eally do not know, sir," he replied; "but I hope you do not think me so
mean as to be guilty of stealing yours." "Yes," said Bligh,
"you ---- hound, I do think so, or you could have given a better account
of them." It was after this offensive accusation that Christian
determined, in the first instance, to quit the ship, and on the morning
of April 28, 1788, finding the mate of the watch asleep, on the spur of
the moment resolved to lay violent hands on the captain, and assume the
command of the _Bounty_. The language attributed to Bligh reads like a
translation into the vernacular, but if Christian kept his designs to
himself, it is strange that they were immediately understood and acted
upon by a body of impromptu conspirators. Testimony, whether written or
spoken, with regard to the succession of events "in moments like to
these," is worth very little; but it is pretty evident that Christian
was a gentleman, and that Bligh's violent and unmannerly ratings were
the immediate cause of the mutiny.

Contradictory accounts are given of Christian's death. It is generally
believed that in the fourth year of the settlement on Pitcairn Island
the Tahitians formed a plot to massacre the Englishmen, and that
Christian was shot when at work in his plantation (_The Mutineers,
etc._, by Lady Belcher, 1870, p. 163; _The Mutiny, etc._, by Rosalind A.
Young, 1894, p. 28). On the other hand, Amasa Delano, in his _Narrative
of Voyages, etc._ (Boston, 1817, cap. v. p. 140), asserts that Captain
Mayhew Folger, who was the first to visit the island in 1808, "was very
explicit in his inquiry at the time, as well as in his account of it to
me, that they lived under Christian's government several years after
they landed; that during the whole time they enjoyed tolerable harmony;
that Christian became sick, and died a natural death." It stands to
reason that the ex-pirate, Alexander Smith, who had developed into John
Adams, the pious founder of a patriarchal colony, would be anxious to
draw a veil over the early years of the settlement, and would satisfy
the curiosity of visitors who were officers of the Royal Navy, as best
he could, and as the spirit moved him.]

[fr] {625} _The ruined remnant of the land's defeat_.--[MS. D. erased.]

[402] {626}[Compare _The Siege of Corinth_, lines 438, 439, Poetical
Works, 1900, iii. 467.]

[403] {629} Of this cave (which is no fiction) the original will be
found in the ninth chapter of "Mariner's Accou