the people were overcome with joy and gratitude. Adams then
told them of the fate of the 'Bounty' and of the rest of the mutineers.

* * * * *

It is easy to suppose that when Christian sailed for the last time from
Otaheite his mind was full of misgiving; that he bitterly repented the
rash act by which the ship had fallen into his hands and by which in all
probability nineteen men had lost their lives, and also the wrecked and
criminal lives of his followers. The picture of the derelict crew in
their little boat was ever in his mind as he had last seen them watching
with despairing eyes their ship sail away; and again as distance blurred
all form, and it lay a blot on the sunny waters, immediately before it
was hidden by the horizon line.

That blot became ever blacker and heavier to his mental vision as one by
one his projects failed. A sullen and morose outcast for ever from
civilisation, he sailed out into the unknown seas with his little band
of desperate followers, to find if possible some solitary island, some
unknown spot, where they might be lost for ever from the world.

Curiously, the place which he pictured, the object for which he sought,
was soon after given to him to find.

Its steep cliffs rise from the sea precipitously, and beyond and above
them a ridge of rocky hills runs from north to south, from which, again,
two mountainous peaks of a thousand feet and more in height stand up
like sentinels.

At a little distance from the coast-line a white wall of surf lashes
itself into fury, and breaks everlastingly over the hidden reefs that
raise so formidable a guard around the island as to render safe landing
impossible save only at particular places and times.

Encouraged by this forbidding coast-line, after they had sailed all
round the island they effected a landing, and finding it uninhabited,
they decided to make it their home. The 'Bounty' was run into an inlet
between the cliffs, and after she had been dismantled and her materials
used for building houses, in 1790 they burnt her, as they feared she
might attract the notice of any ship that should chance to pass.

The first thing they did after their arrival was to divide the land into
nine equal parts, giving none to the Otaheitan men, who it is said had
been carried off from their own island by force. At first they were
kindly treated by the white men; but afterwards they made them their
slaves.

When they had