Dangers, Joys, Trials, and Multiplication.  
“I’m going to the cliffs to-day, Williams,” said Young one morning. “Will you come?”
 
Williams was busy at the forge under the pleasant shade of the great banyan-tree. Resting his hammer on the anvil, he looked up.
 
“No,” he answered. “I can’t go till I’ve finished this spade. It’s the last bit of iron we have left that’ll serve for such a purpose.”
 
“That’s no reason why you should not let it lie till the afternoon or to-morrow.”
 
“True, but I’ve got another reason for pushing through with it. Isaac Martin says the want of a spade keeps him idle, and you know it’s a pity to encourage idleness in a lazy fellow.”
 
“You are right. What is Martin about just now?”
 
“Working at the big water-tank. It suits him, a heavy quiet sort of job with the pick, requiring no energy or thought,—only a sleepy sort o’ perseverance, of which long-legged Isaac has plenty.”
 
“Come, now,” returned Young, with a laugh. “I see you are getting jealous of Martin’s superior intellect. But where are Quintal and McCoy?”
 
“Diggin’ in their gardens, I suppose. Leastwise, I heerd Mr Christian say to Mainmast he’d seen ’em go off in that direction. Mr Christian himself has gone to his old outlook aloft on the mountains. If he don’t see a sail at last it won’t be for want o’ keepin’ a bright look-out.”
 
The armourer smiled grimly as he thrust the edge of the half-formed spade into the fire, and began to blow his bellows.
 
“You’ve got them to work again,” said Young, referring to the bellows which had belonged to the Bounty.
 
“Ay, patched ’em up after a fashion, though there’s a good deal o’ windage somewheres. If them rats git hold of ’em again, the blacksmith’s occupation’ll be gone. Here comes Bill Brown; p’r’aps he won’t object to go bird-nestin’ with ’ee.”
 
The armourer drew the glowing metal from the fire as he spoke, and sent the bright sparks flying up into the leaves of the banyan-tree while the botanist approached.
 
“I’ll go, with all my heart,” said Brown, on being invited by Young to accompany him. “We’d better take Nehow with us. He is the best cliff-man among the natives.”
 
“That’s just what I thought of doing,” said Young, “and—ah! here comes some one else who will be glad to go.”
 
The midshipman’s tone and manner changed suddenly as he held out both hands by way of invitation to Sally, who came skipping forward, and ran gleefully towards him.
 
Sally was no longer the nude cherub which had landed on the island. She had not only attained to maturer years, but was precocious both in body and mind,—had, as we have shown, become matronly in her ideas and actions, and was clothed in a short petticoat of native cloth, and a little scarf of the same, her pretty little head being decorated with a wreath of flowers culled and constructed by herself.
 
“No, I can’t go,” answered Sally to Young’s invitation, with a solemn shake of her head.
 
“Why not?”
 
“’Cause I’s got to look arter babby.”
 
Up to this period Sally had shown a decided preference for the ungrammatical language of the seamen, though she associated freely with Young and Christian. Perhaps her particular fondness for John Adams may have had something to do with this.
 
“Which baby, Sall? You know your family is a pretty large one.”
 
“Yes, there’s a stunnin’ lot of ’em—a’most too many for me; but I said the babby.”
 
“Oh, I suppose you mean Charlie Christian?”
 
“In coorse I means Challie,” replied the child, with a smile that displayed a dazzling set of teeth, the sparkle of which was only equalled by that of her eyes.
 
“Well, but you can bring Charlie along with you,” said Young, “and I’ll engage to carry him and you too if you get tired. There, run away; find him, and fetch him quick.”
 
Little Sall went off like the wind, and soon returned with the redoubtable Charles in her arms. It was all she could do to stagger under the load; but Charlie Christian had not yet attained to facility in walking. He was still in the nude stage of childhood, and his faithful nurse, being afraid lest he should get badly scratched if dragged at a rapid pace through the bushes, had carried him.
 
Submitting, according to custom, in solemn and resigned surprise, Charlie was soon seated on the shoulders of our midshipman, who led the way to the cliffs. William Brown followed, leading Sally by the hand, for she refused to be carried, and Nehow brought up the rear.
 
