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I remember Captain Bligh saying to Fryer, about noon on May the twelfth: “I think we’ve seen the worst of it.”

“I am sure of it, sir,” Fryer replied, but he believed no more than Bligh in the truth of the statement. It had fallen calm about half an hour before, but the sea, as viewed from the launch, was an awe-inspiring sight. Fryer had just relieved Bligh at the tiller, which he had held continuously for eighteen hours.

Our shrouds for the masts and the canvas weather cloth had been fitted none too soon; on the evening of that same day,—May the ninth,—at about nine o’clock, wind and rain had struck us together, and all through the night four men were continuously bailing, and there were times when every man of us save Bligh was so employed. The sky was concealed by low gray clouds scudding before the wind. So it remained all day and all night of the tenth, the eleventh, and till near midday of the twelfth; and now, although the wind had fallen, the sky was an ominous sight.

There was no break in the clouds, no signs of a lightening at any point in the heavy canopy that overhung us, so low that it seemed almost within reach. Nevertheless, it was calm, for the moment, at least, and the sky withheld its rain. Our sail was dropped into the boat.

“I want two men at the oars,” Bligh said.

“I’ll make one, sir,” Lenkletter called out, and a dozen others at the same time. All were eager for a chance to warm their benumbed bodies. Lenkletter and Lebogue were first chosen, but there were reliefs every quarter of an hour so that the rest of us might enjoy the benefit of the exercise.

“Don’t exert yourselves, men,” said Bligh; “merely keep her stern to the swell.”

The boat had never seemed so small to me as she did then, and I could imagine what a speck she would have appeared in that vast ocean could one have observed her with a sea bird’s eye. The long swell, coming from the southeast, was of a prodigious height, but without the wind there was no menace in it. The seas moved toward us, rank after rank, with a solemnity, a majesty, that filled the heart with awe; cold and wretched though we were, we had a kind of solemn pleasure in watching them: seeing our little boat lifted high on their broad backs, to find ourselves immediately after in a great valley between them.

As a recompense for our sufferings, Captain Bligh issued an allowance of rum, two teaspoonfuls for each man; and for our dinner that day we had half an ounce of pork each, in addition to the bread. This made our midday meal seem a veritable feast, and the rum gave us a little warmth. It was the cold that we dreaded at this time, fully as much as the sea: the wind, penetrating cloathing perpetually drenched with rain, felt bitterly chill, as though it were blowing from fields of ice. Thanks to Captain Bligh, we now adopted a means of combating it that proved of inestimable service. He advised us to wring out our cloathing in sea water. It is strange that none of us had thought of this simple expedient before, but the fact remains that we had not. The moment we tried it we found ourselves wonderfully comfortable in comparison with our miserable plight before, the reason being that salt water does not evaporate in the wind so fast as fresh.

We passed the next two or three hours tolerably well; what between taking our turns at the oars and wringing out our cloathes from time to time, we broke the back of the afternoon, each man secretly watching all the while for any change that would give us reason to hope that better weather was in store; but the only change was that the dull light became duller yet, as the day wore on toward evening. And still there was no wind.

The silence made us uneasy. Our ears had been accustomed to the deep roar of the wind and the seething hiss of breaking seas. God knows, we wanted no more of such weather, but we did crave wind enough to carry us on our way. The great swells went under us noiselessly; the only sounds to be heard were the small human sounds within the boat—a spoken word, a cough, a weary sigh as someone shifted his position.

It must have been toward four o’clock in the afternoon that there was mingled with the vast quiet what was, at first, the very ghost of sound—and yet every man of us heard it. Elphinstone, who was lying in the bottom of the boat just before me, raised his head to look round. “What is that?” he said.

There was no need to reply. As we rose to the swell, every head was turned to the eastward; and there, not half a mile distant, we again saw approaching our remorseless enemy—rain.

It came on in what appeared to be a solid wall of blackness, faintly lighted by a dull grayish glow from the sky before it. There was no wind immediately behind; the slowness of its approach assured us of that; therefore, we waited in silence, while the sound increased and spread, now deadened as we fell into the trough, more loud as we rose to the crest of the next wave. Then, as though at the last moment it had leaped to make sure of us, we were in the midst of it—drenched, half drowned, gasping for breath, in a deluge such as we had never before experienced.

