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more than breadfruit Sometime in the early morning hours at work, I noticed a slight change in my hand. I could start to see lines on my knuckle and on the back of my hand there were indications of muscle under the skin instead of just a domed surface. Much to my relief the swelling had gone down and the itching was far less intense than it had been the previous night. I took that as a good sign, but knew that it would probably take some more time before I'd be completely healed. While the swelling was going down, I read about the Pandora and its pursuit of the mutineers from The Bounty. Until I read the article in The New Yorker I didn't know how quickly the British government sent people after Fletcher Christian and the rest of them. I knew that they hadn't been forgotten, but the fact that they were already being pursued within a year of their actions surprised me. Maybe it was simply a sign of that era that those men weren't allowed to go unpunished and justice had to be served no matter what effort needed to be made to enforce it. Even if that is true, I still can't begin to fully comprehend the struggle that the Pandora endured just to bring some men to trial. It wasn't as though they took a plane to cross the world in order to these men. Once again I am convinced that we live in very soft times when people complain about having to sit in a plane for more than three hours. To me that is heaven compared to an ocean voyage of months aboard a ship without any means modern navigation or comforts. Maybe I should add a William Bligh biography to my list of future reads. |