Page:Paine--Lost ships and lonely seas.djvu/216

178 must have wrung the hearts of these honest British tars, who had sweethearts waiting at the end of the long road home, when, as the story runs:

The fourteen mutineers had built a little schooner only thirty-five feet long, in which they were hoping to flee to an island more remote, but the Pandora swooped down before they were quite ready to embark. Captain Edwards seized this vessel to use as a tender, and manned her with two petty officers and seven sailors, who sailed away on a cruise of their own to assist in the search for the rest of the pirates, as they were called. The voyage of this tiny cock-boat of a schooner is one of the most remarkable tales in the history of South Sea discovery, but not even a diary or log remains to relate it in detail.

These adventurers were the first white men to set foot on the great group of the Fiji Islands, which Tasman and Cook had passed by. The exploit is sung to this day in one of the poems of the