In an instant I lost sight of the men in the forward part of the boat. This, I know, will scarcely be believed by those whose experience of rain has been only in the northern latitudes, who know nothing of the enormous weight of water released in a tropical cloudburst. The fact remains that the launch vanished from my sight save for the after part of it where I sat, and the men immediately before my eyes were but shadows blurred by sheets of almost solid water. I heard Captain Bligh’s voice, faintly, above the hiss and thunder of the deluge. The words were indistinguishable, but we well knew what we had to do. We bailed with the desperation of men who feel the water gaining upon them even as they bail; who feel it cover their feet and rise slowly toward their knees. And it was not sea water that we threw over the side. It was the pure sweet water of clouds, which men, adrift in a small boat in mid-ocean, so often pray for in vain, with blackening lips and swelling tongues; and we hurled it away from us with bailing scoops, coconut shells, the copper pot, with our hats, with our cupped hands, lest this precious fluid, which Captain Bligh had, rightly, doled out to us a quarter of a pint at a time, should be our death. There was irony in the situation, though we had no time to think of it then.

The darkness in the midst of the storm was almost that of night, but presently I could once more see the outlines of the boat and the forms of the men, and knew that the worst was over. We were a forlorn-looking crew: the water streamed from our cloathing, which was plastered against our bodies; from our hair and beards; and we were again chilled to the bone.

Mr. Bligh’s voice sounded unusually loud against the ensuing silence. “Look alive, lads! Mr. Cole, close-reef the foresail, and get it on her. There’ll be wind behind this.”

“Aye, aye, sir,” the boatswain called back. The rest of us, with the exception of the men at the oars, continued bailing, for there was a deal of water yet to be got rid of.

Lebogue was working beside me. “Aye,” he muttered, at Bligh’s remark about wind; “we’ve summ’at to come, I’ll be bound.”

We bailed her dry, and then had time, for a few moments, to know how cold we were. “Wring out your cloathes,” said Bligh. We were not slow to obey, and the men nearest Lamb and Simpson performed this service for them, as they were too weak to do it for themselves. Meanwhile the foresail had been double-reefed and hoisted, Bligh again took the tiller, and we waited for the wind.

We saw it coming from afar. The oily swells, that had been smooth enough to reflect the gray light, were blackened under it. We saw it leaping from summit to summit; but whilst it came swiftly, there was no great weight of air at first. Our tiny bit of sail, heavy and dark with rain, bellied out, and the launch gathered steerageway once more. The dull light faded from the sky, and soon what was left of it seemed to be gathered on the surface of the sea, again streaked with foam and flying spray. Harder and harder it blew. No watch was set for the night. We well knew there was work and to spare at hand for all of us.

Nelson touched my arm and pointed overhead. A man-of-war bird, its great wings outspread, wheeled into the wind and hovered over us for a few seconds, seeming to stand motionless against that mighty stream as it looked down at us. Of a sudden it tipped, scudded away, and was lost to view.

Fryer was seated by Mr. Bligh, watching the following seas. “Stand by to bail!” he shouted.

I cannot recall the thirty-six hours that followed without experiencing something of the horror I felt at the time. Wind and rain, rain and wind, under a sky that held no promise of relief. Bad as the hours of daylight were, those of darkness were infinitely worse, for we could see nothing. It seemed a miracle to me that Mr. Bligh was able to keep the launch before the seas, the more so because the wind veered considerably at times, and he could not depend upon the feel of it at his back to tell him how the waves were approaching. He was helped to some extent by Fryer and Elphinstone, who crouched on their knees beside him, facing aft, peering into the darkness; but with the clouds of spray continually in their faces, they could see little or nothing until a sea was on the point of boarding us.

Never, I think, could the gray dawn have been welcomed more devoutly than it was by us on the morning of May the fourteenth; and, as though in pity of our plight, the wind abated shortly after. There was even a watery gleam of light as the sun rose, but our hopes and prayers for blue sky were unavailing. Nevertheless, the clouds were higher and the look of them less menacing than they had been for four days past.

