egetation seemed
to advance as regularly and as rapidly as the island, and after the
rainy season the trees had grown up so high, that the ship was
completely hid in a large wood, and it was just possible to see her
lower masts above the branches. For some time the men seemed perfectly
contented. We had plenty of stores in the ship of every description:
the cargo I had taken on board was chiefly manufactures, and as the
island provided fresh meat, fish, and fruit, they were in want of
nothing. But sailors are such changeable and restless beings, that I
really believe they would soon be tired of Paradise itself. After a
sojourn of nine months, during which they perhaps lived better than they
ever had before, they began to murmur and talk of getting away in some
manner or another. As my cargo was valuable, I was in hopes that a
vessel would visit the island, and take it on board: I therefore made
every remonstrance that I could imagine to induce them to wait some time
longer; but they would not listen to me, and made preparations for
building a vessel at the weather-side of the island, out of the
materials that the ship afforded. The reason why they chose the weather
side was, that they perceived that the island only increased to leeward;
whereas to windward it was a perpendicular rock of coral, which you
could not obtain bottom alongside of, with two hundred fathoms of line.
They had cut a slip out of the rock, and were already occupied with
driving out the bolts and fastenings of the ship that was shored up in
the woods, when one evening we perceived a large fleet of canoes coming
towards us. As I knew that I could not be far from the Sandwich
Islands, I immediately pronounced them to come from that quarter, in
which supposition I was correct; for although the island was not
inhabited, the islanders had for some years been aware of its existence,
and came to gather the crop of cocoa-nuts which it annually produced. I
advised my men to keep quiet in the woods, removing the tents and every
object that might create suspicion of our being on the island; but they
were of a different opinion, and as they had lately discovered the means
of collecting the toddy from the cocoa-nut trees, and distilling arrack,
they had been constantly drunk, mutinous, and regardless of my
authority. They thought it would be much easier to take the large
canoes from the islanders, and appropriate them to their own use, than
to build a ves