vessels are low forward, but rise abaft; and, being narrow, are fitted
with an outrigger on each side to keep them steady. A raft, of greater
breadth than the canoe, extends over about half the length, and upon this
is fixed a shed or hut, thatched with palm leaves. These people, in
short, appeared to be dexterous sailors and formidable warriors, and to
be as much at ease in the water as in their canoes."

On September 19th the two ships, with caution and perseverance, had
threaded their dangerous way through the intricate maze of reefs and
shoals of Torres Strait, and found open sea to the westward. In latitude
10 degrees 8 1/2 minutes "no land was in sight, nor did anything more
obstruct Captain Bligh and his associates in their route to the island
Timor."

It is easy to imagine the delight with which these experiences thrilled
the young midshipman on the Providence. His eighteenth birthday was spent
in the Pacific, in the early Autumn of a hemisphere where the sea was not
yet cloven by innumerable keels, and where beauty, enchantment and
mystery lay upon life and nature like a spell. A few years previously he
had been a schoolboy in the flattest, most monotonous of English shires.
Broad fields, dykes and fen had composed the landscape most familiar to
his eye. In these surroundings he had dreamed, as a boy will, of
palm-fanned islands in distant climes, of adventures with savage peoples,
of strange seas where great fishes are, and where romance touches all
that is with its purple light. Far horizons steeped in marvels had
bounded the vision of his imagining eye. His passion was to see and do in
realms at the back of the sunrise. He wanted to sail and explore in parts
represented by blank spaces on the map.

These dreams of the boy, basking with Robinson Crusoe under remote skies,