As I looked into the faces about me I realized how frightful my own must appear. Lamb, the butcher, and George Simpson, the quartermaster’s mate, appeared to be at the last extremity. They lay in the bottom of the boat, unable to do aught for themselves; throughout the night just past, the water we shipped continually had been washing around them, and it was as much as they could do at times to raise their heads above it. Nelson, too, was a pitiable sight. Never a strong man, the privations and hardships we had undergone had worn him down, but the spirit within the frail body was as tough as that of Captain Bligh himself. Never a groan or a word of complaint came from Nelson. Weak as he was, physically, he was a tower of strength in our company. The men who showed the fewest signs of suffering thus far were Purcell, Cole, Peckover, Lenkletter, Elphinstone, and the three midshipmen. Captain Bligh and the master, who had borne the brunt of our battle against the sea, were gaunt and hollow-eyed, but Bligh seemed to have an inexhaustible reserve of energy to draw upon. I must not omit to speak of Samuel, Bligh’s clerk, who I had thought would be among the first to show the effects of hardship. He was city born and bred, with the pale complexion and the soft-appearing body usually found among men of sedentary occupations; nevertheless, he had borne up amazingly well, both in body and spirit. He was a man wholly lacking in imagination, and his belief in Captain Bligh was like that of a dog for its master. He would not, I am sure, conceive of any situation, however perilous, which Bligh was not more than equal to. I envied him this confident trust, particularly at night. Tinkler and Hayward were sturdily built lads, and youth gave them a great advantage over some of the rest of us. Hallet lacked their toughness of fibre, but for all that he played his part like a man, and deserved the more credit in that he was compelled to fight constantly against his terror of the sea. He was not the only one with this fear at his heart. I admit freely that my spirits were often far sunk because of it, although I did my best to conceal the fact.

There had been times, at night, when no man of us, unless it were Samuel,—no, not even Captain Bligh himself,—could have believed that we should see another dawn. The fact that we had survived the nights of the thirteenth and fourteenth gave us new courage. We knew, now, what our boat could do.

We were on a course, N.W. by W. Of a sudden the gray sky to the southwest lightened, and a few moments later there was a break in the clouds. We had all around us, as we thought, nothing but empty sea; but presently we saw, or thought we saw, pale-blue mountains that seemed to be floating high in air. Tinkler was the first to spy them, and before some of us could raise our heads to look, they had again vanished in the mists. Those who had not seen could not believe in the reality of the vision, but an hour later, there it was again; and this time there was no doubt in anyone’s mind. Clouds of dense vapour lifted slowly, revealing a land of lofty mountains that stood in cold blue silhouette against the gray sky. At first we thought it one island; but as we approached we found there were four, which bore S.W. to N.W. by W., and distant about six leagues. The largest was, in Captain Bligh’s judgment, about twenty leagues in circuit.

We altered our course to pass a little to the eastward of the most northerly one. Bligh had only his recollection to serve him, but he believed them a part of the New Hebrides, which Captain Cook had named and explored during his second expedition to the South Sea, in 1774. All through the morning we were sailing at about two knots. The sea was now so calm that but two men were required at the bailing scoops. The rest of us feasted our eyes upon the land. Many an anxious and appealing glance was thrown in Captain Bligh’s direction, but he gave no hint as to what his plan was. By the middle of the afternoon we had left the larger islands well astern, and were no more than two leagues distant from the northerly one. The wind was again blowing fresh, and our course was altered to approach still closer. We could see the smoke of many fires rising from the foreshore; the thought of their warmth increased our misery.

The land was of a horseshoe shape. A ridge of high mountains, falling steeply to the sea, enclosed a large bay with a northeasterly exposure. We passed the entrance to this bay not more than two miles off. In about half an hour we had rounded the northern cape, and were well in the lee.

No word had been spoken during this time. We waited with deep anxiety to learn what Captain Bligh’s intentions were.

“Trim the sails,” he ordered.

We headed up, approaching to within a quarter of a mile of a small cove that resembled, in a general way, the one at Tofoa; but here there was a smooth sandy beach instead of a rocky one, and the vegetation was of the richest green; indeed, the island seemed a paradise to our famished, sea-weary eyes. The sail was dropped and two men were set at the oars to keep us off the land.

“Now, Mr. Purcell,” said Bligh, “we will repair our weather cloth. Look alive, for I wish to lose no more time here than is necessary.”

Our weather cloth had been much damaged by the sea the night before.

A deep silence followed this order. Purcell remained where he was. Presently he raised his head, sullenly.

“Mr. Bligh,” he said, “if you mean to go on from here without giving us a chance to refresh ourselves, I’m opposed; and there’s more that feels as I do.”

For all the stiffness in his legs, Bligh got to his feet in an instant. His lips were drawn in a thin line and his eyes were blazing with anger, but as he looked at the forlorn figures before him the expression on his face softened and he checked himself.

