As soon as I had time to reflect I felt an inward satisfaction which prevented any depression of my spirits:  conscious of my integrity and anxious solicitude for the good of the service in which I had been engaged I found my mind wonderfully supported, and I began to conceive hopes, notwithstanding so heavy a calamity, that I should one day be able to account to my King and country for the misfortune.  A few hours before my situation had been peculiarly flattering.  I had a ship in the most perfect order and well stored with every necessary both for service and health:  by early attention to those particulars I had as much as lay in my power, provided against any accident, in case I could not get through Endeavour Straits, as well as against what might befall me in them; add to this the plants had been successfully preserved in the most flourishing state:  so that upon the whole the voyage was two-thirds completed, and the remaining part to all appearance in a very promising way; every person on board being in perfect health, to establish which was ever amongst the principal objects of my attention.

It will very naturally be asked what could be the reason for such a revolt? in answer to which I can only conjecture that the mutineers had flattered themselves with the hopes of a more happy life among the Otaheiteans than they could possibly enjoy in England; and this, joined to some female connections, most probably occasioned the whole transaction.

The women at Otaheite are handsome, mild and cheerful in their manners and conversation, possessed of great sensibility, and have sufficient delicacy to make them admired and beloved.  The chiefs were so much attached to our people that they rather encouraged their stay among them than otherwise, and even made them promises of large possessions.  Under these and many other attendant circumstances equally desirable it is now perhaps not so much to be wondered at, though scarcely possible to have been foreseen, that a set of sailors, most of them void of connections, should be led away; especially when, in addition to such powerful inducements, they imagined it in their power to fix themselves in the midst of plenty on one of the finest islands in the world, where they need not labour, and where the allurements of dissipation are beyond anything that can be conceived.  The utmost however that any commander could have supposed to have happened is that some of the people would have been tempted to desert.  But, if it should be asserted that a commander is to guard against an act of mutiny and piracy in his own ship more than by the common rules of service, it is as much as to say that he must sleep locked up and when awake be girded with pistols.

Desertions have happened more or less from most of the ships that have been at the Society Islands; but it has always been in the commanders power to make the chiefs return their people:  the knowledge therefore that it was unsafe to desert perhaps first led mine to consider with what ease so small a ship might be surprised, and that so favourable an opportunity would never offer to them again.