The Lonely Island: The Refuge of the Mutineers

Charlie had not with years lost one jot of that intensely innocent and guileless look of childhood, which inclined one to laugh while he merely cast earnest gaze into one’s face; but years had given to him a certain gravity and air of self-possession which commanded respect, even from that volatile imp, his contemporary, Dan McCoy.

Thursday October Christian, who was less than a year younger than Sally, had also shot up into a long-legged boy, and bade fair to become a tall and sturdy man. He, like his brother, was naturally grave and earnest, but was easily roused to action, and if he did not himself originate fun, was ever ready to appreciate the antics and mild wickedness of Dan McCoy, or to burst into sudden and uproarious laughter at the tumbles or ludicrous doings of the sprawlers, who rolled their plump-made forms on the soft grass.

Not one of the band, however, had yet attained to the age which renders young people ashamed of childish play. When Young and Adams appeared on the scene, Sally, her hair broken loose and the wreath confusedly mingled with it, was flying round the square with Dolly Young on her shoulder, and chased by Charlie Christian, who pretended, in the most obvious manner, that he could not catch her. Toc was sitting on the fence watching them, and perceiving his brother’s transparent hypocrisy, was chuckling to himself with great delight.

Matt Quintal and Dan McCoy, at the head of two opposing groups, were engaged in playing French and English, each group endeavouring to pull the other over a rope laid on the grass between them.

Several of the others, being too little, were not allowed to join in the game, and contented themselves with general scrimmaging and skylarking, while Edward Quintal, Catherine McCoy, and Hannah Adams, the most recent additions to the community, rolled about in meaningless felicity.

“Hold on hard,” shouted Dan McCoy, whose flushed face and blue eyes beamed and flashed under a mass of curling yellow hair, and who was the foremost boy of the French band.

“I’m holdin’ on,” cried Matt Quintal, who was intellectually rather obtuse.

“Tight,” cried Dan.

“Tight,” repeated Matt.

“There, don’t let go—oh! hup!”

The grasp of Dan suddenly relaxed when Matt and his Englishmen were straining their utmost. Of course they went back on the top of each other in a wild jumble, while Dan, having put a foot well back, was prepared, and stood comparatively firm.

“You did that a-purpose,” cried Matt, springing up and glaring.

“I know you did it a-purpose,” retorted Dan.

“But—but I said that—that you did it a-purpose,” stammered Matt.

“Well, an’ didn’t I say that you said that I said you did it a-purpose?”

A yell of delight followed this reply, in which, however, Matt did not join.

Like his father, Matt Quintal was short in the temper—at least, short for a Pitcairn boy. He suddenly gave Dan McCoy a dab on the nose with his fist. Now, as every one must know, a dab on the nose is painful; moreover, it sometimes produces blood. Dan McCoy, who also inherited a shortish temper from his father, feeling the pain, and seeing the blood, suddenly flushed to the temples, and administered to Matt a sounding slap on the side of the head, which sent him tumbling on the grass. But Matt was not conquered, though overturned. Jumping up, he made a rush at Dan, who stood on the defensive. The other children, being more gentle in their natures, stood by, and anticipated with feelings of awe the threatened encounter; but Thursday October Christian, who had listened with eager ears, ever since his intelligence dawned, to the conversations of the mutineers, here stepped between the combatants.

“Come, come,” said he, authoritatively, in virtue of his greater age and superior size, “let’s have fair play. If you must fight, do it ship-shape, an’, accordin’ to the articles of war. We must form a ring first, you know, an’ get a bottle an’ a sponge and—”

An appalling yell at this point nearly froze the marrow in everybody’s bones. It was caused by a huge pig, which, observing that the gate had been left open, had entered the square, and gone up to snuff at one of the nude babies, who, seated like a whitey-brown petrifaction, gazed with a look of horror in the pig’s placid face.

If ever a pig in this sublunary sphere regretted a foolish act, that Pitcairn pig must have been steeped in repentance to the latest day of its life. With one howl in unison, the entire field, minus the infants, ran at that pig like a human tornado. It was of no avail that the pig made straight for the gate by which it had entered. That gate had either removed or shut itself. In frantic haste, the unhappy creature coursed round the square, followed by its pursuers, who soon caught it by the tail, then by an ear, then by the nose and the other ear, and a fore leg and two hind ones, and finally hurled it over the fence, amid a torrent of shrieks which only a Pitcairn pig could utter or a Pitcairn mind conceive. It fell with a bursting squeak, and retired in grumpy silence to ruminate over the dire consequences of a too earnest gaze in the face of a child.

