78 VOYAGE TO THE 



chap, nature, invented a story to account for their absence, 

 ^-v^y and told them that Lieutenant Bligh having found 

 Hi - an island suitable for a settlement, had landed there 

 with some of his officers, and sent them in the ship 

 to procure live stock and whatever else would be 

 useful to the colony, and to bring besides such of the 

 natives as were willing to accompany them.* Sa- 

 tisfied with this plausible account, the chiefs sup- 

 plied them with every thing they wanted, and even 

 gave them a bull and cow which had been confided 

 to their care, the only ones, I believe, that were on 

 the island. They were equally fortunate in finding 

 several persons, both male and female, willing to 

 accompany them ; and thus furnished, they again 

 sailed for Tobouai, where, as they expected, they 

 were better received than before, in consequence of 

 being able to communicate with the natives through 

 their interpreters. 



Experience had taught them the necessity of 

 making self-defence their first consideration, and a 

 fort was consequently commenced, eighty yards 

 square, surrounded by a wide ditch. It was nearly 

 completed, when the natives, imagining they were 

 going to destroy them, and that the ditch was in- 

 tended for their place of interment, planned a general 

 attack when the party should proceed to work in the 

 morning. It fortunately happened that one of the 



* In the Memoir of Captain Peter Heywood, in Marshall's Naval 

 Biography, it is related that the mutineers availing themselves of a 

 fiction which had been created by Lieutenant Bligh respecting 

 Captain Cook, stated that they had fallen in with him, and that he 

 had sent the ship back for all the live stock that could be spared, 

 in order to form a settlement at a place called Wytootacke, which 

 Bligh had discovered in his course to the Friendly Islands. 