“There are more?” he asked quietly. “Who are they? Let them speak up.”

“I’m one, sir,” Elphinstone replied in a hollow voice; “and I’ll ask you to believe I’m speaking for others more than myself.”

“We are in a pitiful state, sir,” Fryer put in. “A night of rest on shore might be the means of preserving the lives of some of us. There’s sure to be food on so rich an island.”

“There’s coconut trees, sir,” Lenkletter put in eagerly. “Look yonder, halfway up the slope.”

A clump of coconut palms could, in fact, be seen, raising their plumed tops above the forests that covered the steep hillsides. Bligh looked from us to the land, and back again; presently he shook his head.

“Lads, we dare not risk it,” he said. “You cannot suppose that I do not feel for your sufferings, since I share them with you. God knows I should be glad to rest here; but the danger is too great. We must not!”

“There’s no Indians here, sir,” said Purcell. “That’s plain to be seen.”

Bligh controlled himself with difficulty. “At the moment there are none,” he replied; “but we have seen the smoke of many fires, and we were well within view as we passed the bay on the northern side. Make no mistake, we have been seen; and I will say this, which may cool your desire to go ashore: Captain Cook told me that the savages of the New Hebrides are cannibals of the fiercest sort. These islands must be a part of the same group.”

“I don’t fear them,” Purcell interrupted, “whatever may be the case with yourself.”

Bligh jerked back his head, as though he had been struck in the face. Purcell, always a cantankerous old rogue, had never before dared to speak in this fashion. Some allowance, perhaps, can be made for him under the circumstances. Although he had borne hardships well, it is possible that he felt the pangs of hunger more keenly than any of us.

Mr. Bligh behaved with a forbearance I had thought him incapable of exercising. Frequently, on the Bounty, I had seen him fly into a passion upon slight provocation. Now that he had ample cause for anger, he kept himself well in hand. The reason was, I believe, that he knew how desperately weary we were and how bitter our disappointment at being within view of what appeared to us Eden itself, and forbidden to rest and refresh ourselves there. No insult could have been more gross and unjust than that of the carpenter, and he well knew it.

For a moment Bligh did not trust himself to speak. Then he said: “Set about your work, Mr. Purcell. If you do not, by God you shall go ashore—with me, and with me alone.”

The carpenter, knowing that he was in the wrong, obeyed at once. Those who had the strength assisted him; the rest of us kept watch on shore.

Presently Lebogue exclaimed: “Aye, sir, we’ve been seen, right enough! Look yonder!”

Half a dozen savages emerged from the thick bush and came down to the water’s edge, gazing out toward us. We were directly opposite the entrance to the cove, and could see them plainly. They were naked save for short kirtles about the middle, and were armed with spears, bows, and arrows. About this same time, Tinkler and Hayward discovered a path leading up one of the hills at the beck of the cove. At one point it was in plain view, where it rounded a grassy knoll. Keeping watch upon this place, we saw more Indians passing it as they hastened into the valley. The beach was soon thronged, and we could faintly hear their shouts as they ran this way and that, evidently in a state of great excitement. We had the entire half circle of the beach within view; no canoes were to be seen there, but we did not know what they might have concealed amongst the trees.

In view of Purcell’s bold statement of half an hour before, it was interesting to observe his nervousness as the throng of savages increased. Many an apprehensive glance did he throw in their direction.

“Keep your eyes on your work, sir!” Bligh ordered. “Your friends ashore will wait for you.”

Presently Tinkler, who had the keenest eyes amongst us, informed Bligh that he had seen three or four of the Indians running up the hill, evidently returning to the large bay on the other side of the mountains.

“They must be sending word to the people over there, sir,” Fryer remarked, anxiously. “No doubt they have canoes in the bay, and mean to get at us by sea.”

“I should think it more than likely, sir,” Bligh replied, quietly. “Nevertheless, we shall have time to finish repairing our weather cloth.”

Never, I fancy, had Purcell worked more earnestly than he did upon this occasion. Bligh watched him grimly and would allow him to skimp nothing.

Just as the work was finished, a large canoe, containing between forty and fifty savages, appeared round the northern promontory, about a mile distant. They had no sail, but, with ten or fifteen paddlers on a side, they came on swiftly.

“Now, Mr. Purcell,” said Bligh; “is it your desire that we let them come up with us? You say you have no fear of them.”

It was all but impossible for the carpenter ever to admit himself in the wrong; but upon this occasion he swallowed his stubborn pride at once.

