induced to kill Tetaheite with an axe, and
Young himself immediately after shot Nehow.

When McCoy and Quintal were told that all the Otaheitan men were dead
they returned to the settlement. It was a terrible scene of desolation
and woe. Even these two rough and heartless men were awed for a time
into something like solemnity.

The men now left alive on the island were Young, Adams, Quintal, and
McCoy. In the households of these four the widows and children of the
slain were distributed. The evidences of the bloody tragedy were
removed, the murdered men were buried, and thus came to a close the
first great epoch in the chequered history of Pitcairn Island.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN.

MATT QUINTAL MAKES A TREMENDOUS DISCOVERY.

Upwards of four years had now elapsed since the mutiny of the _Bounty_,
and of the nine mutineers who escaped to Pitcairn Island, only four
remained, with eleven women and a number of children.

These latter had now become an important and remarkably noisy element in
the colony. They and time together did much to efface the saddening
effects of the gloomy epoch which had just come to a close. Time,
however, did more than merely relieve the feelings of the surviving
mutineers and widows. It increased the infantry force on the island
considerably, so that in the course of a few years there were added to
it a Robert, William, and Edward Young, with a little sister named Dolly
Young, to keep them in countenance. There also came a Jane Quintal and
an Arthur Quintal, who were closely followed by a Rebecca Adams and a
James Young. So that the self-imposed cares and burdens of that pretty,
active, and self-denying little creature, Otaheitan Sally, increased
with her years and stature.

Before the most of these made their appearance, however, the poor
Otaheitan wives and widows became downcast and discontented. One cannot
wonder at this. Accustomed though they no doubt had been to war and
bloodshed on their native island, they must have been shocked beyond
measure by the scenes of brutality and murder through which they had
passed. The most of them being now without husbands, and the men who
remained being not on very amicable terms among themselves, these poor
creatures seem to have been driven to a state of desperation, for they
began to pine for their old home, and actually made up their minds to
quit the island in one of the _Bounty's_ old boats, and leave the white
men and even the chil