The Lonely Island: The Refuge of the Mutineers by R. M. Ballantyne (10 ebook reader .txt) 📖

Great was the interest aroused on board the Topaz when Jack Brace narrated his experiences among the islanders, and Captain Folger resolved to pay them a visit. He did so next day, accompanied by the Englishman and some of the other men, the sight of whom gladdened the eyes and hearts of Adams and his large family.

Besides assuring himself of the truth of Brace’s statements, the Captain obtained additional proof of the truth of Adams’s account of himself and his community in the form of the chronometer and azimuth compass of the Bounty.

“How many did you say your colony consists of?” asked Folger.

“Thirty-five all told, sir,” answered Adams; “but I fear we shall be only thirty-four soon.”

“How so?”

“One of our lads, a dear boy of about eight years of age, is dying, I fear,” returned Adams, sadly.

“I’m sorry to hear it, and still more sorry that I have no doctor in my ship,” said Folger, “but I have a smatterin’ of doctors’ work myself. Let me see him.”

Adams led the way to the hut where poor James Young lay, tenderly nursed by Mary Christian. The boy was lying on his bed as they entered, gazing wistfully out at the little window which opened from the side of it like the port-lights or bull’s-eyes of a ship’s berth. His young nurse sat beside him with the Bounty Bible open on her knees. She shut it and rose as the strangers entered.

The poor invalid was too weak to take much interest in them. He was extremely thin, and breathed with great difficulty. Nevertheless his face flushed, and a gleam of surprise shot from his eyes as he turned languidly towards the Captain.

“My poor boy,” said Folger, taking his hand and gently feeling his pulse, “do you suffer much?”

“Yes,—very much,” said little James, with a sickly smile.

“Can you rest at all?” asked the Captain.

“I am—always—resting,” he replied, with a pause between each word; “resting—on Jesus.”

The Captain was evidently surprised by the answer.

“Who told you about Jesus?” he asked.

“God’s book—and—the Holy—Spirit.”

It was obvious that the exertion of thinking and talking was not good for poor little James. Captain Folger therefore, after smoothing the hair on his forehead once or twice very tenderly, bade him good-bye, and went out.

“Doctors could do nothing for the child,” he said, while returning with Adams to his house; “but he is rather to be envied than pitied. I would give much for the rest which he apparently has found.”

“Give much!” exclaimed Adams, with an earnest look. “Rest in the Lord is not to be purchased by gifts. Itself is the grand free gift of God to man, to be had for the asking.”

“I know it,” was the Captain’s curt reply, as he entered Adams’s house. “Where got you the chronometer and azimuth compass?” he said, on observing these instruments.

“They belonged to the Bounty. You are heartily welcome to both of them if you choose; they are of no use to me.” (See Note.)

Folger accepted the gift, and promised to write to England and acquaint the Government with his discovery of the colony.

“You see, sir,” said Adams, with a grave look, while hospitably entertaining his visitor that afternoon, “we are increasing at a great rate, and although they may perhaps take me home and swing me up to the yard-arm, I think it better to run the risk o’ that than to leave all these poor young things here unprotected. Why, just think what might happen if one o’ them traders which are little better than pirates were to come an’ find us here.”

He looked at the Captain earnestly.

“Now, if we were under the protection o’ the British flag—only just recognised, as it were,—that would go a long way to help us, and prevent mischief.”

At this point the importunities of some of the young people to hear about the outside world prevailed, and Folger began, as Jack Brace had done the day before, to tell them some of the most stirring events in the history of his own land.

But he soon found out that the mental capacity of the Pitcairners was like a bottomless pit. However much they got, they wanted more. Anecdote after anecdote, story after story, fact after fact, was thrown into the gulf, and still the cry was, “More! more!”

At last he tore himself away.

“Good-bye, and God bless you all,” he said, while stepping into the canoe which was to carry him off. “I won’t forget my promise.”

“And tell ’em to send us story-books,” shouted Daniel McCoy, as the canoe rose on the back of the breakers.

The Captain waved his hand. Most of the women and children wiped their eyes, and then they all ran to the heights to watch the Topaz as she sailed away. They watched her till she vanished over that mysterious horizon which seemed to the Pitcairners the utmost boundary of the world, and some of them continued to gaze until the stars came out, and the gulls retired to bed, and the soft black mantle of night descended like a blessing of tranquillity on land and sea.

Before bidding the Topaz farewell, we may remark that Captain Folger faithfully fulfilled his promise. He wrote a letter to England giving a full account of his discovery of the retreat of the mutineers, which aroused much interest all over the land; but at that time the stirring events of warfare filled the minds of men in Europe so exclusively, that the lonely island and its inhabitants were soon forgotten—at least no action was taken by the Government—and six years elapsed before another vessel sailed out of the great world into the circle of vision around Pitcairn.

Meanwhile the Pitcairners, knowing that, even at the shortest, a long, long time must pass before Folger could communicate with the “old country,” continued the even tenor of their innocent lives.

The school prospered and became a vigorous institution. The church not less so. More children were born to Thursday October, insomuch that he at last had one for every working-day in the week; more yam-fields were cultivated, and more marriages took place—but hold, this is anticipating.

We have said that the school prospered. The entire community went to it, male and female, old and young. John Adams not only taught his pupils all he knew, but set himself laboriously to acquire all the knowledge that was to be obtained by severe study of the Bible, the Prayer-book. Carteret’s Voyages, and by original meditation. From the first mine he gathered and taught the grand, plain, and blessed truths about salvation through Jesus, together with a few tares of error resulting from misconception and imperfect reasoning. From the second he adopted the forms of worship of the Church of England. From the third he gleaned and amplified a modicum of nautical, geographical, and general information; and from the fourth he extracted a flood of miscellaneous, incomplete, and disjointed facts, fancies, and fallacies, which at all events served the good purpose of interesting his pupils and exercising their mental powers.

But into the midst of all this life death stepped and claimed a victim. The great destroyer came not, however, as an enemy but as a friend, to raise little James Young to that perfect rest of which he had already had a foretaste on the island.

It was the first death among the second generation, and naturally had a deeply solemnising effect on the young people. This occurred soon after the departure of the Topaz. The little grave was made under the shade of a palm-grove, where wild-flowers grew in abundance, and openings in the leafy canopy let in the glance of heaven’s blue eye.

One evening, about six months after this event, Adams went up the hill to an eminence to which he was fond of retiring when a knotty problem in arithmetic had to be tackled. Arithmetic was his chief difficulty. The soliloquy which he uttered on reaching his place of meditation will explain his perplexities.

“That ’rithmetic do bother me, an’ no mistake,” he said, with a grave shake of the head at a lively lizard which was looking up in his face. “You see, history is easy.