‘The stones mean they are preparing to attack,’ the captain told the officers quietly. ‘I saw it before when I sailed with the captain—’
‘Captain Cook, sir?’ asked I, piping up with one of my questions at an inappropriate time.
‘Yes, of course Captain Cook,’ he replied testily. ‘Look, Turnstile, will you prepare yourself for the journey, please? Have you collected as much water as you can?’
‘Yes, sir,’ said I.
‘Then, stand with the midshipmen until it is time for us to leave.’
As I walked away, I noticed one of the savages approaching the captain’s group and he took Mr Bligh gently by the arm, attempting to pull him back towards their line with a wide smile plastered across his chops; the suggestion was that he should stay on the island and, I presumed, that we should all stay too.
‘No, no,’ said the captain, laughing gently and releasing himself from the man’s grip. ‘We cannot stay, I’m afraid. There is nothing any of us would like more, of course; you have been uncommonly kind to us, but it is time we pressed on. Farewell to you all and the king’s blessings upon you.’
I shook my head, wondering why he continued to speak English to a group of people who couldn’t understand him, but speak it he did. As he turned, the clanging of the stones began to grow louder and I observed some of the savages beginning to move towards us.
‘Quickly now, but carefully,’ said the captain in a clear voice that we all might hear. ‘Make your way towards the launch.’
We did as he said, stepping into the water even as the savages tried to pull us back. It was all that we could do to release ourselves from them and I felt that at any moment now the scene could turn murderous. There was a chance that they would let us go, aggrieved no doubt, but without menaces. Or they might charge at us. I was in the launch by now and watching as the captain and a few others made their way slowly towards us. In my mind I urged them on, wishing that they might step more lively, but the captain did not want to give off the appearance that any of us, himself included, was the least bit afeared.
By the time we were all in the launch, the natives of the island were half in the water too, shouting at us, laughing no longer, but they seemed as if they did not intend to attack after all. I took my place in the rear of the boat, unhappily the closest man to them, and from the side of my eyes I noted John Norton, the quartermaster, leaping overboard and heading back to the shore, or to the pole that we had planted there to rope the launch sturdily; it was obvious that he was setting to in order to release us and allow us on our way.
‘Get back here,’ cried Mr Fryer, but his voice was overtaken by the captain, standing and calling loudly.
‘Mr Norton, return immediately. We will cut the launch free.’
Norton turned at the sound of his captain’s voice, and I watched as a great roar went up from the savages the moment his back was turned. At that sound he turned back again as perhaps thirty of them descended on him. He tripped backwards into the water and then there was a great sound of splashing and murder as they fell on him and raised their stones, crashing them down into his skull with laughter and delight.
‘Cut us free, Turnstile!’ cried the captain and I looked around just in time to grab hold of the knife he had flung in my direction by the handle; I momentarily wondered whether it might have hit my head or sliced my hand off. I stared at it, unsure what to do, and looked out again at the terrible scene playing out before me. The water was already scarlet with Mr Norton’s blood and the savages seemed keen for more. They turned in our direction and I quickly cut the rope and the launch gave a great heave, allowing us to sail further out. There was no question that the savages could have caught us or sailed after us and killed us all, but once we were free of their beach they appeared inclined to let us go.
My last sight of that place was a picture of the body of John Norton, his head smashed clear from his body revealing a contorted and bloody stump below, being taken back to the island for who-knew-what terrible reason. The tub was quiet now as we sat silent and still, terrified as one, grief-stricken for our fallen comrade. I turned away from the grizzly scene and looked ahead.
There was nothing to see there. Nothing to take my mind off it.
47
Day 7: 4 May
IT WAS SOME RELIEF TO be away from that blasted place and those damnable murderers, but being back in the tub reminded me how poor our chances of surviving this adventure truly were. We had lost a man after less than a week – and a good man too, for John Norton had always been kind to me and was one of the few men on board the Bounty who resisted the urge to call me by the blasted nickname Turnip – and each of us felt the worse for it, although one dark voice was heard to mutter an obscene remark regarding how much more space there would have been for each of us on the launch had the savages managed to take a few more alongside Mr Norton.
The sea was rough that day, as I recall, and although the tub felt more sturdy and secure than it had when we arrived at the Friendly Islands, the roar of the waves crashing around us meant that we were spending much of our time scooping the water from the floor of the launch and returning it whence it had come. It was thankless work and continued for so long that I swore my arms would fall off with the strain of it; by the time the winds died down a little and we were allowed to sit back and take rest, my muscles felt like jelly and they appeared to be trembling within my skin at the horror of what they had been asked to do.
‘Mr Fryer,’ said Robert Lamb, the butcher, late that afternoon, turning his head a little to look in all four points of the compass and seeing nothing but open sea, ‘where are we headed, sir, does the captain know?’
‘Of course he knows, Lamb,’ replied the master’s mate. ‘The captain has a fine nose for these things and you should trust in him. We’re keeping west by nor’west, in the direction of the Feejees.’
‘The Feejees, you say?’ asked the butcher, his voice betraying the fact that he was less than happy with this as an answer.
‘Yes, Mr Lamb. Is there a problem with that?’
