pass the hut of William McCoy. The others,
conforming to the natural tendency of mankind to congregate together,
had built their houses round the cleared space on the table-land above
Bounty Bay, from which central point they were wont to sally forth each
morning to their farms or gardens, which were scattered wide apart in
separate valleys. McCoy, however, aspired to higher heights and grander
solitudes. His dwelling, a substantial log-hut, was perched upon a
knoll overlooking the particular valley which he cultivated with the aid
of his Otaheitan wife and one of the native men.

"You are getting on well," said Christian to McCoy, who was felling a
tree when he came up to him.

"Ay, slowly, but I'd get on a deal faster if that lazy brown-skin Ohoo
would work harder. Just look at him. He digs up that bit o' ground as
if he was paid by the number o' minutes he took to do it. I had to give
him a taste of a rope's end this morning, but it don't seem to have done
him much good."

"It didn't seem to do much good to you when you got it on board the
_Bounty_," said Christian, gravely.

"P'r'aps not; but we're not on board the _Bounty_, now," returned McCoy,
somewhat angrily.

"Depend on it, McCoy," said Christian, softening his tone, "that the cat
never made any man work well. It can only force a scoundrel to
obedience, nothing more."

"H'm, I b'lieve you're not far wrong, sir," returned the other, resuming
his work.

Giving a friendly nod to Ohoo as he passed, and a cheerful
"good-morning" to Mrs McCoy, who was busy inside the hut, Christian
passed slowly on through the luxuriant herbage with which that part of
the hillside was covered.

At first he walked in the shade of many-stemmed banyans and
feathery-topped palms, while the leaves of tall and graceful ferns
brushed his cheeks, and numerous luxuriant flowering plants perfumed the
air. Then he came to a clump of bushes, into which darted one of the
goats that had by this time become almost wild. The goat's rush
disturbed a huge sow with a litter of quite new pigs, the gruntings and
squeakings of which gave liveliness to an otherwise quiet and peaceful
scene.

Coming out on the shoulder of the mountain just above the woods, he
turned round to look back. It was a splendid panorama of tropical
vegetation, rounded knolls, picturesque mounds, green patches, and
rugged cliffs, extending downwards to Bounty Bay with its fringe of
surf, and beyond--all round