CHAPTER VI.BEARINGS.
Pitcairn! I remembered something of what the word meant, next morning, when I woke from a refreshing sleep.
Who does not know that story, just a century old? A ship of war from England sent out to these southern seas to fetch breadfruit for transplantation. Her work easy, her crew passing long delicious enervating months in this contrasting clime; the southern sky, in lieu of our murky heavens, the southern woman, in lieu of Deptford Poll. Then, the breadfruit all collected, the signal given to start for home, but given by an unpopular commander. Mutiny next. The captain and a faithful remnant thrust into an open boat, with a handful of provisions; the crew gently sailing away in search of some happy isle. One group thinking they had found it in Otaheite,and there disembarking, leaving the others to steer further forward into the unknown. These last, finally, spying the dot of Pitcairn, and stopping there, scuttling their ship to signify ‘Good-bye’ to the world. An auspicious settlement, with all the comforts—the heathen woman (imported) and heathen whisky, home made, by an inventor of genius, who could not find even this morning light sufficiently exhilarating without his dram; a few native men for service, beside. So, they began to be happy for ever, according to the most approved methods of Wapping Old Stairs. Meanwhile, the captain and his faithful remnant, in the open boat, make the best of their way to England, through sun and storm; their first halting stage, and nearest prospect of relief and refreshment, twelve hundred leagues away, their rations weighed to the twenty-fifth fraction of a pound, and a cocked pistol always ready for service between the rotting bread and the famished crew. Home at last; the story told; and another war ship sent out to the Pacific, to pick up the mutineers. The Otaheitan settlers, or what is left of them, caught and brought back to hang,or otherwise pay their score; the Pitcairners never found by the avenger, though she rakes the seas for them for months. Nothing heard of them for close on twenty years, when, one day, in the following century, a Yankee skipper, ranging the smooth ocean, finds this speck of volcanic eruption on its face; and then the whole story comes out. We left them, it may be remembered, with liquor and ladies, sunshine and a solitary isle, the honestest attempt ever made to realise the nautical ideal—said sometimes to extend to other professions—of a paradise ashore. Alas! it still was not enough. There had been wild debauchery in both kinds; riot and midnight murder; sudden and crafty slayings, to the confusion of all method in the butcher’s art, of men by women, women by men, Englishmen by natives, and contrariwise, then, of Englishmen, among themselves. At last, only one man is left, and he of our stock, with twelve native women in his guardianship, and nineteen children, most of them fathered by the Englishmen dead and gone. This man, struck with horror and remorse, takes a turn to piety, and, knowing nothing of heredity,is simple enough to believe that God gives the race a fresh start with every generation. So believing, he reclaims this spawn of hell to Christianity and civilisation, and makes a new human type. Other varieties may yet be found in the stars; this one owned a virtue that almost ignored evil, and that was well nigh as effortless as the love of light. It was strong and gentle, truthful and brave, by fine instinct; it had an untaught facility of laughter and of tears; was passionate in loving, yet strange to violent hate—an image of character that cast no shadows, the most wonderful curiosity in life.
The Yankee skipper soon made his strange discovery known, and then this colony of half-castes became the pets of the world. English war ships went to visit them, this time not for vengeance, but to carry them all whereof they stood in need, in loving gifts. French war ships looked in, and, charmed with their innocence and simplicity, deigned to give them leave to hoist a Gallic flag, but showed no resentment when the offer was declined. America opened her generous hand. It was a place of pilgrimage; mankind seemed to seemuch that it might have been in this outlandish folk, without a war, a debt, a slave class, or a bottle of brandy to boast of, but only with labour and love. So much had been omitted, from sheer defect of memory and knowledge in that poor stranded tar. He had just tried to make them good, and had left the rest to take care of itself. Suppose he had come earlier, and caught the whole race on their exit from the Ark. How it might have spoiled history—all the devilment of the world cleared off, and a new start made with a germ of good! Well, they multiplied, with this encouragement, till their numbers threatened to exceed the capacities of the isle, when a considerate British Government transported them to another island, ever so far superior, and set them up in housekeeping. They flourished; but the new island was the great world, and the gentler spirits among them sighed for their worldlet once more. So these came back to it; and their children and children’s children are here, in the old peace and beauty of life, to this day.