Anonymous

“ Whatever the daughter of Adams may have feared in her love for her father, he himself did not appear afraid to receive these English visitors to his island refuge. For he felt that as, in the sight of God, his sin had for Christ’s sake been pardoned, so in the eyes of men these long years of penitence, and of honest endeavor after a better life, would surely have won pardon for the sins of his youth. It was with feelings too deep for words that he looked once more on the faces of his countrymen and heard the English speech from other lips than those to whom he had taught it. ”

“ And thus Juan Fernandez was left once more in utter solitude, and Selkirk, gazing from the ship’s deck, saw its green hills and pleasant coasts disappear in the distance, as he left the island and all its sad, its sacred, its happy memories forever. He soon grew tired of the society of men, and when not busy about the ship, would always seek to be alone, dreaming of the 183 life which he had left. He found it hard, too, to accustom himself to the salt meat and biscuits which were sailors’ fare, and to the dress and boots in which he must now appear. ”

“ Five out of the nine Englishmen were shot, and amongst them was their leader, Fletcher Christian. Ever since he had come to Pitcairn’s Island, he had appeared sunk in sorrow and remorse. All day long he had remained hidden among the rocks, away from his comrades, his eyes fastened on the wide ocean, the barrier which he knew must now divide him for ever from his home and from all he loved. In this solitude his companion was the Bible, brought on shore by him from the ship. ”

“ Far away from any other land, in the midst of the South Pacific Ocean, there is a little island, a mere speck in the sea, for it is not six miles across at its widest point. A passing ship might leave this tiny island unnoticed, save for the lofty cliffs and precipices which guard its shores, running down to the white waves, ever curling and breaking at their feet. ”

“ Thus we need not wonder that trouble and dissension seemed to follow everywhere the ill-fated crew of the Bounty. They quarrelled and fought with the natives of the first island which they chose for an asylum; they disputed among themselves, suspecting and hating each other, as partners in sin most often do. The hearts of the leaders were full of fear also as they thought of the laws which they had broken, and of the fate which would be theirs should their captain reach England, and a ship be sent out to capture them. ”

“ Before he had well finished speaking, his Italian sailors had begun their work, the slower and more apathetic Greeks needing, even in that moment of danger, to be urged with many words before they would obey. Thus it was but slowly that the heavy sails, creaking and swaying in the wind, were drawn in and bound to the masts, and before half the work was done, the storm in its full fury had struck the ship, and each man clung for life to the nearest support, as the reeling vessel ploughed heavily through the swollen seas. ”

“ On the morning following the fatal occurrence, I visited the jail in which the mutineers were confined. The cells were small, but clean and light. In the first of them, I found George Beavers, Nicholas Lewis, and Henry Sears. Beavers was crouching in one corner of the cell, and looking sullen, and in despair. Lewis, who was walking the scanty space of the cell, seemed to glory in the rattle of his heavy chains; while Sears was stretched, apparently asleep, upon a grass mat. They were all heavily ironed, and every precaution had evidently been taken to prevent escape. ”

“ Yet it was not a mere rock, inaccessible and barren; for when once a boat has safely won its way through the breakers, and the sailor has climbed the rocks 95 which, steep above steep, stand like a wall before him, he is rewarded by the sight of lovely valleys, of forests of fruit-bearing palms, and of green, fresh-springing plants: a little fairy land, a new paradise seems hidden here from the eye and the foot of man.
It is called Pitcairn’s Island, and was discovered more than a hundred years ago by a passing ship. ”

“ Ere long the boat returned, and the adventurers climbed on board as eager to speak as were their companions to hear.
“A dainty and delicious country, truly, Captain Lionel, but men we saw none,” said the first speaker.
“The beasts thereon are tame, and have no fear of man,” continued another.
“Yea, and the land is a garden of flowers, and the air soft, that it would give back health to the dying; there will your fair wife recover her bloom, and we all shall rest after our grievous toil.” ”

