by an officer a letter calling upon Bligh to resign, he marched upon Government House as rapidly as in 1804 he had chased the rebels. The troops having been formed in the barrack-square, Johnston declared (in his defence):
"We marched to the Government House attended by a vast concourse of people, who were all influenced with indignation against the Governor. On our arrival I learned that the officers I had sent had not then been able to obtain an interview, but that the Governor had concealed himself. This intelligence was truly alarming, for I had everything to fear from the agitation it was likely to produce. I immediately drew up the soldiers in line before the Government House and between it and the people, who were thus made to keep a respectful distance; the troops were halted and made to stand at ease. I then directed a small number to proceed in search of the Governor, while I waited below to protect the family from injury or insult. At length he was found, and brought to the room where I was."
Mrs. Putland, Bligh's daughter, courageously but vainly struggled to prevent the soldiers from entering the house.
As to the manner in which Bligh was found, there were disputes. His enemies aver that he was found concealed under a bedstead up-stairs. Lieut. Minchin, the officer who took Bligh to Johnston, swore that one of the soldiers who found Bligh said he was so found; and Sergeant Sutherland swore that he was one of two who found him under the bed. Bligh's friends denied this, and Bligh stated that he retired to destroy some papers, was busily engaged when arrested, and that it was "his contemplation how he could possibly get clear of the troops, and get to the Hawkesbury," where he thought the people would flock to his standard. If he had any hope thus to escape there was no pusillanimity in hiding, and there would have been folly in exposing himself; but a charge of cowardice made against him he repudiated with scorn. He had fought at the Dogger Bank, Gibraltar, and Camperdown, and had, after the battle of Copenhagen, where he "commanded the Glatton, been sent for by Lord Nelson to receive his thanks publicly on the quarter-deck. Was it for me, then, to sully my reputation and to disgrace the medal I wear by shrinking from death, which I had braved in every shape? [1]
- ↑ Bligh wrote (April 1808) to Downing Street that some inhabitants were "privately discontented, and the arch-fiend John Macarthur so influenced their minds as to make them dissatisfied with Government. . . . He has