The cliffs to which their steps were directed were not more than an hour’s walk from the settlement at Bounty Bay, though, for Sally’s sake, the time occupied in going was about half-an-hour longer. It was a wild spot which had been selected. The towering walls of rock were rugged with ledges, spurs, and indentations, where sea-birds in myriads gave life to the scene, and awakened millions of echoes to their plaintive cries. There was a pleasant appearance of sociability about the birds which was powerfully attractive. Even Nehow, accustomed as he was to such scenes, appeared to be impressed. The middy and the botanist were excited. As for Sally, she was in ecstasies, and the baby seemed lost in the profoundest fit of wonder he had experienced since the day of his birth.
 
“Oh, Challie,” exclaimed his nurse in a burst of laughter, “what a face you’s got! Jis’ like de fig’r’ead o’ the Bounty.” (Sall quoted here!) “Ain’t they bootiful birds?”
 
She effectually prevented reply, even if such had been intended, by suddenly seizing her little charge round the neck and kissing his right eye passionately. Master Charlie cared nothing for that. He gazed past her at the gulls with the unobliterated eye. When she kissed him on the left cheek, he gazed past her at the gulls with the other eye. When she let him go, he continued to gaze at the gulls with both eyes. He had often seen the same gulls at a distance, from the lower level of Bounty Bay, but he had never before stood on their own giddy cliffs, and watched them from their own favourite bird’s-eye-view point; for there were thousands of them sloping, diving, and wheeling in the airy abyss, pictured against the dark blue sea below, as well as thousands more circling upwards, floating and gyrating in the bright blue sky above. It seemed as if giant snowflakes were trembling in the air in all directions. Some of the gulls came so near to those who watched them that their black inquiring eyes became distinctly visible; others swept towards them with rustling wings, as if intending to strike, and then glanced sharply off, or upwards, with wild cries.
 
“Wouldn’t it be fun to have wings?” asked Brown of Sally, as she stood there open-mouthed and eyed.
 
“Oh, wouldn’t it?”
 
“If I had wings,” said Young, with a touch of sadness in his tone, “I’d steer a straight course through the air for Old England.”
 
“I didn’t know you had such a strong desire to be hanged,” said Brown.
 
“They’d never hang me,” returned Young. “I’m innocent of the crime of mutiny, and Captain Bligh knows it.”
 
“Bligh would be but a broken reed to lean on,” rejoined Brown, with a shrug of contempt. “If he liked you, he’d favour you; if he didn’t, he’d go dead against you. I wouldn’t trust myself in his hands whether innocent or guilty. Depend upon it, Mr Young, Fletcher Christian would have been an honour to the service if he had not been driven all but mad by Bligh. I don’t justify Mr Christian’s act—it cannot be defended,—but I have great sympathy with him. The only man who deserves to be hanged for the mutiny of the Bounty, in my opinion, is Mr Bligh himself; but men seldom get their due in this world, either one way or another.”
 
“That’s a powerfully radical sentiment,” said Young, laughing; “it’s to be hoped that men will at all events get their due in the next world, and it is well for you that Pitcairn is a free republic. But come, we must go to work if we would have a kettle of fresh eggs. I see a ledge which seems accessible, and where there must be plenty of eggs, to judge from the row the gulls are making round it. I’ll try. See, now, that you don’t get yourself into a fix that you can’t get out of. You know that the heads of you landsmen are not so steady as those of seamen.”
 
“I know that the heads of landsmen are not stuffed with such conceit as the heads of you sailors,” retorted Brown, as he went off to gather eggs.
 
“Now, Sally, do you stop here and take care of Charlie,” said Young, leading the little girl to a soft grassy mound, as far back from the edge of the cliff as possible. “Mind that you don’t leave this spot till I return. I know I can trust you, and as for Charlie—”
 
“Oh, he never moves a’most, ’xcept w’en I lifts ’im. He’s so good!” interrupted Sally.
 
“Well, just keep a sharp eye on him, and we’ll soon be back with lots of eggs.”
 
While Edward Young was thus cautioning the child, William Brown was busy making his way down the cliffs to some promising ledges below, and Nehow, the Otaheitan, clambered up the almost perpendicular face of the part that rose above them. (See frontispiece.)
 
It was interesting to watch the movements of the three men. Each was, in his own way, venturesome, fearless, and more or less practised in cliff climbing. The midshipman ascended the perpendicular face with something of a............