‘You may leave now while I change,’ he said. ‘I have what has the makings of a very pleasant evening ahead of me and I’ll be damned if I haven’t earned it.’
As things turned out it must have been an even more pleasant evening than he had imagined, for the next I saw of him was at the crack of dawn the following morning when, with the tip of his boot, he knocked me out of my bunk to the floor, returning me to consciousness without so much as a by-your-leave, a fate I was growing more and more accustomed to.
‘Come along, lad,’ he roared cheerfully. How he managed to keep his wits about him and retain an air of jollity at such an ungodly hour is anyone’s guess. ‘The two of us are going ashore this morning.’
‘Ashore?’ said I, opening my eyes wide now, for here was my chance to get off the blasted ship at last. ‘Both of us?’
‘Aye, both of us,’ he snapped, suddenly irritated (he really was a one for a change of mood). ‘I’m always having to repeat myself around you, Turnstile – why is that? Sir Robert is taking me to the hills to show me some of the excellent flora that graces the land here and is allowing me to take some cuttings back to Sir Joseph in London.’
I nodded and pulled myself together. He was already walking past me and marching down the corridor, so I suspected I was not to be given the benefit of breakfast; instead it was all I could do to keep pace with him in his excitement. (From that day to this, I’m not sure I’ve ever known a man who could survive on such little sleep as the captain and still manage to keep his wits about him.) On deck, he gave some instructions to Mr Christian, who looked at me a little uncertainly.
‘Perhaps I should come with you, Captain,’ he said, the smarm. ‘Mr Fryer or Mr Elphinstone can take charge of the boat. Why take Turnip with you anyway? He’s just a servant-lad.’
‘And a very fine servant-lad he is too,’ replied the captain, slapping me on the back as if I was his own son. ‘Master Turnstile will be responsible for gathering the cuttings in a basket for me. But I need you here, Fletcher. Keeping the men busy with the repairs. I don’t want us having to stay in Africa any longer than necessary even though it is, as you can see, a very pleasant diversion for a couple of days. We’ve lost enough time as it is.’
‘Very good, sir,’ said Mr Christian with a sigh.
I didn’t dare offer him the smug look that I was harbouring inside lest it came back to haunt me at a later date. I knew that he would have preferred to stay a little longer, as the gossip had already spread around the ship about a dalliance he was enjoying with a local molly. I had the mark of him already, that was for sure.
A carriage awaited us at the end of the gangway and a few minutes later the captain and I were on our way through the dusty streets, leaving the shadow of the boat behind us.
‘You mentioned Sir Joseph earlier, Captain,’ said I after a few minutes, turning from looking out at the unfamiliar surroundings and back towards him in curiosity.
‘I did indeed.’
‘You’ve mentioned him many times on our voyage, in fact. Might I ask who he is?’
He stared at me and smiled. ‘My dear boy, haven’t you ever heard the name of Sir Joseph Banks?’
I shook my head. ‘No, sir,’ I replied. ‘I haven’t. Except from your own lips, of course.’
The captain looked startled by my innocence. ‘Why, I thought every lad of your age knew the name of Sir Joseph and idolized him for it. He’s a great man. A very great man indeed. Without him, none of us would be here.’
For a moment, I thought he was comparing him to the Saviour himself, but this was just a fancy; I said nothing, just continued to look at him and await an answer.
‘Sir Joseph is the finest botanist in England,’ he said finally. ‘Ha! Said I England? I should say the world. A brilliant collector of rare and exotic plants. A man of great taste and sensibility. He sits on numerous boards and committees and advises Mr Pitt on many matters of social and ecological interest, as he did for Portland, Shelburne and Rockingham before him. He owns a great many conservatories and is the recipient of so much correspondence from keen botanists around the world that they say he keeps a dozen secretaries on hand to answer them all. And above all that, it was his idea for us to undertake our mission.’
I nodded, unembarrassed by my ignorance. ‘I see,’ I said, leaning forward. ‘A famous chap, then, I imagine. And, Captain, may I ask one further question?’
