Note 17 — THE MUTINY OF THE “BOUNTY.”

Byron, with wonderful poetic accuracy, recounts the actual mutiny:—

“Awake, bold Bligh! the foe is at the gate!

Awake! awake!—alas! it is too late!

Fiercely beside thy cot the mutineer

Stands, and proclaims the reign of rage and fear,

Thy limbs are bound, the bayonet at thy breast;

· · · · ·

Full in thine eyes is waved the glittering blade,

Close to thy throat the pointed bayonet laid;

The levell’d muskets circle round thy breast,

In hands as steel’d to do the deadly rest.

Thou dar’st them to their worst, exclaiming—‘Fire!’

But they who pitied not could yet admire,

Some lurking remnant of their former awe

Restrained them longer than their broken law;

They would not dip their souls at once in blood,

But left thee to the mercies of the flood.

‘Hoist out the boat!’ was now the leader’s cry;

And who dare answer ‘No!’ to mutiny,

In the first dawning of the drunken hour,

The Saturnalia of unhoped-for power?

The boat is lower’d with all the haste of hate,

With its slight plank between thee and thy fate;

Her only cargo such a scant supply

As promises the death their hands deny;

And just enough of water and of bread,

To keep, some days, the dying from the dead:

Some cordage, canvas, sails, and lines, and twine,

But treasures all to hermits of the brine,

Were added after, to the earnest prayer

Of those who saw no hope save sea and air;

And last, that trembling vassal of the Pole—

The feeling compass—Navigation’s soul.”