spirited little affair, four-foot arrows pelting like hail across
the deck, a cannon hurling grapeshot from the taffrail, Amasa
Delano hit in the chest and pulling out the arrow to jump to his
duty again.

Only a few years earlier the mutineers of the Bounty had
established themselves on Pitcairn Island, and Delano was able to
compile the first complete narrative of this extraordinary
colony, which governed itself in the light of the primitive
Christian virtues. There was profound wisdom in the comment of
Amasa Delano: "While the present natural, simple, and
affectionate character prevails among these descendants of the
mutineers, they will be delightful to our minds, they will be
amiable and acceptable in the sight of God, and they will be
useful and happy among themselves. Let it be our fervent prayer
that neither canting and hypocritical emissaries from schools of
artificial theology on the one hand, nor sensual and licentious
crews and adventurers on the other, may ever enter the charming
village of Pitcairn to give disease to the minds or the bodies of
the unsuspecting inhabitants."

Two years of this intensely romantic existence, and Delano
started homeward. But there was a chance of profit at Mauritius,
and there he bought a tremendous East Indiaman of fourteen
hundred tons as a joint venture with a Captain Stewart and put a
crew of a hundred and fifty men on board. She had been brought in
by a French privateer and Delano was moved to remark, with an
indignation which was much in advance of his times: "Privateering
is entirely at variance with the first principle of honorable
warfare . . . . This system of licensed robbery enables a wicked