Mutiny: A Novel of the Bounty

  ‘If either of them was to lose his bucket, don’t you think it would be important for him to inform us all and admit to the loss?’

  ‘Yes, sir, of course,’ I said.

  ‘Well, you must be punished for it,’ he said. ‘You will do a double shift all this day at the oars and let that be a lesson to you.’ And he boxed my ears then to finish off. ‘Mr Samuel, allow Turnstile here to take your place.’

  The ship’s clerk stood up and I sat down and began rowing, my face burning with shame, aware of the looks of condemnation I was receiving from the others, but it mattered not. It would be forgotten by the next day. We had more things to worry about than this.

  56

  Day 16: 13 May

  NOTHING OF ANY INTEREST TO any of us took place this day. It was just tedium. Tedium and hunger.

  57

  Day 17: 14 May

  ABAD DAY WAS MADE WORSE when I was awakened in the middle of the night by a great wave tumbling into the tub and landing directly on my person. I spat water from my mouth and sat up straight, wondering why the other seven or eight men who were asleep beside and atop me did not waken too. No doubt it had something to do with the fact that we were all so tired and feeble by now that it would take more than a little splash of water to disturb them. I looked around and was surprised to see the captain sitting behind me at the rear of the launch – his usual position was at the fore – and, sensing my eyes on him, he turned round to look at me.

  ‘Not asleep, Turnstile?’ he asked quietly.

  ‘I was,’ I said. ‘I was awakened.’

  ‘You should try to sleep again,’ he replied, turning away from me and looking out at the water; the moon was full in the sky that night and lent his face a spectral aspect. ‘We must all rest when we can to maintain our strength.’

  ‘Are you all right, sir?’ I asked, stepping over the snoring body of Robert Lamb and making my way to the seat beside him. ‘Is there anything I can do for you?’

  ‘We’re not on the Bounty now, lad,’ he said sadly. ‘There’s little that you can do for me. I lost the ship, don’t you remember?’

  ‘I remember it being stolen from you, sir,’ said I. ‘I remember it being taken. By mutineers and pirates.’

  ‘Aye, but I’ll not see it again, I know that much.’

  I nodded and considered what I might say to lift his spirits. By now we were simply two men drawn together at a difficult time rather than captain and servant. I wanted to tell him something that would make him feel more like his old cheerful self, but I have never been much of a one on occasions like this. Fortunately for me he chose to speak first.

  ‘Do you know why they did it, John?’ he asked me, employing my Christian name for once, a rare treat. ‘Why they took my boat, I mean?’

  ‘Because they’re blackguards, sir,’ I replied. ‘There’s no way around it. They’re a rum lot, every one. I never trusted that Mr Christian, if you want to know the truth. There was always the air of a nance about him. I know he’s an officer, sir, but I can say that now, can’t I? I can say what I think?’

  ‘He’s not an officer any more,’ he said with a shrug. ‘He’s a pirate. A traitor. Treasonous. He’ll be a wanted man when we return home. And he’ll hang for it sooner or later.’

  I smiled, appreciative of how the captain always referred to when we returned to England, not if. ‘I never saw a man with cleaner hair than he,’ I continued then, warming to my theme. ‘Or neater nails. Or one who smelled so good. I never knew whether I should obey him or whistle at him. And as for that scut Mr Heywood . . . He were a bad lot from the start.’

  ‘Fletcher and I . . . Mr Christian, I mean . . . we had known each other a long time. I know his family. I promoted him, Turnstile. It vexes me. Why would they do it?’

  I bit my lip and considered the matter. There was something that had been preying on my mind for days, but I had not yet had the opportunity to speak to the captain about it. ‘There was a list, Captain,’ I said finally.

  ‘A list?’

  ‘Mr Fryer found it. It had the names of the mutineers on it. Mr Christian’s name was there. And Mr Heywood’s. And the others too.’

  ‘Aye, you know about that, do you?’ he asked, narrowing his eyes to stare at me. ‘Who told you about it?’

  ‘Truthfully, I was awake that evening, sir,’ said I. ‘When the two officers were summoned to your cabin. When Mr Fryer spoke to you about it. I heard the conversation.’

  ‘I suspect you have heard rather a lot over the course of our voyage, Turnstile,’ he said. ‘I have always thought that you are a young man who keeps his ears open and his mouth shut.’

  ‘It’s right enough,’ I admitted.

  ‘I’m glad of it, in truth,’ he said. ‘I might need your memory when we return to England.’ There it was again. ‘When the courts convene, and they will convene. When my name is blackened.’ He hesitated and I thought I could hear a catch in his voice. ‘And it will be blackened,’ he added.

  ‘Yours, sir?’ said I, appalled. ‘But why? What have you done to deserve that?’

  ‘We live in strange times,’ he said with a shrug. ‘Stories have a way of altering. There will be those who will ask why a group of men, including officers from decent families, would turn on their captain in the way that they did. They will blame me, some of them. Only one story will be remembered in the end. Either my own or theirs.’

  ‘But yours is the truth, sir,’ said I, surprised that he could be so pessimistic. ‘A fairer captain never lived. That is what they will remember.’