‘Oh, no, sir,’ he said quickly, shaking his head. ‘I hear they are very beautiful islands indeed.’
It struck me that there was something he was not saying, for I could hear a trembling in his tone and spy a look of concern about his phizzy, but I waited until Mr Fryer had returned to the fore of the launch before inching closer to my sailing mate and poking him in the ribs.
‘What was that for, young Turnip?’ he asked, turning towards me with a look of irritation on his face, although his earlier predilection towards violence, which had been much on display in the sailors’ quarters of the Bounty, had diminished in these trim surroundings.
‘The Feejees,’ I said. ‘You know of them?’
‘I know a little of them,’ he said. ‘But take an honest man’s word for it, Turnip: you don’t want to know what I have heard.’
I swallowed a little nervously and furrowed my brow. ‘Tell me, Mr Lamb,’ said I. ‘I have an interest in it.’
He looked around for a moment to check that we were not being overheard, but most of the men were taking their rest at that time, the decent wind carrying us in the correct direction.
‘Is it more women?’ I asked. ‘Are they like the women of Otaheite? Free with their virtue, I mean?’ I may have been stuck on this launch for a week and I may have been exhausted beyond all that was natural or holy, but I was still a fifteen-year-old lad and the motions were playing up with me something terrible and as I had had no opportunity to play at tug since being evicted from the Bounty, there was a fierce longing inside me. Even mentioning the freedom of women’s virtue was enough to send the blood rushing southwards.
‘It’s not that, lad,’ he confided in me. ‘I had a friend once, a right suitable fellow, name of Charles Conway. He sailed with Captain Clerk and they stopped at the Feejees on one visit and what happened, only the natives captured three of their fellows, strung them up, dropped them in a pot of
water, boiled them alive and ate them.’
‘Bones and all?’ I asked, wide-eyed.
‘They used the bones to pick their teeth,’ he said. ‘Like the trolls in the fairytales you read as a lad.’
‘I don’t think we should go to these Feejees,’ I said, not bothering to disillusion him of the fact that I had been a childhood reader. ‘I have no desire to be eaten alive.’
‘You’re boiled first, in fairness,’ he stated then with a shrug, as if this made the whole practice a far more agreeable matter. ‘I imagine the life has gone out of you after that.’
‘Still, it’s not a happy way to go.’
‘No,’ he conceded. ‘No, it’s not. But listen here, you have the ear of the captain. Perhaps you should be the one to tell him that we ought to seek an alternative island, preferably one of a hospitable nature?’
I looked towards the fore of the boat where Captain Bligh had just begun the process of dividing out the evening feast. One by one we were called before him and he handed us a morsel of coconut, a scrap of plantain, and a teaspoon full of rum. It was scarcely enough to fill the belly of a babe at wean, but we were grateful for it, especially now that our stomachs had grown accustomed to sustenance again after our short stay on the Friendlies.
‘Captain,’ I whispered as he handed me my allotted amount.
‘Move along, Turnstile,’ he said, waving me away. ‘There are other men awaiting their repast.’
‘But, Captain, the Feejees,’ I said. ‘There’s fierce terrible stories about—’
‘Move along, Turnstile,’ he repeated, more forcibly now, and before he could say anything more I had been cruelly manhandled by Mr Elphinstone and sent back to my seat.
But I was determined that no savage would make a meal of John Jacob Turnstile. Not in this life.
48
Day 8: 5 May
A DISPUTE OF A SORT BROKE out today between Mr Hall, who had been cook of the Bounty, and Surgeon Ledward. It began over a trifle, the surgeon suggesting that a cook with half a wit about him would be able to take our meagre provision and turn it into something more delicious for us all.
‘And what would you have me do, Surgeon?’ asked Mr Hall, who had a sweet nature about him for most of the time but could turn cantankerous if his culinary skills were called into question. ‘What have we after all only a few coconuts and plantains, a little rum and some bread that grows harder to the touch by the hour? Am I to be like the Saviour?’ he continued, ignorant of the blasphemy. ‘Turning water into wine for every man on board?’
‘I know not what you might do with it,’ replied the surgeon, leaning against the side of the tub and scratching his beard irritably. ‘I have not been trained in the art of the kitchen. But I know that a skilled man might find a way to—’
‘And a skilled surgeon might have leapt into the surf and taken the dead body of John Norton from the arms of the savages and brought him back to life,’ rejoined Mr Hall, sitting forward and wagging his finger like an old washerwoman. ‘Speak not to me of skilled men, Surgeon Ledward, when you yourself have shown no such abilities.’
The surgeon breathed heavily through his nose for a moment before shaking his head and narrowing his eyes. I could sense that such an argument might lead to fisticuffs had we been on either Otaheite or the deck of the Bounty, but here in the tub there was no such freedom to move around; men could cause friction and then find no way to resolve matters. I began to consider that this might ultimately be our undoing.
‘John Norton was dead, Mr Hall,’ he said finally. ‘It does not take a talented surgeon to revive those who have gone to their reward, it takes the will of God.’
