The force of forty women, with only one man to command
them, was not equal to driving eight sturdy sailors back into the sea.
[Footnote: In the accounts given in Findlay's "Sailing Directory" of
some of the events there is a chronological discrepancy. I follow the
accounts gathered from the old captain's grandsons and from records on
the spot.]
From this time on Hare had a hard time of it. He and Ross did not get
on well as neighbors. The islands were too small and too near for
characters so widely different. Hare had "oceans of money," and might
have lived well in London; but he had been governor of a wild colony
in Borneo, and could not confine himself to the tame life that prosy
civilization affords. And so he hung on to the atoll with his forty
women, retreating little by little before Ross and his sturdy crew,
till at last he found himself and his harem on the little island known
to this day as Prison Island, where, like Bluebeard, he confined his
wives in a castle. The channel between the islands was narrow, the
water was not deep, and the eight Scotch sailors wore long boots. Hare
was now dismayed. He tried to compromise with rum and other luxuries,
but these things only made matters worse. On the day following the
first St. Andrew's celebration on the island, Hare, consumed with
rage, and no longer on speaking terms with the captain, dashed off a
note to him, saying: "Dear Ross: I thought when I sent rum and roast
pig to your sailors that they would stay away from my flower-garden.
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