James Norman Hall - The Mutiny on the Bounty - Complete Trilogy

But Tehani snatched the grass from his hand. “Stop the night if you like,” she said to Stewart, “but Byam goes ashore! I want no demon-woman for him, nor mortal girls who would swim out to impersonate her!”

Stewart sailed for Matavai on the day after our picnic, and four months passed before I saw him again. Yet as I review those months in memory, they seem no longer than so many weeks. It has often been observed—with a justice for which I can vouch—that in the South Sea men lose their sense of the passage of time. In a climate where perpetual summer reigns and there is little to distinguish one week from another, the days slip by imperceptibly.

That year of 1790 was the happiest and seemed the shortest of my entire life. And 1791 began happily enough; January passed, and February, and toward the middle of March Tehani sailed with Vehiatua to the other side of the island, to take part in some religious ceremony. The Indian ceremonies of this nature were wearisome to me, and I decided to remain in Tautira, with my brother-in-law. My wife had been gone a week or more when the ship came.

Tuahu and I had been amusing ourselves at a heiva the night before, and, returning late to bed, I slept till the sun was up. Tuahu woke me with a hand on my shoulder. “Byam!” he said in a voice breathless with excitement. “Wake up! A ship! A ship!”

Rubbing the sleep from my eyes, I followed him to the beach, where numbers of people were already gathering. All were staring out to the east, into the dazzling light of the morning sun. There was a light breeze at east by north, and far offshore, so far that she was hull-down and her courses hidden by the curve of the world, I saw a European ship. Topsails, topgallants, and royals—looking small, dark, and weather-beaten in the level light—were visible, though the distance was still too great to guess at her nationality. The Indians were in great excitement.

“If a Spanish ship,” I heard one man say, “she will put in here.”

“And if French, she will go to Hitiaa!”

“British ships always go to Matavai,” said Tuahu, glancing at me for confirmation.

“Do you think she is British?” asked Tetuanui, my wife’s old aunt.

I shrugged my shoulders, and an Indian said: “She is not Spanish, anyway. They are standing off too far.”

The vessel was approaching the land on the starboard tack, and it was clear that she was not steering for the Spanish anchorage at Pueu. She might have been a French frigate making for Bougainville’s harbour, or a British vessel bound for Matavai. We seated ourselves on the grass, and presently, as she drew slightly nearer and the light increased, I was all but convinced, from the shape of her topsails, that she was British. I sprang to my feet.

“Tuahu,” I said, “I believe she’s British! Let us take your small sailing canoe and run down to Matavai.”

My brother-in-law sprang up eagerly. “We shall beat them there by hours,” he exclaimed; “this wind always blows strongest close to land. They will be becalmed offshore.”

We made a hasty breakfast on cold pork and yams, left over from the night before, had the canoe well stocked with provisions and drinking nuts, and set sail within the hour, accompanied by one man. As Tuahu had predicted, the wind blew strong along shore, while the vessel four or five miles distant lay almost becalmed. With the fresh breeze abeam, our canoe tore through the sheltered water within the reefs, headed out into the open sea at Pueu, and sailed past Hitiaa and Tiarei. It was mid-afternoon when we ran through the gentle breakers before Hitihiti’s house. The place was deserted, for news of the ship had preceded us, and my taio, with all his household, had repaired to the lookout point on One Tree Hill.

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