and their scanty resources, and to his ability as
a thorough seaman, eighteen souls were saved from imminent and otherwise
inevitable destruction, it was not alone the dangers of the sea, in an
open boat, crowded with people, that he had to combat, though they
required the most consummate nautical skill, to be enabled to contend
successfully against them; but the unfortunate situation, to which the
party were exposed, rendered him subject to the almost daily murmuring
and caprice of people less conscious than himself of their real danger.
From the experience they had acquired at Tofoa of the savage disposition
of the people against the defenceless boat's crew, a lesson was learned
how little was to be trusted, even to the mildest of uncivilized people,
when a conscious superiority was in their hands. A striking proof of
this was experienced in the unprovoked attack made by those amiable
people, the Otaheitans, on Captain Wallis's ship, of whose power they
had formed no just conception; but having once experienced the full
force of it, on no future occasion was any attempt made to repeat the
attack. Lieutenant Bligh, fully aware of his own weakness, deemed it
expedient, therefore, to resist all desires and temptations to land at
any of those islands, among which they passed in the course of the
voyage, well knowing how little could be trusted to the forbearance of
savages, unarmed and wholly defenceless as his party were.

But the circumstance of being tantalized with the appearance of land,
clothed with perennial verdure, whose approach was forbidden to men
chilled with wet and cold, and nearly perishing with hunger, was by no
means the most difficult against which the commander had to struggle.
'It was not the least of my distresses,' he observes, 'to be constantly
assailed with the melancholy demands of my people for an increase of
allowance, which it grieved me to refuse.' He well knew that to reason
with men reduced to the last stage of famine, yet denied the use of
provisions within their reach, and with the power to seize upon them in
their own hands, would be to no purpose. Something more must be done to
ensure even the possibility of saving them from the effect of their own
imprudence. The first thing he set about, therefore, was to ascertain
the exact state of their provisions, which were found to amount to the
ordinary consumption of five days, but which were to be spun out so as
to last fifty days. This was a