‘You may.’
‘This mission of ours . . . what is it exactly?’
The captain stared at me before letting a roar of laughter escape his lips and shaking his head. ‘My dear boy, how long have we been on the Bounty together now? Five months, is it? And every day you have stood around my cabin, or in it, and listened to the conversation of the officers and the men and you mean to tell me that you don’t know what our mission is? Can you be quite so ignorant or are you performing a turn for me?’
‘I apologize, sir,’ said I, sitting back, my face scarlet with embarrassment. ‘I didn’t mean to make you ashamed of me.’
‘No, it is I who should apologize,’ he replied quickly. ‘Truly, Turnstile, I was not mocking you. I merely meant that this is a matter that must have crossed your mind on any number of occasions since we set sail and yet you have never raised it until now.’
‘I didn’t like to ask, sir,’ I said.
‘If you don’t ask, you shall never discover. Our mission, my dear young boy, is one of the utmost importance. You are aware no doubt of England’s slave colonies on the West Indies?’
I knew nothing of these so did the only thing that seemed sensible in the circumstances. I nodded my head and said that I was.
‘Well,’ continued he, ‘the slaves there . . . regardless of their savage nature, they are still men and they want feeding. But as to the cost to the Crown of keeping them, well, I don’t have the exact figures but they are considerable. Now some years ago, when Captain Cook and I were on board the Resolution, we brought home to England various samples of plant and food life which we discovered on the islands of the South Pacific and among them was a particular item known as the breadfruit. It’s an extraordinary thing. Shaped rather like . . . like a coconut, if you can believe it, but growing in the soil. An excellent source of nourishment and protein, and cheap to produce too. We go to collect as many thousands of these breadfruit as we can procure and transport them on our way home to the West Indies, where they will be replanted and more grown, thus saving the Crown considerable expense.’
‘And keeping the men in chains,’ said I.
‘What’s that?’ he asked.
‘Our mission is to make it cheaper to keep men enslaved.’
He stared at me and hesitated before answering. ‘You say that . . . Turnstile, I don’t follow you. Do you feel that we shouldn’t feed the men?’
‘No, sir,’ I said, shaking my head. He was not the type to follow my line of thinking; he was too well educated and of too high a social class to have respect for the rights of man. ‘I’m glad I finally know, that’s all. Our great cabin will be filled with these breadfruit soon enough, then, I expect.’
‘As soon as we can get there and collect them, yes. It’s an adventure of great merit that we are engaged in, Turnstile,’ he told me then, wagging his finger at me as if I was a babe in arms. ‘Some day, when you are an old man, you will look back and tell your grandchildren of it. Perhaps their own slaves will be fed on breadfruit then too, and you will feel enormous pride at our achievements.’
I nodded but wasn’t sure that I would. We travelled on in silence then for some time and I looked out of the window of the carriage, pleased to be able to lay my eyes on something other than the vast blue water of the ocean for a change. All the same, I felt disappointed that the terrain was mostly green and mountainous and seemed to offer little in the way of roads or villages to which I might escape.
We came to a stop in the centre of a small village and the presence of our carriage, along with another of equal splend
our, seemed out of place there, but as we pulled in, a man emerged from a saloon and strolled towards us with his arms outstretched, smiling pleasantly.
‘William,’ he cried in a hearty voice. ‘So pleased you could make it.’
‘Sir Robert,’ replied the captain, stepping down and shaking his hand. ‘I wouldn’t have missed it for anything. I brought my lad with me to carry the cuttings. I hope that’s all right.’
Sir Robert’s face grimaced for a moment as he sized me up and down and finally he shook his head, as if he disapproved of me entirely. ‘If you don’t mind, William,’ he said, leaning forward, ‘my own man will accompany us for that. There are state matters of an urgent nature I wish to discuss with you and it would be inappropriate for me to do so in front of strangers. I dare say he is trustworthy, but—’
‘Of course, of course,’ said Captain Bligh quickly, taking the baskets off me and placing them back in the carriage; another fellow, older than I and far more serious-looking, emerged with baskets from the saloon and stood near by. ‘Turnstile, you may go back to the boat.’
