In 1830, H. M. S. _Seringapatam_ was sent out by the British Government to carry a cargo of agricultural implements, tools, live-stock, and many other things which might increase the happiness and well-being of the people of Pitcairn Island. John Adams had passed away a little while before that, full of years and honor, and it may be safely assumed that he was not logged on the books of the recording angel as a mutineer. The mantle of his leadership fell upon the broad shoulders of Friday Fletcher October Christian. It was only a year or so ago that the generous captain of a freight steamer bound out across the South Pacific wrote a letter to a New York newspaper to inform the public that he would be glad to go out of his course to touch at Pitcairn Island and leave any books or other gifts which might be sent in his care. It was near the Christmas season, and the spirit moved him to play Santa Claus to the people of that happy island whose forefathers were the mutineers of the _Bounty_ in the year of 1789. CHAPTER VIII FRIGATES THAT VANISHED IN THE SOUTH SEAS When our forefathers were fighting in the Revolution, which was not so very long ago in history, the world was a vastly entertaining place for a man who loved to wander in quest of bold adventures. Nowadays the unknown seas have all been charted, and it is not easy to realize that a great part of the watery globe was unexplored and trackless when George Washington led his ragged Continentals. There were no lean, hard-bitten Australian troops to rally to the call of the mother country when England was fighting most of Europe as well as the American Colonies, because not a solitary Briton had then set foot upon the mighty continent of the South Pacific. For three centuries the high-pooped merchant ships and the roving buccaneers of all flags had been sailing on the trade routes to the New World and to the East Indies, but scarcely a solitary keel had furrowed the immense expanse of blue water which is called the South Seas. Daring traders as were the old skippers of Salem, it was not until 1811 that the first of them, in the bark _Active_, bartered a cargo with the Fiji Islanders, and he was only four years later than the pioneer ship of the British East India Company.