“By this time the chief’s son had begun stealing in the ship, on which the crew tied him up, and flogged him with the clue of one of their hammocks, and then sent him down into his canoe.

“They would have flogged the rest also had not I interceded for them, considering that there might be still some of my unfortunate shipmates living on shore, on whom they might avenge themselves.

“The captain now consented to take me along with him; and, the canoe having been set adrift, we stood off from the island.  For the first sixteen months of my residence in New Zealand, I had counted the days by means of notches on a stick; but after that I had kept no reckoning.  I now learned, however, that the day on which I was taken off the island was January 9th, 1826.  I had, therefore, been a prisoner among these savages ten years, all but two months.”

Captain Jackson now gave Rutherford such clothes as he stood in need of, in return for which the latter made him a present of his New Zealand dress and battle axe.

The ship then proceeded to the Society Islands, and anchored on February 10th off Otaheite.

Here Rutherford went into the service of the British consul, by whom he was employed in sawing wood.  On May 26th he was married to a chief woman, whose name, he says, was Nowyrooa, by Mr. Pritchard, one of the English missionaries.  While he resided here, he was also employed as an interpreter by Captain Peachy, of the “Blossom” sloop of war, then engaged in surveying those islands.

Still, however, longing very much to see his native country, he embarked on January 6th, 1827, on board the brig “Macquarie,” commanded by Captain Hunter, and bound for Port Jackson.  On taking leave of his wife and friends, he made them a promise to return to the island in two years, “which,” says he, “I intend to keep, if it is in my power, and end my days there.”

The “Macquarie” reached Port Jackson on February 19th, and Rutherford states that he met there a young woman who had been saved from the massacre of those on board the “Boyd,” and who gave him an account of that event.  This was probably the daughter of a woman whom Mr. Berry brought to Lima.

He also found at Port Jackson two vessels on their way back to England, with a body of persons who had attempted to form a settlement in New Zealand, but who had been compelled to abandon their design, as he understood, by the treacherous behaviour of the natives.

He now embarked on board the Sydney packet, commanded by Captain Tailor, which proceeded first for Hobart Town, in Van Diemen’s Land,[CP] and after lying there for about a fortnight set sail again for Rio de Janeiro.

On his arrival there he went into the service of Mr. Harris, a Dutch gentleman.  Mr. Harris, on learning his history, had him presented to the Emperor Don Pedro, who asked him many questions by an interpreter, and made him a present of eighty dollars.  He also offered him employment in his navy; but this Rutherford refused, preferring to return to England in the “Blanche” frigate, then on the point of sailing, in which he obtained a passage by an application to the British consul.  On the arrival of the ship at Spithead, he immediately left her, and proceeded to Manchester, his native town, which he had not seen since he first went to sea in the year 1806.