d
Thomas Burkitt, able seamen, seized the captain, tied his hands behind
his back, hauled him out of his berth, and forced him on deck. The
boatswain, William Cole, was ordered to hoist out the ship's launch,
which measured twenty-three feet from stem to stern, and into this open
boat Bligh, together with eighteen of the crew, who were or were
supposed to be on his side, were thrust, on pain of instant death. When
they were in the boat they were "veered round with a rope, and finally
cast adrift." Bligh and his eighteen innocent companions sailed
westward, and, after a voyage of "twelve hundred leagues," during which
they were preserved from death and destruction by the wise ordering and
patient heroism of the commander, safely anchored in K[oe]pang Bay, on the
north-west coast of the Isle of Timor, June 14, 1789. (See Bligh's
_Narrative, etc._, 1790, pp. 11-88; and _The Island_, Canto I. section
ix. lines 169-201.)

The _Bounty_, with the remainder of the crew, twenty-five in number,
"the most able of the ship's company," sailed eastward, first to
Toobooai, or Tubuai, an island to the south of the Society Islands,
thence to Tahiti (June 6), back to Tubuai (June 26), and yet again, to
Tahiti (September 20), where sixteen of the mutineers, including the
midshipman George Stewart (the "Torquil" of _The Island_), were put on
shore. Finally, September 21, 1789, Fletcher Christian, with the
_Bounty_ and eight of her crew, six Tahitian men, and twelve women,
sailed away still further east to unknown shores, and, so it was
believed, disappeared for good and all. Long afterwards it was known
that they had landed on Pitcairn Island, broken up the _Bounty_, and
founded a permanent settlement.

When Bligh returned to England (March 14, 1790), and acquainted the
Government "with the atrocious act of piracy and mutiny" which had been
committed on the high seas, the _Pandora_ frigate, with Captain Edwards,
was despatched to apprehend the mutineers, and bring them back to
England for trial and punishment. The _Pandora_ reached Tahiti March 23,
1791, set sail, with fourteen prisoners, May 8, and was wrecked on the
"Great Barrier Reef" north-east of Queensland, August 29, 1791. Four of
the prisoners, including George Stewart, who had been manacled, and were
confined in "Pandora's box," perished in the wreck, and the remaining
ten were brought back to England, and tried by court-martial. (See _The
Eventful History of the Mutiny, etc._