Page:Paine--Lost ships and lonely seas.djvu/215

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FOUR THOUSAND MILES
177

removed to permit exercise. Sweltering in a tropical climate, the wonder is that they did not perish to a man.

There was suffering far worse to endure, however—the anguish of broken hearts. All of these men were torn from the native wives to whom they had been faithful and true, and their infants were left fatherless. Pitiful was the story of "Peggy," the beautiful Tahitian girl who was beloved by Midshipman Stewart of the mutineers and to whom she had borne a child. She was allowed to visit him in the wretched deck-house of the Pandora, but her grief was so violent that she had to be taken ashore by force, and the young husband begged the officers not to let her see him again.

The light of her life had gone out, and she died of sorrow a few months later, leaving her infant son as the first half-caste born in Tahiti. Six years after this, a band of pioneering English missionaries visited Tahiti and heard of the boy and his story. They took this orphan of British blood under their own care and brought him up and educated him.

It is quite evident that Captain Edwards isolated his prisoners and treated them so harshly because of his fear that the bluejackets of his frigate might be stirred to a sympathetic mutiny of their own. It