“ But though neither waves nor storms could make this fire die out, yet there comes a time to most of these volcanic islands when the life and energy of the mountain seems gone, taken away, we know not how, by the same Great Hand that lighted it, and the lonely rock is now ready to be turned into a home for man, for this silent crater, this hard, broken crag, will, after a time, become a fair island home. God does not leave His works incomplete, and He has servants who will change this desolate rock into a fertile garden. ”

“ Two English vessels are approaching the island. At first the crews do not see it, but as evening draws on, the look-out man in the larger ship gives the signal that he has caught sight of land. “Land ho, land!” passes from mouth to mouth among the sailors. What land can it be? No island, no rock even, is marked on the chart, and the officers gather on deck to look over the darkening sea toward that darker point where the new land lies. ”

“ Nearly twenty-five years had passed since 105 John Adams was left on Pitcairn’s Island, the sole protector and teacher of the women, and of the young children who were growing up around him. He was himself but a common sailor, who had enjoyed only a few advantages of education, his only acquirements the simple lessons which had been taught him in his boyhood, and a new but straightforward and earnest desire to serve God in the way which God should teach him, and in penitence and faith to walk himself and to lead others to walk in the way that leads to everlasting life. ”

“ Almost every type of American school-girl is here represented—the vain Helen Dart, the beauty, Amy Searle, the ambitious, high bred, conservative Anna Matson; but next to Kitty herself sunny little Pauline Sedgewick will prove the general favorite. It is a story fully calculated to win both girls and boys toward noble, royal ways of doing little as well as great things. All teachers should feel an interest in placing it in the hands of their pupils. ”

“ The steep, rugged, broken hill was scaled at last, and from its summit the adventurers looked down on their place of refuge. They were on an island, which seemed to be some miles in length; it was thickly covered with trees, and in one part a broad, open plain, fresh and fertile, stretched before them. There were many streams, dancing merrily down the broken cliffs, or shaded by tall tree-ferns and waving grasses. But nowhere was there any sign of human habitation; 75 no palm-roofed huts, no canoes, no figures crossing the open spaces between the trees. ”

“ My father had lost two heifers, white were they, with black stars on their forehead and there were none like them in the island where we dwell. Long did we seek our missing kine, and great was our sorrow when we found them not; but last night I dreamed that I saw them feeding upon this island, the cliffs of which we can sometimes see from our home. When I awakened I persuaded my father to take the boat and let us row to the island.”
“We found not our heifers,” said the old fisherman, smiling, “but, thank the good God, we found men. ”

“ Prior’s” is a sweet story of womanly tact combined with Christian trust. A widow, with scanty means, makes a home happy for a group of children, restless, wayward and aspiring, like many American children of our day. The mother’s love holds them, her thrift cares for them, her firmness restrains, and her christian words and life win them to noble aims and living. The influence of the christian household is widely felt, and the quiet transforming leaven works in many homes. We can’t have too many books of this kind in the family or Sunday-school. ”

“ But God does not choose only the wise and the great and the strong for His workmen: often the weak things of the world are chosen to confound the mighty, and the poor and lowly to do the work of the High and Mighty One who inhabiteth eternity.
We have seen how evil passions indulged were like a seed of sin, growing and spreading into a mighty and poisonous tree. ”

“ Yet in the midst of all his joy he could hardly determine to leave his beloved island, so accustomed had he grown to solitude, and to his wild, uncontrolled life. At length the remembrance of his aged parents, and of his friends at home, made him determine to ask a passage in the ship which had touched on his island shore, and the captain, finding how much he had learnt of seamanship and navigation, offered to rate him as mate. ”

“ But on the thirteenth day a sudden and violent storm broke over the island. The ship was driven from her anchorage by the force of the wind and waves, and was carried, with those of the company then on board, toward the north coast of Africa, where she was at last completely wrecked. The crew escaped with their lives, but only to fall into the hands of the Moors, who, regarding all Christian nations as their enemies, immediately seized those poor English gentlemen as slaves. ”

