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“What of our wives and children?” Stewart asked gloomily. “It may seem strange to you, Byam, but the truth is that I have never before realized that we should have to go. England seems so far away, as though it were on another planet.”

“I know,” I replied. “My feeling has been the same.”

He shook his head mournfully. “Let’s not talk of it. You are certain the ship is English?”

“All but certain.”

“In that case, I’m sorry for poor Morrison. He left in the schooner four days ago. They may be well on their way westward by this time.”

Morrison’s plans, he told me, had not changed. All the mutineers remaining on Tahiti, with the exception of Skinner, had decided to go with him in the Resolution. They had agreed among themselves to go ashore at some island to the westward where there would be little chance of their ever being discovered. Morrison, Norman, McIntosh, Byrne, and Muspratt would then try to make their way to Batavia, on the island of Java, where they hoped to sell the schooner and take passage in some ship bound to Europe.