“Well done, child’n!” cried John Adams. “Sarves him right. Come, now, to grub, all of you.”

Even though the Pitcairn children had been disobedient by nature, they would have obeyed that order with alacrity. In a few brief minutes a profound silence proclaimed, more clearly than could a trumpet-tongue, that the inhabitants of the lonely island were at dinner.

Chapter Twenty One

The Last Man

One morning John Adams, instead of going to work in his garden, as was his wont, took down his musket from its accustomed pegs above the door, and sallied forth into the woods behind the village. He had not gone far when he heard a rustling of the leaves, and looking back, beheld the graceful form of Sally bounding towards him.

“Are you going to shoot, father?” she said, on coming up.

The young people of the village had by this time got into the habit of calling Adams “father,” and regarded him as the head of the community; not because of his age, for at this time he was only between thirty and forty years, but because of his sedate, quiet character, and a certain air of elderly wisdom which distinguished him. Even Edward Young, who was about the same age, but more juvenile both in feeling and appearance, felt the influence of his solid, unpretending temperament, and laughingly acknowledged him King of Pitcairn.

“No, dear, I’m not goin’ to shoot,” said Adams, in reply, “I’m only going up to Christian’s outlook to try if I can find somethin’ there, an’ I always like to have the old blunderbuss with me. It feels sort of company, you know, an’ minds me of old times; but you’ll not understand what I mean, Sall.”

“No, because I’ve no old times to mind about,” said Sally, with a peculiar smile. “May I go with you, father?”

“Of course you may. Come along, lass.”

Adams held out his strong hand. Sally put her peculiarly small one into it, and the two went slowly up the mountain-track together.

On reaching the top of a little knoll or plateau, they stopped, and turned to look back. They could see over the tops of the palm-groves from that place. The track by which they had ascended was visible here and there, winding among the flowering shrubs and trees. The village lay far below, like a gem in a setting of bright green, which contrasted pleasantly with the warm clouds and the blue sea beyond. The sun was bright and the air was calm—so calm that the voices of the children at play came up to them distinctly in silvery ripples.

“How comes it, Sall, that you’ve deserted your post to-day?”

“Because the guard has been relieved; same as you say they do on board a man-of-war. I left the sprawlers in charge of Bessy Mills, and the staggerers are shut into the green. You see, I’m feeling a little tired to-day, and thought I would like to have a quiet walk in the woods.”

She finished this explanation with a little sigh.

“Dear, dear me!” exclaimed Adams, with a look of amused surprise, “you’re not becomin’ sentimental are you, Sally?”

“What is sentimental, father!”

“Why, it’s a—it’s a sort of a feelin’—a sensation, you know, a kind of all-overishness, that—d’ye see—”

He stopped short and stared with a perplexed air at the girl, who burst into a merry laugh.

“That’s one of your puzzlers, I think,” she said, looking up slyly from the corners of her eyes.

“Well, Sall, that is a puzzler,” returned Adams, with a self-condemning shake of the head. “I never before felt so powerfully the want o’ dictionary knowledge. I’ll be shot if I can tell you what sentimental is, though I know what it is as well as I know what six-water grog or plum-duff is. We must ask Mr Young to explain it. He’s bin to school, you know, an’ that’s more than I have—more’s the pity.”

“Well,” said Sally, as they proceeded on their way, “whatever senti—senti—”

“Mental,” said Adams.

“Whatever sentimental is, I’m not that, because I’m just the same as ever I was, for I often want to be quiet and alone, and I often am quiet and alone in the bush.”

“And what do you think about, Sall, when you’re alone in the bush?” said the seaman, looking down with more interest than usual at the innocent face beside him.

“Oh, about heaps and heaps of things. I couldn’t tell you in a month all I think about; but one thing I think most about is a man-of-war.”

“A man-of-war, Sall?”

“Yes; I would give anything to see a man-of-war, what you’ve so often told us about, with all its masts and sails, and bunks and guns and anchors, and officers and men. I often wonder so much what new faces would be like. You see I’m so used to the faces of yourself and Mr Young, and Mainmast and Susannah, and Toc and Matt and Dan and—”

“Just say the rest o’ the youngsters, dear,” interrupted Adams. “There’s no use in goin’ over ’em all by name.”

“Well, I’m so used to them that I can’t fancy how any other faces can be different, and yet I heard Mr Young say the other day that there’s no two faces in the world exactly alike, and you know there must be hundreds and hundreds of faces in the world.”