DURING all this time where were Christian and the other guilty men who followed him? After having set the boat containing Bligh and his companions adrift, Fletcher Christian assumed command of the _Bounty_, and returned toward Tahiti. The ship was taken first to Toobonai, the intention of the men being to settle there; but, finding the place destitute of animals, they went to Tahiti to procure a stock of pigs and goats. Obtaining what they needed, they returned again to Toobonai, but found the natives hostile to their landing. Once more, and for the third and last time, the _Bounty_ was brought to Tahiti, where she was anchored in Matavai Bay, on the 20th of September, 1789. Sixteen of the crew here landed, taking with them their share of the arms and other articles on board the _Bounty_. These were the men, it will be understood, who were discovered and taken away by the _Pandora_, as related in the previous chapter. Leaving at Tahiti that portion of the crew whose choice it was to remain, Christian, accompanied by eight of his shipmates who decided to cast in their lot with him, sailed away from Tahiti forever. But this number was not all, for six of the native men, and ten women, and a girl of fifteen, were taken on board as wives and servants, the sailors having determined to seek some place where they could live secure from the danger of discovery. It is said that Christian, having seen an account of the discovery of a lone island in the Pacific Ocean, by Captain Cartaret, in the year 1767, directed the course of the ship to that place. It was named Pitcairn Island, after the young man who descried it, he being, as the story goes, a son of the Major Pitcairn who fell in the Battle of Bunker Hill. On the twenty-third day of January, 1790, the _Bounty_ reached her destination. The island, though small, being about five miles in circumference, and scarcely more than two miles across at its widest point, was thickly covered with a luxuriant growth of trees. On coming near enough for a boat to venture, a small party went on shore to search the land. They effected a landing on the west side of the island, but, finding that a few yards from the sea the rocks rose perpendicularly to a forbidding height, and thinking to find a more convenient place for a settlement, they brought the ship round to the northeast side of the island. Here they managed to bring their boat safely to the shore, through perilous rocks and breakers. It did not take long to discover that the island had been, and perhaps still was, inhabited, and fears were entertained lest they should be attacked by hostile natives. Traces of former habitations,—_marais_, stone images, rude pictures cut in the rocks, stone hatchets, etc., etc.,—were evident proofs that human beings had once lived on the island, and in addition to these, several human skulls and other bones were afterward seen.