The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Lonely Island, by R.M. Ballantyne

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Title: The Lonely Island
The Refuge of the Mutineers

Author: R.M. Ballantyne

Release Date: June 7, 2007 [EBook #21747]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LONELY ISLAND ***

Produced by Nick Hodson of London, England

THE LONELY ISLAND; OR, THE REFUGE OF THE MUTINEERS, BY R.M. BALLANTYNE.

CHAPTER ONE.

THE REFUGE OF THE MUTINEERS.

THE MUTINY.

On a profoundly calm and most beautiful evening towards the end of the
last century, a ship lay becalmed on the fair bosom of the Pacific
Ocean.

Although there was nothing piratical in the aspect of the ship--if we
except her guns--a few of the men who formed her crew might have been
easily mistaken for roving buccaneers. There was a certain swagger in
the gait of some, and a sulky defiance on the brow of others, which told
powerfully of discontent from some cause or other, and suggested the
idea that the peaceful aspect of the sleeping sea was by no means
reflected in the breasts of the men. They were all British seamen, but
displayed at that time none of the well-known hearty off-hand rollicking
characteristics of the Jack-tar.

It is natural for man to rejoice in sunshine. His sympathy with cats in
this respect is profound and universal. Not less deep and wide is his
discord with the moles and bats. Nevertheless, there was scarcely a man
on board of that ship on the evening in question who vouchsafed even a
passing glance at a sunset which was marked by unwonted splendour. The
vessel slowly rose and sank on a scarce perceptible ocean-swell in the
centre of a great circular field of liquid glass, on whose undulations
the sun gleamed in dazzling flashes, and in whose depths were reflected
the fantastic forms, snowy lights, and pearly shadows of cloudland. In
ordinary circumstances such an evening might have raised the thoughts of
ordinary men to their Creator, but the circumstances of the men on board
of that vessel were not ordinary--very much the reverse.

"No, Bill McCoy," muttered one of the sailors, who sat on the breach of
a gun near the forec