CHAPTER IV.
THE OPEN-BOAT NAVIGATION The boat is lower'd with all the haste of hate, With its slight plank between thee and thy fate; Her only cargo such a scant supply As promises the death their hands deny; And just enough of water and of bread To keep, some days, the dying from the dead: Some cordage, canvas, sails, and lines, and twine.
But treasures all to hermits of the brine, Were added after, to the earnest prayer Of those who saw no hope save sea and air; And last, that trembling vassal of the Pole, The feeling compass, Navigation's soul.
* * * * * The launch is crowded with the faithful few Who wait their Chief--a melancholy crew: But some remained reluctant on the deck Of that proud vessel, now a moral wreck--And view'd their Captain's fate with piteous eyes; While others scoff'd his augur'd miseries, Sneer'd at the prospect of his pigmy sail, And the slight bark so laden and so frail.
Christian had intended to send away his captain and associates in the cutter, and ordered that it should be hoisted out for that purpose, which was done--a small wretched boat, that could hold but eight or ten men at the most, with a very small additional weight; and, what was still worse, she was so worm-eaten and decayed, especially in the bottom planks, that the probability was, she would have gone down before she had proceeded a mile from the ship.

In this 'rotten carcass of a boat,' not unlike that into which Prospero and his lovely daughter were 'hoist,' not rigg'd, Nor tackle, sail, nor mast; the very rats Instinctively had quit it, did Christian intend to cast adrift his late commander and his eighteen innocent companions, or as many of them as she would stow, to find, as they inevitably must have found, a watery grave.

But the remonstrances of the master, boatswain, and carpenter prevailed on him to let those unfortunate men have the launch, into which nineteen persons were thrust, whose weight, together with that of the few articles they were permitted to take, brought down the boat so near to the water, as to endanger her sinking with but a moderate swell of the sea--and to all human appearance, in no state to survive the length of voyage they were destined to perform over the wide ocean, but which they did most miraculously survive.
The first consideration of Lieutenant Bligh and his eighteen unfortunate companions, on being cast adrift in their open boat, was to examine the state of their resources.

The quantity of provisions which they found to have been thrown into the boat, by some few kind-hearted messmates, amounted to one hundred and fifty pounds of bread, sixteen pieces of pork, each weighing two pounds, six quarts of rum, six bottles of wine, with twenty-eight gallons of water, and four empty barricoes.

Being so near to the island of Tofoa, it was resolved to seek there a supply of bread-fruit and water, to preserve if possible the above-mentioned stock entire; but after rowing along the coast, they discovered only some cocoa-nut trees, on the top of high precipices, from which, with much danger owing to the surf, and great difficulty in climbing the cliffs, they succeeded in obtaining about twenty nuts.