ed guard over us
followed at our heels.

As we cleared the galley, which formed part of the structure in which we
had all been confined, the whole of the after part of the ship, from the
fore end of the main hatchway, came into view, and we saw that the
vessel was indeed, as we had supposed, hove-to on the starboard tack,
with her mainyard laid almost square, the mainsail brailed up, and the
remainder of her canvas set; and the fabric was full of the sound of a
gentle creaking of timbers, trusses, and parrals, and the soft rustling
of the white cloths overhead. She had no way on her, but was curtsying
and rolling gently on a long, sluggish swell that came creeping up from
the eastward. Apart from the swell, the sea was quite smooth, its
surface being scarcely wrinkled into a pure, delicate blue tint by the
easterly breeze, which had died down to so gentle a zephyr, that the
lighter canvas and even the topsails flapped to the masts with every
heave and dip of the hull. The sky was cloudless, save away down toward
the west, where a great mass of vapour, broken up into small patches,
blazed crimson and gold in the rays of the declining sun, and gilded and
reddened the sleepy undulations beneath it.

Bainbridge, with his peaked cap thrust aggressively to the back of his
head, his brass-buttoned blue serge jacket opening to display his white
shirt and flowing black silk necktie, and also, incidentally, a brace of
revolvers, suggestively stuck in the broad elastic belt which girt his
waist, and with a smile of insolent triumph upon his dark, saturnine,
but otherwise rather good-looking face, stood alone at the break of the
poop, with both hands thrust deep into his trousers pockets and his
white-canvas-shod feet planted wide apart, watchfully regarding the
proceedings on the main deck beneath him; while the whole of the crew,
with the exception of the cook and the five men who constituted our
especial bodyguard, were drawn up athwart the deck and along the face of
the poop structure, each man armed with a rifle, and with a sheathed
cutlass girt about his waist. Captain Roberts and Mr Bligh stood
together at the open lee gangway, through which and above the lee rail
could be seen the tossing masts of the longboat.

As our little party approached him the skipper turned, and, after
running his eye over us for a moment, said:

"Mr Temple, I shall be obliged to ask you, the carpenter, and Sails to
go with Mr Johnson in the