Page:Royal Naval Biography Marshall sp1.djvu/109

 peevish; his moroseness and irritability daily increased, and he soon disgusted every one by his very oppressive conduct. His treatment of the Otaheitean men and the Toobouaites appears to have been particularly severe and cruel; those who had hitherto lived harmoniously together were thereby divided into parties, disputes frequently took place, and often ended in affrays of a serious nature.

In this state of affairs, and within a twelvemonth after their landing, Mr. Christian’s Otaheitan wife bore him a son, the first child born on the island, who was soon afterwards deprived of both his parents, the mother dying a natural death, and the father being shot by a Toobouaite, whilst he was digging in his own yam plantation. The cause assigned for this act of violence was his tyrannical conduct on all occasions, but particularly in taking the wife of an islander to himself, shortly after the dissolution of his own female partner. The opportunity of revenge had been anxiously sought for, and the assassin committed the act unobserved, firing from a thicket which skirted the plantation. Thus terminated the miserable existence of this ill-fated young man, who was neither deficient in talent, energy, nor connexions, and who might therefore have risen in the service, and become an ornament to his profession.

Desperate contentions now ensued between the Englishmen and the islanders, nor did they cease until four of the former were killed, and the whole of the latter annihilated. Previous to Mr. Christian’s death, one Englishman had been killed in a drunken quarrel, and consequently there were only three of the Bounty’s people remaining alive at this latter period; of these, one died of asthma, and another destroyed himself in a fit of insanity, leaving a widow who was afterwards taken by the only survivor, to supply the place of his deceased help-mate. This man, Alexander Smith, appears to have had a narrow escape during the sanguinary strife, a musket-ball having entered his right shoulder, behind, and gone out through the right breast.

The first ship descried off the island was seen on the 27th Dec. 1795; but as she did not approach the land, they could