and paddling off towards the ships; but their astonishment
was extreme when, on coming alongside, they were hailed in the English
language with 'Won't you heave us a rope now?'

The first young man that sprang, with extraordinary alacrity, up the
side, and stood before them on the deck, said, in reply to the question,
'Who are you?'--that his name was Thursday October Christian, son of the
late Fletcher Christian, by an Otaheitan mother; that he was the first
born on the island, and that he was so called because he was brought
into the world on a Thursday in October. Singularly strange as all this
was to Sir Thomas Staines and Captain Pipon, this youth soon satisfied
them that he was no other than the person he represented himself to be,
and that he was fully acquainted with the whole history of the _Bounty_;
and, in short, that the island before them was the retreat of the
mutineers of that ship. Young Christian was, at this time, about
twenty-four years of age, a fine tall youth, full six feet high, with
dark, almost black, hair, and a countenance open and extremely
interesting. As he wore no clothes except a piece of cloth round his
loins, and a straw hat, ornamented with black cocks'-feathers, his fine
figure and well-shaped muscular limbs were displayed to great
advantage, and attracted general admiration. His body was much tanned by
exposure to the weather, and his countenance had a brownish cast,
unmixed however with that tinge of red so common among the natives of
the Pacific islands.

'Added to a great share of good humour, we were glad to trace,' says
Captain Pipon, 'in his benevolent countenance, all the features of an
honest English face.' He told them he was married to a woman much older
than himself, one of those that accompanied his father from Otaheite.
The ingenuous manner in which he answered all questions put to him, and
his whole deportment, created a lively interest among the officers of
the ship, who, while they admired, could not but regard him with
feelings of tenderness and compassion; his manner, too, of speaking
English was exceedingly pleasing, and correct both in grammar and
pronunciation. His companion was a fine handsome youth of seventeen or
eighteen years of age, of the name of George Young, son of Young the
midshipman.

If the astonishment of the two captains was great on making, as they
thought, this first and extraordinary discovery of a people who had been
so long forgotten, and