Polly Young,
and the rest of them, that the island was not large enough now to
contain all their new ideas, and they said so to John Adams one evening.

"My dears," said John, in reply, laying his hand on that of Sally, who
sat beside him on their favourite confabulation-knoll, which overlooked
Bounty Bay, "ideas don't take up much room, and if they did, we could
send 'em out on the sea, for they won't drown. Ah! Sall, Sall--"

"What are you thinking of, dear father?" asked Sally, with a sympathetic
look, as the old man stopped.

"That my time can't be long now. I feel as if I was about worn-out."

"Oh, _don't_ say that, father!" cried his daughter Hannah, laying her
cheek on his arm, and hugging it. "There's ever so much life in you
yet."

"It may be so. It _shall_ be so if the Lord will," said Adams, with a
little smile; "but I'm not the man I was."

Poor John Adams spoke truly. He had landed on Pitcairn a slim young
fellow with broad shoulders, powerful frame, and curling brown hair. He
was now growing feeble and rather corpulent; his brow was bald, his
scanty locks were grey, and his countenance deeply care-worn. No
wonder, considering all he had gone through, and the severe wound he had
received upwards of thirty years before.

Nevertheless, Hannah was right when she said there was a good deal of
life in the old man yet. He lived after that day to tie the
wedding-knot between his own youngest child George, and Polly Young.
More than that, he lived to dandle George's eldest son, Johnny, on his
knees, and to dismiss him in favour of his little brother Jonathan when
that child made his appearance.

But before this latter event the crowning joy of John Adams's life was
vouchsafed to him, in the shape of a worthy successor to his Pitcairn
throne.

The successor's name was neither pretty nor suggestive of romance, yet
was closely allied with both. It was George Nobbs. He arrived at the
island in very peculiar circumstances, on the 15th of November 1828, and
told his story one afternoon under the banyan-tree to Adams and Buffett,
and as many of the young generation as could conveniently get near him,
as follows:--

"Entering the navy at an early period of life, I went through many
vicissitudes and experiences in various quarters of the globe. But
circumstances induced me to quit the navy, and for a short time I
remained inactive, until my old commander offered to procure me a berth
on board a shi