taken
care of, a signal was to be made to the ship in the bay to send her boat
on shore, the crew of which were to be made prisoners on their landing;
and two or three of the insurgents were to go off in a boat belonging to
the island, and inform the commanding officer that the ship's boat had
been stove on the beach, and that the commandant requested another might
be sent ashore; this also was to be captured: and then, as the last act
of this absurd scheme, the ship was to be taken, with which they were to
proceed to Otaheite, and there establish a settlement. They charitably
intended to leave some provisions for the commandant and his officers,
and for such of the people as did not accompany them in their
escape--this was their scheme. Not one difficulty in the execution of it
ever occurred to their imagination: all was to happen with as much
facility as it was planned; and, had it not been fortunately revealed to
a seaman belonging to the _Sirius_, who lived with Mr. King as a
gardener, by a female convict who cohabited with him, there was no doubt
but that all these improbabilities would have been attempted.

On being made acquainted with these circumstances, the commandant took
such measures as appeared to him necessary to defeat them; and several
who were concerned in the scheme confessed the share which they were to
have had in the execution of it. Mr. King had hitherto, from the
peculiarity of his situation--secluded from society, and confined to a
small speck in the vast ocean, with but a handful of people--drawn them
round him, and treated them with the kind attentions which a good family
meets with at the hands of a humane master; but he now saw them in their
true colours, and one of his first steps, when peace was restored, was to
clear the ground as far as possible round the settlement, that future
villainy might not find a shelter in the woods for its transactions. To
this truly providential circumstance, perhaps, many of the colonists
afterwards were indebted for their lives.

On Thursday the 26th of February the island was visited by a hurricane
which came on early in the morning in very heavy gales of wind and rain.
By four o'clock several pines of 180 and 200 feet in length, and from 20
to 30 feet in circumference, were blown down. From that hour until noon
the gale increased to a dreadful hurricane, with torrents of heavy rain.
Every instant pines and live oaks, of the largest dimensions, were borne