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 see much 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.