“ In the days when voyages were more tedious and dangerous than they are now, when steam was unknown, and the art of navigation little studied, it was especially important to secure safe resting-places for vessels bound on distant voyages. Halfway ports where the health of the sailors might be recruited, where the ship often battered and leaking, might be repaired, and stored once more with water and fresh vegetables, were absolutely essential to safe and profitable commerce. ”

“ He had also, his food to obtain and to cook—goat’s flesh or cray-fish, which he boiled in his large sauce-pan; and to gather the tender tops of the cabbage-palm or other vegetables, for bread. These necessary employments finished, he would take his Bible, and, sitting in the door of his hut, or on the beach, would study it for hours, finding new truths and deeper meaning in the blessed words familiar to him from his childhood. ”

“ In making her acquaintance a new life begins for her. She is brought in contact with new and better influences, and profiting by them becomes in time a sunbeam in her uncle’s house, and the means of softening the heart and quieting the tongue of the aunt who was once her terror and dread. ”

“ They here witnessed a human sacrifice, to propitiate the favor of their gods in a battle they were about to undertake. The victim was generally some strolling vagabond, who was not aware of his fate till the moment arrived, and he received his death-blow from a club. For the purpose of showing the inhabitants the use of the horses, Captains Cook and Clerke rode into the country, to the great astonishment of the islanders; and though this exercise was continued every day by some of the Resolution’s people, yet the wonder of the natives never abated. ”

“ Everything of value on board was taken to the island, even the iron-work of the ship itself being removed, and when the Bounty was reduced to an empty and useless hulk, she was set on fire and burnt to the water-edge, that no passing ship might see any trace of inhabitants on the lonely island where these unhappy men sought to hide themselves. ”

“ Jesus Christ alone founded His empire upon love; and at this hour millions of men would die for Him. I die before my time, and my body will be given back to the earth to become food for worms. Such is the fate which so soon awaits him who has been called the Great Napoleon! what a difference between my deep misery and the eternal kingdom of Christ, which is proclaimed, loved, and adored, and which is extending over the whole earth. Call you this dying? Is it not living rather? The death of Christ is the 84 death of a God!” Napoleon became every day more and more unhappy. ”

“ They were soon received by a crowd of 28 eager peasants, who crowded down to the beach, when the story of the rescue spread. They were in another island now, far larger, and moreover cultivated and inhabited, and food was given them, and shelter offered, and clean clothes brought to replace their own ragged and dirty garments. But of course the first anxiety of the two rescued sailors was to send relief to their companions at the hut, and to those who might yet remain alive on the other side of the island. ”

“ But as they had begun their course by an act which they knew to be wrong, it was not likely that their future would be happy and prosperous; the sweet flowers of peace and content do not spring from the bitter root of sin, “neither do men gather grapes of thorns nor figs of thistles.” ”

“ The men grow daily weaker, and our stores less. We have three sorts of sick men—those that cannot move nor turn themselves in their beds, who must be tended like infants; those that are as it were crippled; and those that are something better, but afflicted with sore mouths. These last make shift to work; they go to work through the snow 39 to the ship, and about their other business. Our cook doth order our food in this manner. The beef which is to serve on Sunday night to supper, he doth boil on Saturday night in a kettle full of water, with a quart of oatmeal, about an hour. ”

“ They were as much less guilty than the English as they were more ignorant; they had never been taught to be merciful, to forgive injuries, to be patient under wrongs; the blessed name of Jesus was not familiar to their ears, nor the lessons of His life and death to their hearts. They knew no law but that of violence and might, and finding themselves unjustly treated by those 100 who had promised to be their friends, they formed a plot to put them all to death, and so to make themselves masters of the island. ”

“ There were men of sixty—quiet and inoffensive old men—placed with others who were as accomplished villains as the world could produce. These were either proceeding to Sydney, their sentences on the island having expired, or as witnesses in another case (a bold and wicked murder) sent there also for trial. The sailors on board the brig were for the most part the cowardly fellows who had so disgracefully allowed the brig to be taken from them; and they, as well as the soldiers on guard (some of them formed a part of the former one) , had no very kindly feeling towards the mutineers. ”