that we could do. Isn't
that white line at the foot o' the cliffs like a heavy surf, boys?"

"It looks like it," answered John Mills, the gunner's mate; "an'
wherever you find cliffs rising like high walls out o' the sea, you may
be pretty sure the water's too deep for good anchorage."

"That's in our favour too," returned Quintal; "nothin' like a heavy surf
and bad anchorage to indooce ships to give us a wide berth."

"I hope," said William Brown the botanist, "that there's some vegetation
on it. I don't see much as yet."

"Ain't it a strange thing," remarked long-legged Isaac Martin, in a more
than usually sepulchral tone, "that land-lubbers invariably shows a fund
of ignorance when at sea, even in regard to things they might be
supposed to know somethin' about?"

"How have I shown ignorance just now?" asked Brown, with a smile, for he
was a good-humoured man, and could stand a great deal of chaffing.

"Why, how can you, bein' a gardener," returned Martin, "expect to see
wegitation on the face of a perpindikler cliff?"

"You're right, Martin; but then, you know, there is generally an
interior as well as a face to a cliffy island, and one might expect to
find vegetation there, don't you see."

"That's true--to _find_ it," retorted Martin, "but not to _see_ it
through tons of solid rock, and from five or six miles out at sea."

"But what if there's niggers on it?" suggested Adams, who joined the
party at this point.

"Fight 'em, of coorse," said John Williams.

"An' drive 'em into the sea," added Quintal.

"Ay, the place ain't big enough for more than one lot," said McCoy. "It
don't seem more than four miles long, or thereabouts."

An order to shorten sail stopped the conversation at this point.

"It is too late to attempt a landing to-night," said Christian to Young.
"We'll dodge off and on till morning."

The _Bounty_ was accordingly put about, and her crew spent the remainder
of the night in chatting or dreaming about their future home.

CHAPTER FOUR.

THE ISLAND EXPLORED.

A bright and pleasant morning forms a powerful antidote to the evils of
a cheerless night. Few of the mutineers slept soundly on the night of
their arrival off Pitcairn, and their dreams of that island were more or
less unpleasantly mingled with manacles and barred windows, and men
dangling from yard-arms. The blessed sunshine dissipated all this,
rousing, in the hearts of some, feelings of hope and forgiveness, in t