The Darkest Hour.  
A long time after the events narrated in the last chapter, John Adams and Edward Young sat together one evening in the cave at the top of the mountain, where poor Fletcher Christian had been wont to hold his lonely vigils.
 
“I’ve bin thinkin’ of late,” said Young, “that it is very foolish of us to content ourselves with merely fishing from the rocks, when there are better fish to be had in deep water, and plenty of material at hand for making canoes.”
 
“You’re right, sir; we ought to try our hands at a canoe. Pity we didn’t do so before the native men was all killed. They knew what sort o’ trees to use, and how to split ’em up into planks, an’ all that sort o’ thing.”
 
“But McCoy used to study that subject, and talk much about it, when we were in Otaheite,” returned Young. “I’ve no doubt that with his aid we could build a good enough canoe, and the women would be as able as the men, no doubt, to direct us what to do if we were in a difficulty. McCoy is a handy fellow, you know, with tools, as he has proved more than once since the death of poor Williams.”
 
Adams shook his head.
 
“No doubt, Mr Young, he’s handy enough with the tools; but ever since he discovered how to make spirits, neither he nor Quintal, as you know, sir, are fit for anything.”
 
“True,” said Young, with a perplexed look; “it never occurred to me before that strong drink was such a curse. I begin now to understand why some men that I have known have been so enthusiastic in their outcry against it. Perhaps it would be right for you and me to refuse to drink with Quintal and McCoy, seeing that they are evidently killing themselves with it.”
 
“I don’t quite see that, sir,” objected Adams. “A glass of grog don’t do me no harm that I knows of, an’ it wouldn’t do them no good if we was to stop our allowance.”
 
“It might; who can tell?” said Young. “I’ve not thought much about the matter, however, so we won’t discuss it. But what would you say if we were to hide the kettle that McCoy makes it in, and refuse to give it up till the canoe is finished?”
 
Again Adams shook his head.
 
“They’d both go mad with DT,” said he, by which letters he referred to the drunkard’s awful disease, delirium tremens.
 
“Well, at all events, we will try to persuade him to go to work, and the sooner the better,” said Young, rising and leaving the cave.
 
In pursuance of this plan, Young spoke to McCoy in one of his few sober moments, and got him persuaded to begin the work, and to drink less while engaged in it.
 
Under the impulse of this novelty in his occupation, the unhappy man did make an attempt to curb himself, and succeeded so far that he worked pretty steadily for several days, and made considerable progress with the canoe.
 
The wood was chosen, the tree felled, the trunk cut to the proper length and split up into very fair planks, which were further smoothed by means of a stone adze, brought by the natives from Otaheite, and it seemed as if the job would be quickly finished, when the terrible demon by whom McCoy had been enslaved suddenly asserted his tyrannical power. Quintal, who rendered no assistance in canoe-building, had employed himself in making a “new brew,” as he expressed it, and McCoy went up to his hut in the mountain one evening to taste.
 
The result, of course, was that he was absolutely incapable of work next day; and then, giving way to the maddening desire, he and his comrade-in-debauchery went in, as they said, for a regular spree. It lasted for more than a week, and when it came to an end, the two men, with cracked lips, bloodshot eyes, and haggard faces, looked as if they had just escaped from a madhouse.
 
Edward Young now positively refused to drink any more of the spirits, and Adams, although he would not go quite to that length, restricted himself to one glass in the day.
 
This at first enraged both Quintal and McCoy. The former cursed his comrades in unmeasured terms, and drank more deeply just to spite them. The latter refused to work at the canoe, and both men became so uproarious, that Young and Adams were obliged to turn them out of the house where they were wont occasionally to meet for a social evening.
 
Thus things went on for many a day from bad to worse. Bad as things had been in former years, it seemed as if the profoundest depth of sin and misery had not yet been fathomed by these unhappy mutineers.
 
In all these doings, it would have gone ha............