The Lonely Island - Robert Michael Ballantyne (free novel 24 .TXT) 📗

boat, but it did not tend to calm their feelings. On the contrary, it seemed to have the effect of filling them with a thirst for vengeance, and they spent part of that day in whispered plottings against the men. They determined to take their lives that very night.

While they were thus engaged, their innocent offspring were playing about the settlement at different games, screaming at times with vehement delight, and making the palm-groves ring with laughter. The bright sun shone equally upon the heads that whirled with merriment and those that throbbed with dark despair.

Suddenly, in the midst of her play, little Sally came to an abrupt pause. She missed little Matt Quintal from the group.

"Where's he gone, Charlie?" she demanded of her favourite playmate, whose name she had by that time learned to pronounce.

"I dunno," answered Charlie, whose language partook more of the nautical tone of Quintal than of his late father.

"D'you know, Dan'l?" she asked of little McCoy.

"I dunno nuffin'," replied Dan, "'xcep' he's not here."

"Well, I must go an' seek 'im. You stop an' play here. I leave 'em in your care, Toc. See you be good."

It would have amused you, reader, if you had seen with your bodily eyes the little creatures who were thus warned to be good. Even Dan McCoy, who was considered out and out the worst of them, might have sat to Rubens for a cherub; and as for the others, they were, we might almost say, appallingly good. Thursday October, in particular, was the very personification of innocence. It would have been much more appropriate to have named him Sunday July, because in his meek countenance goodness and beauty sat enthroned.

Of course we do not mean to say that these children were good from principle. They had no principle at that time. No, their actuating motive was selfishness; but it was not concentrated, regardless selfishness, and it was beautifully counteracted by natural amiability of temperament.

But they were quite capable of sin. For instance, when Sally had left them to search for her lost sheep, little Dan McCoy, moved by a desire for fun, went up behind little Charlie Christian and gave him an unmerited kick. It chanced to be a painful kick, and Charlie, without a thought of resentment or revenge, immediately opened his mouth, shut his eyes, and roared. Horrified by this unexpected result, little Dan also shut his eyes, opened his mouth, and roared.

The face that Charlie made in these circumstances was so ineffably funny, that Toc burst into uncontrollable laughter. Hearing this, the roarers opened their eyes, slid quickly into the same key, and tumbled head over heels on the grass, in which evolutions they were imitated by the whole party, except such as had not at that time passed beyond the staggering age.

Meanwhile Sally searched the neighbouring bush in vain; then bethinking her that Matt Quintal, who was fond of dangerous places, might have clambered down to the rocks to bathe, she made the best of her way to the beach, at a place which, being somewhat difficult of access from above, was seldom visited by any save the wild and venturesome.

She had only descended a few yards when she met the lost one clambering up in frantic haste, panting violently, his fat cheeks on fire, and his large eyes blazing.

"Oh, Matt, what is it?" she exclaimed, awestruck at the sight of him.

"Sip!--sip!" he cried, with labouring breath, as he pointed with one hand eagerly to the sea and with the other to the shore; "bin men down dare!--look, got suffin'! Oh!"

A prolonged groan of despair escaped the child as he fumbled in a trousers-pocket and pushed three fingers through a hole in the bottom of it.

"It's hoed through!"

"What's hoed through?" asked Sally, with quick sympathy, trying to console the urchin for some loss he had sustained.

"De knife!" exclaimed little Dan, with a face of blank woe.

"The knife! what knife? But don't cry, dear; if you lost it through that hole it must be lying on the track, you know, somewhere between us and the beach."

This happy thought did not seem to have occurred to Matt, whose cheeks at once resumed their flush and his eyes their blaze.

Taking his hand, Sally led him down the track.

They looked carefully as they went, and had not gone far when Matt sprang forward with a scream of delight and picked up a clasp-knife. It was by no means a valuable one. It had a buckhorn handle, and its solitary blade, besides being broken at the point, was affected with rust and tobacco in about equal proportions.

"Oh, Matt, where did you find it?"

"Come down and you see," he exclaimed, pointing with greater excitement than ever to the beach below.

They were soon down, and there, on the margin of the woods, they found a heap of cocoa-nut shells scattered about.

"Found de knife dere," said Matt, pointing to the midst of the shells, and speaking in a low earnest voice, as if the subject were a solemn one.

"Oh!" exclaimed Sally, under her breath.

"An' look here," said Matt, leading the girl to a sandy spot close by. They both stood transfixed and silent, for there were _strange foot-prints_ on the sand.

They could not be mistaken. Sally and Matt knew every foot and every shoe, white or black, in Pitcairn. The marks before them had been made by unknown shoes.