I looked around, disappointed, for I had been looking forward to a long walk and an opportunity to see the land and plan my route. It must have been obvious, for Sir Robert caught the expression on my face and clapped me on the back.
‘The poor boy’s been on that boat for so many months,’ he said. ‘Perhaps, William, you wouldn’t object to him waiting for you in the saloon here where he can be given lunch and you can return together later?’
The captain thought about it for only a moment and then, to my delight, nodded his head. ‘Certainly,’ he said. ‘A fair response. But let us begin, Sir Robert. I am anxious to see as much of your plant life as I can. As you know, Sir Joseph expects . . .’
His voice grew more distant as the two men strolled away from me and I turned to look at several of Sir Robert’s servants, who nodded in my direction and motioned me indoors and out of the sun.
‘No need to look so despondent,’ one of them said as I walked. ‘Believe you me, you’re better off sitting here for the day than walking up and down mountainsides all afternoon.’
‘You might not say that had you been stuck on board a ship for the last five months,’ I countered, but the quick appearance of food changed my mind, as my plate contained meat and potatoes and vegetables, freshly cooked, a feast I had not expected or seen since before Christmas.
I ate quickly and hungrily as various members of Sir Robert’s entourage talked to me, trying to learn as much about our ship as they could. The Dutch settlement had existed at False Bay for many decades and, as it turned out, most of the people working on it were as anxious to return to Holland as I was to escape the Bounty. But would they leave me alone? They would not. Finally I got them engaged on the subject of geography and learned that the nearest city was Cape Town, and resolved that I would make my way there. It was only late in the evening, when alcohol was served, that I finally managed to make my way out of the saloon and find myself alone.
The sun had gone down and in truth I was surprised that the captain and Sir Robert had not returned yet, but it made it more difficult for me to find my way to the path. There were no signs anywhere and I knew nothing of Cape Town other than its general direction, north-west, and resolved that I would find somewhere to hide over night and then judge the compass by the rising of the sun the following morning. I had not gone ten minutes down the road when I started to hear sounds.
On board ship, all is either quiet or noise. Either we are in calm waters, when the men are silent and stare ahead and keep the ship at peace, or in noisy waters, when they shout and create a great clamour. At Mr Lewis’s establishment, there was never anything but noise – from my brothers, from the streets below, from the gentlemen in their cups. But here, in this strange place with nothing but mountains and hills around me, I fancied that I could hear animal life ready to attack me and claim me as a worthy dinner. And then footsteps. And voices. I knew there were often criminals hiding out in places like this, but I convinced myself that these sounds were no more than my imagination playing tricks, until they grew louder and louder and I realized that from the direction in which I was walking there were men walking towards me. I hesitated, looked to my left and right in the darkness, and was about to break into a run in the opposite direction, when a hand landed heavily on my shoulder and I jumped and shouted out in fright.
‘Turnstile,’ roared the voice. ‘What the devil are you doing here?’
My eyes grew accustomed to the darkness and my ears recognized the familiar voice.
‘Captain,’ said I. ‘I got lost.’
‘Lost?’ asked Sir Robert. ‘You’re a good fifteen minutes away from the saloon. What has brought you out here at this time of night?’
I could tell that the captain was staring at me in surprise and I thought on my feet. ‘I came outside to relieve myself, sir,’ said I. ‘And I went a little too far away from the saloon to do so. When I was finished I couldn’t find my way back. I ended up here.’
‘A good job we found you, then,’ said Sir Robert, laughing. ‘You might have wandered all night. You might have ended up in Cape Town, you’re headed exactly in that direction.’
‘Aren’t there conveniences at the saloon?’ asked the captain suspiciously.
‘Oh, yes, sir,’ said I. ‘Only, I didn’t think to use them on account of my being naught but a servant. I thought they were reserved for the quality.’
