No More Learning

She gazed, and flung the sea-foam from her eyes,
To watch as for a rainbow in the skies.
On the horizon verged the distant deck,
Diminished, dwindled to a very speck--
Then vanished. All was Ocean, all was Joy!
Down plunged she through the cave to rouse her boy;
Told all she had seen, and all she hoped, and all
That happy love could augur or recall; 390
Sprung forth again, with Torquil following free
His bounding Nereid over the broad sea;
Swam round the rock, to where a shallow cleft
Hid the canoe that Neuha there had left
Drifting along the tide, without an oar,
That eve the strangers chased them from the shore;
But when these vanished, she pursued her prow,
Regained, and urged to where they found it now:
Nor ever did more love and joy embark,
Than now were wafted in that slender ark. 400


XV.

Again their own shore rises on the view,
No more polluted with a hostile hue;
No sullen ship lay bristling o'er the foam,
A floating dungeon:--all was Hope and Home!
A thousand Proas darted o'er the bay,
With sounding shells, and heralded their way;
The chiefs came down, around the people poured,
And welcomed Torquil as a son restored;
The women thronged, embracing and embraced
By Neuha, asking where they had been chased, 410
And how escaped? The tale was told; and then
One acclamation rent the sky again;
And from that hour a new tradition gave
Their sanctuary the name of "Neuha's Cave. "
A hundred fires, far flickering from the height,[fw]
Blazed o'er the general revel of the night,
The feast in honour of the guest, returned
To Peace and Pleasure, perilously earned;
A night succeeded by such happy days
As only the yet infant world displays. [fx] 420

J. 10^th^ 1823.

FOOTNOTES:

[ex] {587} ----_and made before the breeze her way_. --[MS. D. erased.
]

[ey] ----_their doubtful shimmer from the deep_. --[MS. D. erased]

[352] [William Bligh, the son of Cornish parents, was born September 9
1754 (? 1753). He served under Cook in his second voyage in the
_Resolution_, 1772-75, as sailing-master; and, in 1782, fought under
Lord Howe at Gibraltar. He married a daughter of William Betham, first
collector of customs in the Isle of Man, and hence his connection with
Fletcher Christian, who belonged to a Manx family, and the midshipman
Peter Hayward, who was the son of a Deemster. He was appointed to the
_Bounty_ in December, 1787, and in 1791 to the _Providence_, which was
despatched to the Society Islands to obtain a fresh cargo of bread-fruit
trees in place of those which were thrown overboard by the mutineers. He
commanded the _Glatton_ at Copenhagen, May 21, 1801, and on that and
other occasions served with distinction. He was made Governor of New
South Wales in 1805, but was forcibly deposed in an insurrection headed
by Major Johnston, January, 1808. He was kept in prison till 1810, but
on his return to England his administration of his office was approved,
and Johnston was cashiered. He was advanced to the rank of Vice-Admiral
of the Blue in 1814, and died, December 7, 1817.

In his _Narrative_ Bligh describes the mutiny as "a close-planned act of
villainy," and attributes the conspiracy not to his own harshness, or to
disloyalty provoked by "real or imaginary grievances," but to the
contrast of life on board ship, "in ever climbing up the climbing wave,"
with the unearned luxuries of Tahiti, "the allurements of dissipation
. . . the female connections," which the sailors had left behind.