THE "GLOBE" MUTINY 129 



The friction between officers and men, which had found ex- 

 pression hitherto in grumbhng about the food, a universal 

 prerogative of sailormen, now sprang up anew in various 

 hot-headed outbursts, and a new party of malcontents formed 

 a plan to desert at Fanning's Island, whither the ship had laid 

 her course. 



Consider then, the officers and crew who sailed in the Globe 

 from the Sandwich Islands. Most of them were striplings at 

 best, and some of them were young boys, who might far better 

 have been in school. They were never to reach Fanning's 

 Island. 



The number of those who left the ship at Oahu exceeded by 

 one the number of those who joined her, for a certain Joseph 

 Thomas, who shares his name with a distinguished earlier 

 citizen of New England, had entered the crew at some time 

 during the voyage. He is not on the original crew list, and 

 nowhere is he represented as one of the new men who were 

 shipped at Oahu. As we see him dimly through a hundred in- 

 tervening years, he appears to have been a peculiarly negative 

 person; yet, in odd paradox, he was destined to play a part as 

 decisive as it was passive in the fate of the Globe and her men; 

 and of all those who were criminally concerned in her remark- 

 able story he alone was ever brought to trial. 



On the morning of Sunday, January 26, 1824, approximately 

 two years and a month from the day the Globe had sailed, the 

 ill-temper of all hands culminated in general disorder, and that 

 mysterious wretch, Joseph Thomas, insulted Captain Worth, 

 who thereupon flogged him with the end of the main buntline, 

 while those of the crew who were not stationed stood in the 

 hatchway, looking on. 



All that day, the spark kindled by the flogging smouldered, 

 but with no sign at the time to warn the officers and honest men. 

 We know only that a great deal, all knowledge of which went 

 to the grave with Joseph Thomas, was going on under the sur- 

 face of the ordinary routine of life in a ship. 



But concerning the events that occurred that night there is no 

 slightest doubt. The grim history of the Globe has come 



