But the great art of all was to divert their attention from the almost hopeless situation in which they were placed, and to prevent despondency from taking possession of their minds; and in order to assist in effecting this, some employment was devised for them; among other things, a logline, an object of interest to all, was measured and marked; and the men were practised in counting seconds correctly, that the distance run on each day might be ascertained with a nearer approach to accuracy than by mere guessing.  These little operations afforded them a temporary amusement; and the log being daily and hourly hove gave them also some employment, and diverted their thoughts for the moment from their melancholy situation.  Then, every noon, when the sun was out, or at other times before and after noon, and also at night when the stars appeared, Lieutenant Bligh never neglected to take observations for the latitude, and to work the day’s work for ascertaining the ship’s place.  The anxiety of the people to hear how they had proceeded, what progress had been made, and whereabouts they were on the wide ocean, also contributed for the time to drive away gloomy thoughts that but too frequently would intrude themselves.  These observations were rigidly attended to, and sometimes made under the most difficult circumstances, the sea breaking over the observer, and the boat pitching and rolling so much, that he was obliged to be ’propped up,’ while taking them.  In this way, with now and then a little interrupted sleep, about a thousand long and anxious hours were consumed in pain and peril, and a space of sea passed over equal to four thousand five hundred miles, being at the rate of four and one-fifth miles an hour, or one hundred miles a day.

Lieutenant Bligh has expressed his conviction, that the six days spent among the coral islands, off the coast of New Holland, were the salvation of the whole party, by the refreshing sleep they here procured, by the exercise of walking about, and, above all, by the nutriment derived from the oysters and clams, the beans and berries, they procured while there; for that such, he says, was the exhausted condition of all on their arrival at the ‘barrier reef,’ that a few days more at sea must have terminated the existence of many of them.  This stoppage, however, had likewise been nearly productive of fatal consequences to the whole party.  In fact, another mutiny was within an ace of breaking out, which, if not checked at the moment, could only, in their desperate situation, have ended in irretrievable and total destruction.  Bligh mentions, in his printed narrative, the mutinous conduct of a person to whom he gave a cutlass to defend himself.  This affair, as stated in his original manuscript journal, wears a far more serious aspect.