第15章

Their principal motive for doing so was an idea, whether true or groundless the writer cannot say, that Bligh was "no better than themselves;" he was certainly neither a lord's illegitimate, nor possessed of twenty thousand pounds.The writer knows what he is writing about, having been acquainted in his early years with an individual who was turned adrift with Bligh, and who died about the year '22, a lieutenant in the navy, in a provincial town in which the writer was brought up.The ringleaders in the mutiny were two scoundrels, Christian and Young, who had great influence with the crew, because they were genteelly connected.Bligh, after leaving the "Bounty," had considerable difficulty in managing the men who had shared his fate, because they considered themselves "as good men as he," notwithstanding, that to his conduct and seamanship they had alone to look, under Heaven, for salvation from the ghastly perils that surrounded them.Bligh himself, in his journal, alludes to this feeling.Once, when he and his companions landed on a desert island, one of them said, with a mutinous look, that he considered himself "as good a man as he;" Bligh, seizing a cutlass, called upon him to take another and defend himself, whereupon the man said that Bligh was going to kill him, and made all manner of concessions; now why did this fellow consider himself as good a man as Bligh? Was he as good a seaman? no, nor a tenth part as good.As brave a man? no, nor a tenth part as brave; and of these facts he was perfectly well aware, but bravery and seamanship stood for nothing with him, as they still stand with thousands of his class; Bligh was not genteel by birth or money, therefore Bligh was no better than himself.Had Bligh, before he sailed, got a twenty-thousand pound prize in the lottery, he would have experienced no insolence from this fellow, for there would have been no mutiny in the "Bounty." "He is our betters," the crew would have said, "and it is our duty to obey him."The wonderful power of gentility in England is exemplified in nothing more than in what it is producing amongst Jews, Gypsies, and Quakers.It is breaking up their venerable communities.All the better, some one will say.Alas! alas!