He nodded then and indicated that I should follow them, and so I did, angry with myself for getting caught, my first chance of escape destroyed. Sir Robert’s man was laden down with baskets of cuttings, roots and smaller plants and when we arrived back at the carriage they were placed carefully on the floor between us.
‘I hope I’ve not overdone it,’ muttered Captain Bligh as we took the carriage back. ‘But I swear that I could have taken a tenfold amount, there was so much of interest. I must give these to Mr Nelson when we’re aboard and see that he keeps them well. Sir Joseph will be delighted.’
‘Yes, sir,’ said I, watching ahead for the ship. The water appeared suddenly, as if out of nowhere, and upon it I saw our tall sails blowing back and forth in the breeze.
‘Turnstile,’ said the captain as we drew closer to it. ‘Earlier, when we found you, you were lost, weren’t you?’
‘Of course I was,’ said I, unable to look him in the eye. ‘I said as much, didn’t I? I couldn’t find my way back.’
‘Only, there are serious penalties in His Majesty’s navy for deserters. Just so you remember that.’
I said nothing, just looked outside at the Bounty, the place I had lived for the past five months and which, to my surprise, I was not unhappy to see again. It was a home, of sorts.
21
THERE WAS ONE MORE INCIDENT that took place before our ship left South Africa and continued on her merry way and it left something of a dark cloud behind us after we departed.
The Bounty had suffered more than her share of hardship and rough weather since leaving England before Christmas and the so-called rest that the men were supposed to have enjoyed at False Bay was overtaken by almost as much hard work as we had endured during any of the stormy days that we had met at sea. The captain and the officers, on the other hand, were enjoying the hospitality of Sir Robert and the officers of the Dutch settlement, and as this usually involved an evening meal my own nights were not quite so busy as they had once been. In fact the only day that I was engaged upon my regular duties was on our last evening before setting sail again, when Sir Robert invited all the officers to a ball at his home and I was press-ganged into making sure that all their uniforms were clean and starched for the evening’s entertainment. And you should have seen the bunch of fine fellows who went off that night, clean and shiny, ready to meet the ladies, their hair pomaded and their skin washed in cologne. Only poor Mr Elphinstone was left behind to watch the ship, and he wasn’t happy about it one little bit, but good enough for him,
for if we regular boys couldn’t enjoy the festivity, then why should he, and he earned no sympathy from any of them.
Late the following afternoon I was on deck assisting in the polishing of the woodwork with Edward Young, a midshipman who had been allowed ashore every morning to worship at the local church on account of his religious fervour. I didn’t let the fact of it put me off him; other than that, he was a perfectly rational and pleasant man.
‘You’ll be sorry to leave the church behind,’ I said to him, for once we were under way again he’d have no recourse but to whisper his words to the Saviour from the vantage point of his bunk. ‘You were a lucky dog to get off the boat every morning for it, though, weren’t you?’
‘The captain was generous in allowing it, aye,’ he told me. ‘And I thank him for it. You should have come with me, Turnip. You strike me as a lad who could do with a little more Bible in his life.’
I was about to answer this in a manner that he might not have liked, when what did I see, only Sir Robert’s carriage charging down the path towards the ship.
‘Here’s another one who could use the Saviour,’ said Young, nodding his head in the direction of the carriage. ‘Come to invite them all to enjoy more frivolity at his lair, I imagine. Dancing, drinking and carnal behaviour that will damn their souls.’
‘I didn’t know he was expected,’ said I, putting my brush down and looking up at the sky to judge the time, a talent I had grown more skilled at as the months had gone on. ‘The captain never mentioned anything about it.’
I watched as Sir Robert stepped out of his carriage and stood there for a moment, staring at the Bounty with a thunderous look on his face, before marching towards the gangway and making his way to the top, where Mr Elphinstone stepped over to meet him. I noticed Mr Heywood, the scut, walking quickly away to a place where he would not be seen, but thought little of it at the time other than that he was an unsociable brute who would partake of a man’s hospitality on one evening and then snub him the next day.