He proved to be correct, for on 12 June the coast of Timor was discovered at a distance of only 6 miles, and two days afterwards they came to an anchor at the Dutch settlement in Kupang Bay, where they were received with every mark of kindness, hospitality, and humanity. They stayed at Kupang for two months to recruit their strength, and then obtaining a small schooner they sailed to Batavia, from which island they were sent home in the ships of the Dutch East India Company. Bligh himself was landed at the Isle of Wight on 11 March, 1790. Nelson the botanist, however, died at Kupang, and five of the other officers and men succumbed to disease at Java or on the way home, so that besides the man who was killed on the Island of Tofoa, six only out of the nineteen men set adrift by the mutineers failed to reach a home which was some 14,000 miles distant from the place at which they had been cast adrift. After setting Bligh and his companions adrift, Christian took command of the _Bounty_, and her course was directed, not to Tahiti, but to the Tubuai archipelago farther south. The mutineers threw overboard the greater part of the bread-fruit plants, but, quarrelling with the natives of Tubuai, they sailed to Tahiti. Here Otu, the principal chief, became very inquisitive about the fate of Captain Bligh and the bread-fruit plants. They told him a garbled story about meeting Captain Cook and handing the plants over to him, and that Mr. Christian had now returned to Tahiti to obtain an additional supply of pigs, goats, fowls, and more bread-fruit. So overjoyed were the Tahitians to hear that their dear friend Captain Cook was not dead, but alive (which of course was a lie) and about to settle on an island so near to them, that in the course of a very few days the _Bounty_ received on board 312 pigs, 38 goats (derived of course from the animals landed by Cook originally), 96 fowls, a bull and a cow, and a large quantity of bread-fruit and bananas. The _Bounty_ also received on board eight men, nine women, and seven boys. They then returned to Tubuai, where they ran the ship on shore, landed the live stock, and set about building a fort. But they soon quarrelled with the natives, of whom they shot many with their firearms. Their position became untenable; so once more they returned to Tahiti, in September, 1789. Here sixteen of the mutineers were landed at their own request, while the remaining nine decided to continue their voyage in the _Bounty_, which once more sailed away with seven Tahiti men and twelve women, intending to discover some unknown or uninhabited island in which there was no harbour for shipping.