  ‘Do you think so? Who is to say, after all? One of us – Mr Christian and me, I mean – will be remembered as a tyrant and a blackguard. And the other will be recalled as a hero. I may need your ears and your memory to assume my rightful place.’

  ‘Sir, was my name on the list?’ I asked, blurting this out quicker than I had expected.

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘The list of mutineers,’ I said. ‘Was my name there?’

  He breathed heavily through his nose and looked me in the eye; the waves splashed towards the side of the tub as he hesitated. ‘It was there,’ he said.

  ‘Then it’s a slander,’ I replied quickly. ‘For I never would have joined them, sir. Not ever. I never heard of it and I never enjoined in any such conversation.’

  ‘It was not a list of mutineers,’ he replied, shaking his head. ‘It was a list of men who Christian thought would join him. People he considered to be . . . unhappy with their lot. Were you unhappy, Turnstile? Did I give you cause to be unhappy?’

  ‘Not I, sir,’ I replied. ‘I was unhappy at home. I was unhappy in England.’

  ‘Ah, yes,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘That.’

  ‘That, sir.’

  ‘You will not be returning to the same life, lad,’ he said. ‘I promise you that.’

  ‘I know it.’

  He smiled and patted me on the shoulder. ‘Do you know something?’ he said. ‘By my calculations today is the fourteenth of May. My own boy’s birthday. I miss him.’

  I nodded but said nothing. I could see that he was emotional at the memory of his son, and before a few more moments had passed I stepped back to my seat, lay down and tried to sleep. And it came, fitfully at first, and then deeper.

  58

  Day 18: 15 May

  I WAS ON ROWING DUTY AN hour or two after sun-up when the midshipman Robert Tinkler suffered the first of his hallucinations. Surgeon Ledward was rowing to my left and we were both engaged about our work without conversation, our arms pulling the oars forwards and backwards without thought any more. The weather had taken an unexpected turn and for once we were not spending our time bailing water from the boat; indeed, some of the men had taken their sodden shirts and britches off and were laying them out in the hope that they might dry over the course of a few hours.

  ‘Charles,’ said Mr Tinkler, appearing from behind us and turning his attention to Surgeon Ledward, whose Christian name was not Ch
arles at all, but Thomas. ‘They say the mare in the high paddock is with foal again. You never told me she had been put out to the stud-horse.’

  Ledward turned his head for a moment and stared at the other man, a look of surprise mingled with disinterest plastered about his features. As he did so, I noticed a long stretch of white flaky skin scabbing its way along his neck and into his shirt and wondered what the surgeon himself made of it.

  ‘I told Father that we should purchase our own studhorse,’ continued Tinkler, oblivious to his lunacy. ‘The shillings it costs every time we—’

  ‘What madness is this?’ asked Ledward. ‘Who do you think I am, Robert, some brother of yours? Some friend?’

  Tinkler stared at him and I thought I caught a nasty look in his eye, as if he was more accustomed to arguing with whoever he believed the surgeon to be than appeasing him.

  ‘You’re no longer my brother, is that it?’ he snapped. ‘I told you that those were nothing but lies that you had about me and Mary Martin-field. I would never lay a finger on someone who you had your heart set on. If we allow this to come between us—’

  ‘Robert, take a rest,’ said the surgeon in a soothing voice. ‘Lay your head down over there where there’s space and close your eyes a spell. When you awaken, things will seem much brighter.’

  Mr Tinkler opened his mouth to say more, but appeared to soften then, nodding his head and turning away for the direction that the surgeon had indicated. I watched him stretch out and close his eyes and within a very few seconds his body was inching upwards and downwards in the act of sleep.

  ‘Is he for the madhouse?’ I asked the surgeon, nodding my own head in the direction of our departed friend.

  ‘Perhaps,’ he replied. ‘It’s hard to tell. The voyage is playing tricks with his head. As is the hunger. And the lack of water.’

  ‘That’s playing tricks with all of us,’ I pointed out. ‘But I don’t believe myself to be the Duke of Portland on account of it.’

  ‘It will affect each of us in different ways,’ he said. ‘What you must not do is aggravate the situation. Mr Tinkler may be in a state of dementia or it may be a passing folly. But our quarters are too small to have him stimulated. I would suggest that if he starts speaking like that again, then you simply humour him and play the part that he assigns you.’

  ‘Merciful Saviour,’ I said, astonished by this, wondering which of us the madness might strike next. ‘You’ve seen this sort of thing before, then?’ I asked.

  ‘I’ve not been stuck in the middle of the Pacific Ocean on a launch barely designed for eight, let alone eighteen, with no opportunity for sustenance and a near certainty of death on my hands, Turnip, no.’ I raised an eyebrow and glared at him and he gave a half-smile and shook his head. ‘I apologize,’ he said. ‘That was unfair.’

  ‘It was a simple enough question,’ I stated. ‘I merely wanted to know whether you had experience of Bedlamites and how to treat them.’

