r with the Lord--the dear Lord!"

There was a long pause, then--

"You'll--carry on--the work, John; not in your own strength, John--in
His?"

Adams promised earnestly in a choking voice, and the sick man seemed to
sink to rest with a smile on his lips. He never spoke again. Next day
he was buried under the palm-trees, far from the home of his childhood,
from the land which had condemned him as a heartless mutineer.

CHAPTER TWENTY TWO.

JOHN ADAMS LONGS FOR A CHUM AND BECOMES A STORY-TELLER.

Faithful to his promise, John Adams, after the death of Young, did his
best to carry on the good work that had been begun.

But at first his spirit was very heavy. It had not before occurred to
him that there was a solitude far more profound and overwhelming than
anything he had hitherto experienced. The difference between ten
companions and one companion is not very great, but the difference
between one and none is immeasurable. Of course we refer to that
companionship which is capable of intelligent sympathy. The solitary
seaman still had his Otaheitan wife and the bright children of the
mutineers around him, and the death of Young had drawn out his heart
more powerfully than ever towards these, but they could not in any
degree fill the place of one who could talk intelligently of home, of
Old England, of British battles fought and won, of ships and men, and
things that might have belonged, as far as the women and children were
concerned, to another world. They could only in a slight degree
appreciate the nautical phraseology in which he had been wont to convey
some of his strongest sentiments, and they could not in any degree enter
into his feelings when, forgetting for a moment his circumstances, he
came out with a pithy forecastle allusion to the politics or the
Government of his native land.

"Oh, you meek-faced brute, if you could only speak!" he exclaimed one
day, dropping his eyes from the sea, on which he had been gazing, to the
eyes of a pet goat that had been looking up in his face. "What's the
use of having a tongue in your head if you can't use it!"

As may be imagined, the goat made no reply to this remark, but continued
its gaze with somewhat of the solemnity of the man himself.

For want of a companion, poor Adams at this time took to talking
frequently in a quiet undertone to himself. He also fell a good deal
into Fletcher Christian's habit of retiring to the cave on the
mountain-top, but