“No, sir,” he replied.

“Very well,” said Bligh. “Get sail on her, Mr. Cole.”

For all the stiffness of our limbs, the two sails were hoisted in an instant, and we drew away from the land. For the moment, at least, we forgot our hunger, our wet cloathing—everything was lost sight of in the excitement of the race. At first the savages gained rapidly, and it was plain from their actions that their intentions were anything but friendly: those who were not paddling brandished their weapons, and several of them shot arrows after us, some of which fell only a little distance astern. Then we caught the full force of the wind, and the space between us gradually increased. Presently they gave up the pursuit; we saw them enter the cove opposite which we had lain. We then stood away upon the old course.

Never, I think, during the whole of our voyage, were our spirits so low as upon this same afternoon. The sea stretched away, gray and solitary, and we dared not think of the horizons beyond horizons that remained to be crossed before we could set foot upon any shore. Most of us knew that we were still far from halfway, even, to the coast of New Holland. At the earliest we could not hope to reach it before another fortnight had passed.

I now come to an incident concerning which I am most reluctant to speak, and yet it must not be passed over in silence. There was, it seems, one man in our company so lost to all sense of his duty toward the others as to steal a part of our precious supply of pork. The theft amounted to one two-pound piece, and was committed during the night of this same day. With respect to the bread, Captain Bligh had put temptation beyond the power of anyone: it was kept under lock and key in the carpenter’s chest. But the pork was not so guarded. It was stored, wrapped in a cloth, in the bow. We had passed a wretched night, with a strong northeast wind, a rough sea, and perpetual rain. There had been no sleep for anyone. At dawn the next morning, Captain Bligh ordered a teaspoonful of rum and half an ounce of pork for our breakfast; and it was then that the theft was discovered. I well remember the look of horror in Mr. Cole’s face as he reported it. “There’s a piece missing, sir,” he said.

I should not have supposed that any man guilty of such a crime against his comrades could have maintained an air of perfect innocence upon the discovery of the theft; but so it was, here. Captain Bligh questioned each of us by name, beginning with the master:—

“Mr. Fryer, did you take this pork?”

“No, sir,” Fryer replied, with a sincerity that no one could doubt.

The question was repeated seventeen times, and the seventeen replies all carried conviction.

I remember having heard, or read, that men reduced to starvation in company sometimes lose all sense of moral responsibility, and that cases have been known where men of integrity, under normal conditions, have committed such crimes without any qualms of conscience, stoutly and indignantly denying them, no matter how damning the evidence against them might be. With us there was no evidence as to the possible culprit; most of our company had taken turns at bailing in the bow during the night, which was so black that one could not see one’s next neighbour in the boat.

I shall say no more of this wretched affair except that the thief, whoever he may have been, must surely have despised himself. Captain Bligh brought home to him the enormity of the wrong he had done his fellow sufferers in words that he can never forget.

I believed, on the night of the fourteenth of May, that our company had suffered to the limits of endurance. “Another night as bad as this ...” I had thought. And there were to be nine to follow—nine days and nights, during which time we were continuously wet and all but perished with cold. The wind shifted from southeast to northeast, now blowing half a gale, now dying away to a dead calm when the oars would be gotten out to keep the launch before the sea. There were moments of fugitive sunshine, but of such brief duration that they but added to our misery, for we were never able to dry our cloathes.

Our situation on the afternoon of May twenty-third was so like that of the twelfth that it seemed time had stood still. We rode the same mountainous seas, under the same lowering sky. What added to my confused sense that we were doomed to an eternity of misery was that Mr. Bligh had again remarked to Fryer: “I think we’ve seen the worst of it.”

We had been on starvation rations for twenty-one days past, and, during the whole of this time, wet to the skin and chilled to the bone. Our bodies were covered with salt-water sores, so that the slightest movement was agony, yet we were compelled to move constantly for the purpose of bailing. Many of us were now too weak to raise ourselves to our feet, but we crawled and pulled ourselves about somehow, and, knowing that our lives depended upon it, we could still manage to throw out water.

