erving his disappearance.

Soon the four conspirators were seated in a dark group under shade of
the trees.

"The time has come when the black man must be revenged," said Nehow.
"Look my back. Salt was rubbed into these wounds. It is not the first
time. It shall be the last! Some of you have suffered in the same
way."

It scarcely needed this remark to call forth looks of deadly hate on the
Otaheitan faces around him.

"The white men must die," he continued. "They have no mercy. We will
show none."

Even in the darkness of that secluded spot the glistening of the eyes of
these ill-treated men might have been seen as they gave ready assent to
this proposal in low guttural tones.

"How is it to be done?" asked Menalee, after a short pause.

"That is what we have met to talk about," returned Nehow. "I would hear
what my brothers have to say. When they have spoken I will open my
mouth."

The group now drew closer together, and speaking in still lower tones,
as if they feared that the very bushes might overhear and betray them,
they secretly plotted the murder of the mutineers.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN.

THE INFLUENCE OF INFANCY, ALSO OF VILLAINY.

While the dark plots referred to in the last chapter were being hatched,
another life was introduced into the little community in the form of a
third child to Fletcher Christian,--a little girl. Much though this man
loved his two boys, a tenderer, though not, perhaps, a deeper region of
his heart was touched by his daughter. He at once named her Mary. Who
can tell the multitude of old memories and affections which were revived
by this name? Might it not have been that a mother, a sister, some lost
though not forgotten one, came forcibly to mind, and accounted, in some
degree at least, for the wealth of affection which he lavished on the
infant from the day of her birth? We cannot tell, but certain it is
that there never was a more devoted father than this man, who in England
had been branded with all that was ferocious, mean, desperate,--this
hardened outlaw, this chief of the mutineers.

Otaheitan mothers are not particular in the matter of infant costume.
Little Mary's dress may be described in one word--nothing. Neither are
such mothers much troubled with maternal anxieties. Long before a
European baby would have been let out of the hands of mother or nurse,
even for a moment, little Molly Christian was committed to the care of
her delighted father,