But nothing could save him; he was found guilty of misprision of treason,
and degraded from his office, and all his property was confiscated.
The lamest part of the whole shameful matter was the reason suggested by
his enemies for his destruction of the law, to wit: that he did it to
favor Christian, because Christian was his cousin! Whereas Stavely was
the only individual in the entire nation who was not his cousin. The
reader must remember that all these people are the descendants of half a
dozen men; that the first children intermarried together and bore
grandchildren to the mutineers; that these grandchildren intermarried;
after them, great and great-great-grandchildren intermarried; so that
to-day everybody is blood kin to everybody. Moreover, the relationships
are wonderfully, even astoundingly, mixed up and complicated. A
stranger, for instance, says to an islander:
"You speak of that young woman as your cousin; a while ago you called her
your aunt."
"Well, she is my aunt, and my cousin, too. And also my stepsister, my
niece, my fourth cousin, my thirty-third cousin, my forty-second cousin,
my great-aunt, my grandmother, my widowed sister-in-law--and next week
she will be my wife.
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