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Usually, after Bligh had given vent to a fit of this sort, we could promise ourselves several days of calm, during which time he would have little or nothing to say to us, but it chanced that the following day a similar incident occurred which was to have the gravest consequences for all of us. I am no believer in fate. Men’s actions, in so far as their relationships with one another are concerned, are largely under their own control; but there are times when malicious powers seem to order our small human affairs for their own amusement, and one of these occasions must surely have been on the twenty-seventh day of April, in the year 1789.

We had sailed from Namuka on the evening of the twenty-sixth and, the wind being light, had made but little progress during the night. All of the following day we were within seven or eight leagues of the land. The supplies we had received from the Indians were being stored away, and the carpenters were making pens for the pigs and crates for the fowls not intended for early use. Mr. Bligh had kept to his cabin all the morning, but early in the afternoon he appeared on deck to give some instructions to Mr. Samuel, who was in charge of the work of sorting over our purchases at Namuka. A great many coconuts had been piled up on the quarter-deck between the guns, and Bligh, who knew to the last ounce how many yams we had purchased, and the exact number of coconuts, discovered that a few of the latter were missing. He may have been told of this by Samuel, but at any rate he knew it.