Never before had I realized what a torment the body could be. But I must add this: neither had I realized the toughness, the fineness, of the human spirit under conditions that try it to the utmost. The miscreant who had stolen the pork served only as a foil to the others, whose conduct was such during these interminable hours of trial as has given me a new and exalted opinion of my fellow beings. Whatever men may say in men’s despite in the future, or whatever unfortunate revelations concerning them may come under my own observation, I shall think of the company in the Bounty’s launch and retain my firm belief that, in their darkest hours, and in situations that bear upon them even past the limits of endurance, most men show a heroism that lifts them to heights beyond estimation. The cynic may smile at this. I care not. I know whereof I speak. I have seen the matter put to the proof in a company of eighteen whose members, with two exceptions,—Captain Bligh and Mr. Nelson,—were men such as one might find in any seacoast town in England.

I will not say that there had been no complaints, no urgent, piteous requests for additional food. There were. I can understand better now than I could then what strength Bligh needed to withstand the entreaties of starving men. He fed the weakest upon wine, a few drops at a time; but every demand for additional food was refused save upon the occasions when a tiny morsel of pork would be added to our mouthful of bread.

I have a vivid recollection of the events of the evening and the night of May twenty-third. Bligh had been continuously at the tiller for thirty-six hours, and he remained there until dawn the following morning. I sat in the bottom of the boat facing him, propped up against the thwart immediately forward of the stern sheets. Nelson lay beside me with his head on my knee. He was frightfully emaciated, and so weak that I believed he had not more than twenty-four hours to live. The strongest of our number were Mr. Bligh, Fryer, Cole, Peckover, Samuel, and the two midshipmen, Tinkler and Hayward. The two latter were at the oars as the last of daylight faded, keeping the launch before the sea.

It had been dead calm for more than two hours, but neither past experience nor the look of the sky gave us reason to expect that it would remain so. The last gray light faded quickly, and soon we were in the complete darkness that had been our portion during so many terrible nights.

About three hours after sunset I had fallen into a doze, and only a moment later, it seemed, I was awakened by the deep humming of the wind and the hiss and wash of breaking seas. I heard Bligh calling to Cole, whose station was forward by the reefed foresail, and immediately afterward solid water came pouring over our quarters. Never had we come so near to foundering as at that moment; indeed, for a few seconds I thought we were lost. Bligh shouted: “Bail for your lives!” and so we did. Not a man of us but realized that we were in the immediate presence of disaster.

The horror of that experience I shall not attempt to describe; but it had this good effect: that it aroused even the weakest from apathy, and called into play reserves of nervous force that we did not know we possessed. As for Captain Bligh, he displayed, throughout the whole of this night, a courage far above my poor powers to depict. Now and then his emaciated form would be clearly outlined for a second or two in a glare of lightning, then swallowed up in darkness. When I had said to Nelson, at Tofoa, that ours was a situation that Bligh was born to meet, I little realized how truthfully I spoke. Worn down though he was by hunger and hardship and lack of sleep, he showed no sign of weakening to the strain. Indeed, the more desperate our situation, the more he seemed to rejoice in it. I say this with no desire to exaggerate. He displayed on this night an exhilaration of mind the more striking in view of the peril of our situation. We passed through a series of violent squalls accompanied by thunder and lightning, and I shall never forget the vivid glimpses I had of him, one hand gripping the tiller, the other the gunwale, the seas that threatened to swamp us foaming up behind him and showering him with spray.

And I can still hear his voice in the darkness, heartening us all: “We’re doing a full six knots, lads! Let that warm your blood if bailing can’t do it—but don’t stop bailing!”

Once, in a brief lull between storms, Fryer had suggested that a prayer be said. “No, Mr. Fryer,” he replied. “Pray if you like, but to my way of thinking, God expects better than prayers of us at a time like this.” It was in this same lull, I remember, that Cole called back, “Sir, shall I relieve you at the tiller?”

“Sit where you are, Mr. Cole,” Bligh replied. “Do you think you can handle her better than myself?”

“I know very well I can’t,” Cole replied. “I was thinking how tired you must be.”

A moment of silence followed; then we again heard Bligh’s voice: “You are a good man, Mr. Cole, and an able man. I wish there were more like you in the service.”

It was a handsome apology, and praise well deserved. I knew how it must have warmed Cole’s heart.

The pause between squalls was of short duration. There was more, and worse, to come; and in the midst of it I saw Captain Bligh at the summit of his career.

There was a blinding glare of lightning, followed by a peal of thunder that seemed to shake the very bed of the deep. At that moment a great sea flung the launch into an all but vertical position. And there sat Bligh as on a throne, lifted high above us all, exalted in more than a physical sense.

“Bail, lads!” he shouted. “By God! We’re beating the sea itself!”