Dickens, Charles – Reprinted Pieces

at him.

Captain Bligh (a worse man to be entrusted with arbitrary power

there could scarcely be) is handed over the side of the Bounty, and

turned adrift on the wide ocean in an open boat, by order of

Fletcher Christian, one of his officers, at this very minute.

Another flash of my fire, and ‘Thursday October Christian,’ fiveand-

twenty years of age, son of the dead and gone Fletcher by a

savage mother, leaps aboard His Majesty’s ship Briton, hove-to off

Pitcairn’s Island; says his simple grace before eating, in good

English; and knows that a pretty little animal on board is called a

dog, because in his childhood he had heard of such strange

creatures from his father and the other mutineers, grown grey under

the shade of the bread-fruit trees, speaking of their lost country

far away.

See the Halsewell, East Indiaman outward bound, driving madly on a

January night towards the rocks near Seacombe, on the island of

Purbeck! The captain’s two dear daughters are aboard, and five

other ladies. The ship has been driving many hours, has seven feet

water in her hold, and her mainmast has been cut away. The

description of her loss, familiar to me from my early boyhood,

seems to be read aloud as she rushes to her destiny.

‘About two in the morning of Friday the sixth of January, the ship

still driving, and approaching very fast to the shore, Mr. Henry

Meriton, the second mate, went again into the cuddy, where the

captain then was. Another conversation taking place, Captain

Pierce expressed extreme anxiety for the preservation of his

beloved daughters, and earnestly asked the officer if he could

devise any method of saving them. On his answering with great

concern, that he feared it would be impossible, but that their only

chance would be to wait for morning, the captain lifted up his

hands in silent and distressful ejaculation.

‘At this dreadful moment, the ship struck, with such violence as to

dash the heads of those standing in the cuddy against the deck

above them, and the shock was accompanied by a shriek of horror

that burst at one instant from every quarter of the ship.

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Dickens, Charles – Reprinted Pieces

‘Many of the seamen, who had been remarkably inattentive and remiss

in their duty during great part of the storm, now poured upon deck,

where no exertions of the officers could keep them, while their

assistance might have been useful. They had actually skulked in

their hammocks, leaving the working of the pumps and other

necessary labours to the officers of the ship, and the soldiers,

who had made uncommon exertions. Roused by a sense of their

danger, the same seamen, at this moment, in frantic exclamations,

demanded of heaven and their fellow-sufferers that succour which

their own efforts, timely made, might possibly have procured.

‘The ship continued to beat on the rocks; and soon bilging, fell

with her broadside towards the shore. When she struck, a number of

the men climbed up the ensign-staff, under an apprehension of her

immediately going to pieces.

‘Mr. Meriton, at this crisis, offered to these unhappy beings the

best advice which could be given; he recommended that all should

come to the side of the ship lying lowest on the rocks, and singly

to take the opportunities which might then offer, of escaping to

the shore.

‘Having thus provided, to the utmost of his power, for the safety

of the desponding crew, he returned to the round-house, where, by

this time, all the passengers and most of the officers had

assembled. The latter were employed in offering consolation to the

unfortunate ladies; and, with unparalleled magnanimity, suffering

their compassion for the fair and amiable companions of their

misfortunes to prevail over the sense of their own danger.

‘In this charitable work of comfort, Mr. Meriton now joined, by

assurances of his opinion, that, the ship would hold together till

the morning, when all would be safe. Captain Pierce, observing one

of the young gentlemen loud in his exclamations of terror, and

frequently cry that the ship was parting, cheerfully bid him be

quiet, remarking that though the ship should go to pieces, he would