Page:Twenty years before the mast - Charles Erskine, 1896.djvu/100

 number of men on board. On many of the islands of the Pacific there were runaway convicts from Hobart Town  and Sydney, the Botany Bay of Great Britain. There were also many runaway sailors and many who had not  run away, but who had been driven off by bad usage. The next morning after our arrival, an American whaler, hailing from New Bedford, came into port with a red  shirt fluttering to the breeze from her fore-rigging.

PAGO PAGO BAY.

When a man-of-war’s man sees that signal he well knows that there is difficulty between Jack before the mast  and the officers of that ship. Our commodore was soon on board the whaler and listening to Jack’s yarn. He was told that they were two years out; that they were  full of oil, had plenty of provisions, and were homeward  bound; that they had been put on short allowance;  were short-handed, five of the crew having died, and  three being sick in their bunks from ill-treatment; and