HAZARDS AND COMPENSATIONS 199 



hold. The mutineers now attempted to take charge of the 

 ship 3 but finding it impossible to steer a straight course, they 

 were compelled to offer the mate his safety in return for his 

 services as navigator. With this assistance they finally neared 

 a little-known shore in the South Pacific, where the ten muti- 

 neers, taking with them a large quantity of supplies, put off 

 in two boats. Before disappearing from view, however, they 

 forced the mate to swear that he would sail away at once and 

 not seek to molest themj and in return they wrote the full 

 and true account of the whole episode in the log-book, in order 

 to free the remainder of the crew from all suspicion of com- 

 plicity in the crime. 



The classic case of mutiny in the annals of whaling, how- 

 ever, was that which occurred on board the ship Globe, 

 of Nantucket, in January, 1824. Again several mutineers, 

 headed by a boatsteerer named Comstock, attacked and killed 

 the sleeping captain and mates. Comstock, who seems to 

 have been actuated by personal grievances as well as by the 

 general dissatisfaction of the crew, thereupon took command 

 of the vessel, with another hand named Payne acting as mate. 

 Those members of the crew who had not openly joined the 

 mutineers were forced to an apparently willing acquiescence; 

 and with affairs in this state the ship reached the Mulgrave 

 Islands. Here preparations were made for an extended so- 

 journ on shore. Payne and Comstock quarreled, however, 

 and the latter was murdered. Soon thereafter six members 

 of the crew, who had never voluntarily joined in the mutinous 

 acts, succeeded in escaping with the vessel. In spite of their 

 short-handed condition they finally reached Valparaiso, where 

 the case was officially reported. Meantime Payne and his as- 

 sociates were subjecting the natives to such indignities that the 

 islanders turned and massacred all of the white men except 

 two, who were protected because they had shown some kind- 

 ness to several families. These two men, William Lay and 

 Cyrus Hussey, lived with their rescuers on terms of mingled 

 captivity and adoption for almost two years, until they were 

 finally discovered by an American naval vessel in December, 

 1825. 



Such a record of occupational disaster and adversity, run- 



