keep the carpenter or his mate (Norman), but knowing
the former to be a troublesome fellow, he determined on the latter.'

The following paragraph also appears in his original journal, on the day
of the mutiny, but is not alluded to in his printed narrative. 'The
master's cabin was opposite to mine; he saw them (the mutineers) in my
cabin, for our eyes met each other through his door-window. He had a
pair of ship's pistols loaded, and ammunition in his cabin--a firm
resolution might have made a good use of them. After he had sent twice
or thrice to Christian to be allowed to come on deck, he was at last
permitted, and his question then was, "Will you let me remain in the
ship?"--"No." "Have _you_ any objection, Captain Bligh?" I whispered to
him to knock him down--Martin is good (this is the man who gave the
shaddock), for this was just before Martin was removed from me.
Christian, however, pulled me back, and sent away the master, with
orders to go again to his cabin, and I saw no more of him, until he was
put into the boat. He afterwards told me that he could find nobody to
act with him; that by staying in the ship he hoped to have retaken her,
and that, as to the pistols, he was so flurried and surprised, that he
did not recollect he had them.' This master tells a very different story
respecting the pistols, in his evidence before the court-martial.

Whatever, therefore, on the whole, may have been the conduct of Bligh
towards his officers, that of some of the latter appears to have been on
several occasions provoking enough, and well calculated to stir up the
irascible temper of a man, active and zealous in the extreme, as Bligh
always was, in the execution of his duty. Some excuse may be found for
hasty expressions uttered in a moment of irritation, when passion gets
the better of reason; but no excuse can be found for one, who deeply and
unfeelingly, without provocation, and in cold blood, inflicts a wound on
the heart of a widowed mother, already torn with anguish and tortured
with suspense for a beloved son, whose life was in imminent jeopardy:
such a man was William Bligh. This charge is not loosely asserted; it is
founded on documentary evidence under his own hand. Since the death of
the late Captain Heywood, some papers have been brought to light, that
throw a still more unfavourable stigma on the character of the two
commanders, Bligh and Edwards, than any censure that has hitherto
appeared in print, though