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Christian, whom I had grown to know well, disliked the thought of departure as much as I. His attachment to Maimiti was of the tenderest description, and I knew how he must dread the final parting from her. Of the midshipmen, Stewart was as deeply attached to his Indian sweetheart as Christian himself. Young was constantly in the company of a girl called Taurua, the Indian name for the evening star. Stewart called his sweetheart Peggy; she was the daughter of a chief of some consequence on the north end of the island, and devotedly attached to him.

A day or two before the Bounty sailed, Christian, Young, and Stewart strolled up the beach to call on me, accompanied by Alexander Smith, my hammock man. Smith had formed an alliance with a short, dark, lively girl of the lower orders, who loved him in the robust fashion of a sailor’s lass. He called her Bal’hadi, which was as close as his honest English tongue could twist itself to Paraha Iti, her true name.

We had been so long in Tahiti, and my shipmates had been so constantly in the company of the natives, that many of them were able to make themselves understood to some extent in the Indian language. Both Stewart and Ellison spoke it remarkably well, and Young and Smith had likewise made considerable progress in it. Smith, nevertheless, was of the opinion that, if English were spoken slowly and in a loud voice, it must be a stupid foreigner indeed who could fail to understand.