her times before and after noon, and also at night when
the stars appeared, Lieutenant Bligh never neglected to take
observations for the latitude, and to work the day's work for
ascertaining the ship's place. The anxiety of the people to hear how
they had proceeded, what progress had been made, and whereabouts they
were on the wide ocean, also contributed for the time to drive away
gloomy thoughts that but too frequently would intrude themselves. These
observations were rigidly attended to, and sometimes made under the most
difficult circumstances, the sea breaking over the observer, and the
boat pitching and rolling so much, that he was obliged to be 'propped
up,' while taking them. In this way, with now and then a little
interrupted sleep, about a thousand long and anxious hours were consumed
in pain and peril, and a space of sea passed over equal to four thousand
five hundred miles, being at the rate of four and one-fifth miles an
hour, or one hundred miles a day.

Lieutenant Bligh has expressed his conviction, that the six days spent
among the coral islands, off the coast of New Holland, were the
salvation of the whole party, by the refreshing sleep they here
procured, by the exercise of walking about, and, above all, by the
nutriment derived from the oysters and clams, the beans and berries,
they procured while there; for that such, he says, was the exhausted
condition of all on their arrival at the 'barrier reef,' that a few days
more at sea must have terminated the existence of many of them. This
stoppage, however, had likewise been nearly productive of fatal
consequences to the whole party. In fact, another mutiny was within an
ace of breaking out, which, if not checked at the moment, could only, in
their desperate situation, have ended in irretrievable and total
destruction. Bligh mentions, in his printed narrative, the mutinous
conduct of a person to whom he gave a cutlass to defend himself. This
affair, as stated in his original manuscript journal, wears a far more
serious aspect.

'The carpenter (Purcell) began to be insolent to a high degree, and at
last told me, with a mutinous aspect, he was as good a man as I was. I
did not just now see where this was to end; I therefore determined to
strike a final blow at it, and either to preserve my command or die in
the attempt; and taking hold of a cutlass, I ordered the rascal to take
hold of another and defend himself, when he called out that I was going
to ki