both of which were a few leagues to windward.  Capt.  Betts, however, had come on board the Anne, and now joined his old friend, the governor, when about four leagues from the cape.  Glad enough was Mark Woolston to meet with the Anne, and to find so good an assistant on board her.  That schooner, which was regularly pilot-boat built, was the fastest craft about the islands, and it was a great matter to put head-quarters on board her.  The Martha came next, and the whale-boat was sent in to find that sloop, which was up at the Reef, and to order her out immediately to join the governor.  Pennock was the highest in authority, in the group, after the governor, and a letter was sent to him, apprising him of all that was known, and exhorting him to vigilance and activity; pointing out, somewhat in detail, the different steps he was to take, in order that no time might be lost.  This done, the governor stood in towards Whaling Bight, in order to ascertain the state of things at that point.

The alarm had been given all over the group, and when the Anne reached her place of destination, it was ascertained that the men had been assembled under arms, and every precaution taken.  But Whaling Bight was the great place of resort of the Kannakas, and there were no less than forty of those men there at that moment, engaged in trying out oil, or in fitting craft for the fisheries.  No one could say which side these fellows would take, should it appear that their proper chiefs were engaged with the strangers; though, otherwise, the colonists counted on their assistance with a good deal of confidence.  On all ordinary occasions, a reasonably fair understanding existed between the colonists and the Kannakas.  It is true, that the former were a little too fond of getting as much work as possible, for rather small compensations, out of these semi-savages; but, as articles of small intrinsic value still went a great way in these bargains, no serious difficulty had yet arisen out of the different transactions.  Some persons thought that the Kannakas had risen in their demands, and put less value on a scrap of old iron, than had been their original way of thinking, now that so many of their countrymen had been back and forth a few times, between the group and other parts of the world; a circumstance that was very naturally to be expected.  But the governor knew mankind too well not to understand that all unequal associations lead to discontent.  Men may get to be so far accustomed to inferior stations, and to their duties and feelings, as to consider their condition the result of natural laws; but the least taste of liberty begets a jealousy and distrust that commonly raises a barrier between the master and servant, that has a never-dying tendency to keep them more or less alienated in feeling.  When the colonists began to cast about them, and to reflect on the chances of their being sustained by these hirelings in the coming strife, very few of them could be sufficiently assured that the very men who had now eaten of their bread and salt, in some instances, for years, were to be relied on in a crisis.  Indeed, the number of these Kannakas was a cause of serious embarrassment with the governor, when he came to reflect on his strength, and on the means, of employing it.