Excerpt from The Bounty by Caroline Alexander, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

From Duke of York Island down to the rest of the Union Islands (Tokelau), thence to the Samoas, the Pandora continued her futile search. To aid them in making rough landfalls, Lieutenants Corner and Hayward donned cork jackets and plunged boldly into the surf ahead of the landing boats. Parakeets were purchased on one island, splendid birds resembling peacocks on another, and on others still the use of the islands' women. Striking sights were enjoyed--the large skeleton of a whale, for example, and a deserted shrine with an altar piled with white shells. They had even discovered whole islands, whose newly bestowed names would form a satisfying addition to the report Edwards would eventually turn over to the Admiralty. In short, the Pandora had discovered a great deal--but nothing at all that pertained to the missing mutineers and the Bounty.

Thousands of miles from England, adrift in one of the most unknown regions of the earth, Hamilton, who seems to have enjoyed this meandering sojourn, mused tellingly on the strange peoples he had seen and their distance from civilized life: "[A]nd although that unfortunate man Christian has, in a rash unguarded moment, been tempted to swerve from his duty to his king and country, as he is in other respects of an amiable character, and respectable abilities, should he elude the hand of justice, it may be hoped he will employ his talents in humanizing the rude savages," he wrote, in an astonishing wave of sympathy for that elusive mutineer who had, after all, consigned his captain and eighteen shipmates to what he had thought was certain death.

"[S]o that, at some future period, a British I1ion may blaze forth in the south," Hamilton continued, working to a crescendo of sentiment, "with all the characteristic virtues of the English nation, and complete the great prophecy, by propagating the Christian knowledge amongst the infidels." Even here, at the early stage of the Bounty saga, the figure of Christian himself represented a powerful, charismatic force; already there is the striking simplistic tendency to blur the mutineer's name--Christian--with a christian cause.

In the third week of June, while in the Samoas, Edwards was forced to report yet another misfortune: "[B]etween 5 & 6 o'clock of the Evening of the 22nd of June lost sight of our Tender in a thick Shower of Rain," he noted tersely. Edwards had now lost two vessels, this one with nine men. Food and water that were meant to have been loaded onto the tender were still piled on the Pandora's deck. Anamooka (Nomuka), in the Friendly Islands, was the last designated point of rendezvous in the event of a separation, and here the Pandora now hastened.

"The people of Anamooka are the most daring set of robbers in the South Seas," Hamilton noted matter- of-factly. Onshore, parties who disembarked to wood and water the ship were harassed as they had not been elsewhere. Edwards's servant was stripped naked by an acquisitive crowd and forced to cover himself with his one remaining shoe. "[W]e soon discovered the great Irishman," Hamilton reported, "with his shoe full in one hand, and a bayonet in the other, naked and foaming mad." While overseeing parties foraging for wood and water, Lieutenant Corner was momentarily stunned on the back of his neck by a club-wielding islander, whom the officer, recovering, shot dead in the back.

There was no sign of the tender.

Leaving a letter for the missing boat in the event that it turned up, Edwards pressed on to Tofua, the one island on which Bligh, Thomas Hayward and the loyalists in the open launch had briefly landed. One of Bligh's party had been stoned to death here, and some of the men responsible for this were disconcerted to recognize Hayward.

From Tofua, the Pandora continued her cruising before returning to Anamooka, where there was still no word of the missing tender.

From The Bounty by Caroline Alexander. Copyright Caroline Alexander 2003. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or stored in an form without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the publisher of this book, Viking Penguin.