in treating them as servants.”
“No doubt we did, but it would have been difficult to do otherwise,” said Christian; “they fell so naturally into the position of servants of their own accord, regarding us, as they did, as superior beings. We should have considered their interests when we divided the land, no doubt. However, that can’t well be remedied now.”
“Perhaps not,” remarked Young, in an absent tone. “It would be well, however, to take some precautions.”