Just in proportion as youth is more susceptible of astonishment than age, so was the surprise of those little ones immeasurably greater than that of Robinson Crusoe in similar circumstances. With awestruck faces they traced the foot-prints down to the water's edge. Then, for the first time, it struck Matt that he had forgotten something.

"Oh, me forget de sip--de sip!" he cried, and pointed out to sea.

Sally raised her eyes and uttered an exclamation of fresh astonishment, as well she might, for there, like a seagull on the blue wave, was a ship under full sail. It was far-off, nearly on the horizon, but quite distinct, and large enough to be recognised.

Of course the gazers were spellbound again. It was the first real ship they had ever seen, but they easily recognised it, being familiar with man's floating prisons from the frequent descriptions given to them by John Adams, and especially from a drawing made by him, years ago, on the back of an old letter, representing a full-rigged man-of-war. This masterpiece of fine art had been nailed up on the walls of John Adams's hut, and had been fully expounded to each child in succession, as soon after its birth as was consistent with common-sense--sometimes sooner.

Suddenly Otaheitan Sally recovered herself.

"Come, Matt, we must run home an' tell what we've seen."

Away they went like two goats up the cliffs. Panting and blazing, they charged down on their amazed playmates, shouting, "A sip! a sip!" but never turning aside nor slacking their pace until they burst with the news on the astonished mutineers.

Something more than astonishment, however, mingled with the feelings of the seamen, and it was not until they had handled the knife, and visited the sandy cove, and seen the foot-prints, and beheld the vessel herself, that they became fully convinced that she had really been close to the island, that men had apparently landed to gather cocoa-nuts, and had gone away without having discovered the settlement, which was hid from their view by the high cliffs to the eastward of Bounty Bay.

The vessel had increased her distance so much by the time the men reached the cove, that it was impossible to make out what she was.

"A man-o'-war, mayhap, sent to search for us," suggested Quintal.

"Not likely," said Adams. "If she'd bin sent to search for us, she wouldn't have contented herself with only pickin' a few nuts."

"I should say she is a trader that has got out of her course," said Young; "but whatever she is, we've seen the last of her. I'm not sure that I wouldn't have run the risk of having our hiding-place found out, and of being hung, for the sake of seeing once more the fresh face of a white man."

He spoke with a touch of sadness in his tone, which contrasted forcibly with the remark that followed.

"It's little _I_ would care about the risk o' bein' scragged," said Quintal, "if I could only once more have a stiff glass o' grog an' a pipe o' good, strong, genuine baccy!"

"You'll maybe have the first sooner than you think," observed McCoy, with a look of intelligence.

"What d'ye mean?" asked Quintal.

"Ax no questions an' you'll be told no lies," was McCoy's polite rejoinder, to which Quintal returned a not less complimentary remark, and followed Young and Adams, who had already begun to reascend the cliffs.

This little glimpse of the great outer world was obtained by the mutineers in 1795, and was the only break of the kind that occurred during a residence of many years on the lonely island.

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Note 1. We are led to this conclusion in regard to the children by the fact that in the various records which tell us of these women attempting their flight, no mention is made of the children being with them.


CHAPTER SEVENTEEN.


THE CLOUDS GROW THICKER AND BLACKER.

This glimpse of a stray vessel left a deep impression on the minds of the exiles for many days, and it so far influenced the women that they postponed their scheme of vengeance for some time.

It must not be supposed, however, that all of those women, whom we have described as being so gentle in character, were suddenly transformed into demons. It was only two or three of the more energetic and passionate among them who stirred up the rest, and forced them to fall in with their views. These passionate ones were the widows of the men who had been slain. They not only felt their loss most bitterly, but became almost mad with the despair caused by their forlorn condition, and the apparent hopelessness of deliverance.

The sight of the passing ship had diverted their thoughts for a time, perhaps had infused a little hope; but when the excitement died down they renewed their plots against the men and at last made a desperate attempt to carry them out.

It was on a dark and stormy night. Thunder was rolling in the sky. Lightning flashed among the mountain-peaks. Rain, the first that had descended for many days, fell in fitful showers. It must have seemed to the women either that the elements sympathised with them, or that the extreme darkness was favourable to the execution of their plan, for about midnight one of them rose from her bed, and crept noiselessly to the corner of her hut, where she had seen Quintal deposit a loaded musket the previous day. Possessing herself of the weapon, she went straight to the widow of Fletcher Christian, and wakened her. She rose, somewhat reluctantly, and followed the woman, whose face was concealed in a kerchief of native cloth. The two then went cautiously to another hat, where two of the wives of the murdered