‘Aye, and it would take the will of God to turn the few scraps the captain keeps under lock and key into anything fit to eat. We’re in this together, Surgeon Ledward. I suggest you maintain your dignity and allow your unhappy state not to cast aspersions on your fellow drifters.’
The surgeon nodded and was happy to let it go at that. Tempers had been stirred, voices raised, an argument distributed, but had they continued it would only have forced one of the officers to attend to them and such a thing was already being seen as unfair. We were a small society, the nineteen of us. The eighteen of us, as we were now. We could not fight among ourselves.
A fierce wind came upon us that evening, but it blew east by nor’east, pushing us along in the direction that the captain insisted would bring us home. I found myself drifting in and out of sleep and on one occasion awoke with a start, convinced that I was back in Mr Lewis’s establishment in Portsmouth. The lapping of the water around me did not stir my senses yet to inform me that I was nowhere near England and had precious little hope of seeing it again, and when I finally returned to full consciousness and an awareness of who and where I was, I found that to my surprise I missed my sometime home. Not Mr Lewis, of course. I could not have given a fig for him. But I missed England. And Portsmouth. And some of my brothers. The good ones. The ones I cared for.
I sat up, rubbing my eyes, and looked around at our desperate crew with a sensation of hope in my heart. We were a raggle-taggle lot and no mistake. Dirty, smelly, bearded – even my own chin was beginning to be tickled by soft whiskers – but we were a crew. And we had been cast out to sea without a care for our survival. And we would survive. The captain would see to that. Aye, and every last one of us.
I narrowed my eyes and peered into the distance. Somewhere out there, perhaps half a world away, lay England. Lay Portsmouth. Lay Mr Lewis. It was a place I had been running away from for sixteen months, a place I had sworn never to revisit. But that night, sitting in the tub with the farting, stinking evicted crew of the Bounty around me, I swore that I would do the opposite of all of that. I would return there. I would go back and seek my own vengeance. And then I would begin again. Life might hold a lot of treasures for John Jacob Turnstile yet and I would allow no man to play liberties with me again.
‘You have a look of fire in your eyes, Turnstile,’ said the captain, opening his own eyes to look at me; he was seated only a few feet from me, his body twisted in its sleep as he tried to find a comfortable position. I smiled at him and nodded but offered no reply. And when he closed his eyes again and his snoring began, I watched him and thought to myself that here was a great man. Here was a heroic sort. Here was a fellow that another fellow might follow into battle. And at that moment I found my own life’s ambition.
I would be a great man like Captain Bligh too, one day. I would survive, I would thrive and I would succeed.
And we would all, every man jack of us, return to England safely.
49
Day 9: 6 May
WE FINALLY SPOTTED A NEW island and a great cheer went up among our hungry, thirsty and exhausted crew as the possibility of rest and sustenance became more likely.
‘Turn us there, men,’ cried the captain to the rowers, pointing in the direction of the green, mountainous region before us; a great stretch of sandy beach at its fore was a delight to behold. I couldn’t help but note how the captain’s voice had changed during the nine days since we had been away from the Bounty; like all of us, he was dehydrated, but there was a croak in it that had not been there previously. I suspected he was growing increasingly depressed by the turn of events. Still, there was a general feeling among us that if we could survive from island to island, and then make that great stretch of sea between the two last, then we might yet live to tell our tale, and the sight of the new island before us gave ever more hope for that.
We all watched the land hopefully as we got closer, but then, what did we see only a group of savages emerging from the thickets to spy on us. We were still some way from the shore, far enough that they would not be able to reach us, but the captain gave the order to maintain our position and the oarsmen lifted their oars and we all watched.
‘Captain?’ said Mr Fryer. ‘What do you think?’
The men on the shore, who numbered about thirty or forty, appeared friendly enoug
h. They were waving in our direction and some were dancing a most curious dance, but they were not carrying stones in their hands, as the savages on the Friendly Islands were.
‘I think we are outnumbered to begin with,’ said the captain. ‘But they may mean to greet us.’
‘It might be some days before we reach another island,’ remarked Mr Elphinstone, who was taller than most of us and who was beginning to suffer badly from the cramped conditions, as he could never stretch his legs out and was barely able to sleep. ‘Perhaps we could send a few men over to discover whether they mean us any harm and then decide? I’d be happy to volunteer.’
‘And I thank you for it, Mr Elphinstone,’ replied the captain. ‘But I do not desire to send any man towards his demise. We have the example of Mr Norton to remember, do we not?’
‘Look!’ cried a voice from my left, that of Peter Linkletter, the quartermaster. ‘Look what they have!’
All our eyes turned in the direction of the shore, where some more savages, perhaps a dozen or so, were carrying great barrels of fruit and placing them before us. Some more appeared quickly after them with sides of meat. Even looking at this sight prompted my mouth to salivate with hunger. And then what, only caskets of water to wash the feast down. They beckoned us over and the men cheered in delight, rising up so quickly that they threatened to turn our tub over.
‘Sit ye down, men!’ roared the captain, the croak in his voice affecting his ability to shout. ‘Maintain your places: we’ll have none of it.’
‘None of it, Mr Bligh?’ cried William Purcell. ‘You can’t mean it! We could survive for weeks on the offerings they have for us.’