Some of the party die
and are eaten; some are murdered by the rest and eaten. This one
awful creature eats his fill, and sustains his strength, and lives
on to be recaptured and taken back. The unrelateable experiences
through which he has passed have been so tremendous, that he is not
hanged as he might be, but goes back to his old chained-gang work.
A little time, and he tempts one other prisoner away, seizes
another boat, and flies once more - necessarily in the old hopeless
direction, for he can take no other. He is soon cut off, and met
by the pursuing party face to face, upon the beach. He is alone.
In his former journey he acquired an inappeasable relish for his
dreadful food. He urged the new man away, expressly to kill him
and eat him. In the pockets on one side of his coarse convict-
dress, are portions of the man's body, on which he is regaling; in
the pockets on the other side is an untouched store of salted pork
(stolen before he left the island) for which he has no appetite.
He is taken back, and he is hanged. But I shall never see that
sea-beach on the wall or in the fire, without him, solitary
monster, eating as he prowls along, while the sea rages and rises
at him.
Captain Bligh (a worse man to be entrusted with arbitrary power
there could scarcely be) is handed over the side of the Bounty, and
turned adrift on the wide ocean in an open boat, by order of
Fletcher Christian, one of his officers, at this very minute.
Another flash of my fire, and 'Thursday October Christian,' five-
and-twenty years of age, son of the dead and gone Fletcher by a
savage mother, leaps aboard His Majesty's ship Briton, hove-to off
Pitcairn's Island; says his simple grace before eating, in good
English; and knows that a pretty little animal on board is called a
dog, because in his childhood he had heard of such strange
creatures from his father and the other mutineers, grown grey under
the shade of the bread-fruit trees, speaking of their lost country
far away.
See the Halsewell, East Indiaman outward bound, driving madly on a
January night towards the rocks near Seacombe, on the island of
Purbeck! The captain's two dear daughters are aboard, and five
other ladies. The ship has been driving many hours, has seven feet
water in her hold, and her mainmast has been cut away. The
description of her loss, familiar to me from my early boyhood,
seems to be read aloud as she rushes to her destiny.
'About two in the morning of Friday the sixth of January, the ship
still driving, and approaching very fast to the shore, Mr. Henry
Meriton, the second mate, went again into the cuddy, where the
captain then was. Another conversation taking place, Captain
Pierce expressed extreme anxiety for the preservation of his
beloved daughters, and earnestly asked the officer if he could
devise any method of saving them. On his answering with great
concern, that he feared it would be impossible, but that their only
chance would be to wait for morning, the captain lifted up his
hands in silent and distressful ejaculation.
'At this dreadful moment, the ship struck, with such violence as to
dash the heads of those standing in the cuddy against the deck
above them, and the shock was accompanied by a shriek of horror
that burst at one instant from every quarter of the ship.