  ‘Not I,’ he admitted. ‘My father and grandfather were physicians before me but we have each dealt with matters of the body, not of the mind. It’s an area of little interest to most true surgeons as there are no cures for those whose brains are diseased. Incarceration is the fairest solution for society.’

  ‘I’ve heard terrible stories about those places,’ I said with a shudder. ‘I wouldn’t care for them myself.’

  ‘Then you must remain healthy and not give in to vice. Lads of your own age give in to vice constantly and I swear it is one of the reasons for lunacy in later life.’

  I said nothing; I had observed on occasion that Mr Ledward was a religious man and I wondered whether he was suggesting that spending too much time at tug, which it was true that I did, would send me demented. He had carried a Bible with him during the course of the outward voyage, and read from it frequently, although unlike many of his ilk he did not see fit to impose its tracts upon the rest of us.

  ‘I have never given in to vice in my life,’ I protested, sniffing slightly and turning away from him. ‘And I consider the suggestion a slander on my character.’

  ‘Yes, yes, Turnip,’ he said irritably. ‘I shall take your word on it, then.’

  I turned away from him, intending to stare out to sea in silence again, but was disturbed by Mr Tinkler sitting up and commenting on the condition of the streets of Cardiff these days and their tendency to be over-polluted by the manure of the horses, and I shook my head and sighed, hoping that the surgeon was wrong, for if I was to survive this voyage at all I wanted it to be as a healthy lad and not as one who would be sent to the madhouse immediately upon my return.

  59

  Day 19: 16 May

  IF THE SAVIOUR HAD SEEN fit to give us a bit of sunshine on our backs the day before, he took a great delight in spinning us the other way round on this day, for the gales and storms blew up like nobody’s business and threatened to send us all downwards to a watery grave for some six or seven hours. Our strongest and best rowers – John Hallett, Peter Linkletter, William Peckover and Lawrence LeBogue – took on the oars themselves and worked as if they were one man with four limbs to keep us afloat. Others bailed water from the deck, while the rest of us dared to utter a few terrified prayers in our heads that we might survive this escapade.

  When the hurricanes finally died down and we had nothing left to contend with but wind and rain, the captain sensed our misery and offered us a little salt-pork, which was our finest remnant from our brief time on the Friendly Islands, as well as a morsel of bread and a thimbleful of water. I confess that the three items taken together felt like a great feast, and had my stomach not been screaming that this was not enough for it, not enough by far, I would have lain back a happy and sated Turnstile and thought myself a fine fellow altogether.

  ‘Captain,’ said Mr Tinkler, who had briefly returned to his senses, although perhaps they were still a little impaired considering the impudence that was to come. ‘Captain, you can’t mean to give us just this?’ he asked.

  ‘Just what, Mr Tinkler?’ replied the captain, running the back of his hand across his eyes, wiping the rain from them, the dark bags beneath them betraying his exhaustion.

  ‘These morsels,’ said Mr Tinkler, a note of utter frustration creeping into his tone. ‘Why, they wouldn’t be enough to feed a budgerigar, let alone a crew of grown men and the lad Turnip.’

  I took exception to this but said nothing for now, merely adding it in my mind to a list of perceived insults and slights.

  ‘Mr Tinkler,’ replied the captain with a sigh, ‘that is all there is. Should I give you more and starve you tomorrow? And the next day? Is that what you would have me do?’

  The former Bedlamite stood up at this, stretched his arms out before him slowly and curled his hands into fists, not in order to make assault on the captain but to pump them up and down in the air in anger. ‘Tomorrow is tomorrow,’ he said, stating the clear and obvious. ‘May we not worry about that then?’

  ‘No,’ said the captain, shaking his head.

  ‘But I am starving,’ came the screaming reply. ‘I shall die of my hunger. Look here,’ he added, lifting his chemise to reveal a set of fine ribs, on which I might have run a spoon and produced a harmonious effect. ‘I am skin and bone!’

  ‘We are all skin and bone, sir,’ cried the captain. ‘And we will remain skin and bone until we have saved ourselves. It is the price we pay for the crimes of our erstwhile sailors.’

  ‘The price we pay for our folly in joining you, you mean,’ he shouted, incensed, turning round to look at the rest of us, his face both pale with illness and scarlet with fury, if such a description can be understood. He turned to an unlistening audience, however, for none of us was in a mood to listen to his disputes. ‘What say you, men?’ he cried. ‘We are deprived. We are starved. There is . . .’ He looked up towards the crate that sat locked beside the captain at all times, its key suspended from his neck. ‘There is food in there,’ he roared. ‘Food that Mr Bligh decides when
and if we should dine off. Who gave him this authority? Why do we allow it?’

  At this the captain leapt from his seat at the fore of the launch and in a trice was about Mr Tinkler with the back of his hand; there was a madness in his eyes and for a moment I worried about where this might end. ‘Sit you down, sir,’ he roared in a voice so loud that even Mr Christian might have heard him. ‘I’ll not have talk like this, do you hear me? Have we not had enough of mutiny for one lifetime? Who gave me my authority? you ask. The king, sir! The king gave it and only the king might take it away.’

  Mr Tinkler locked eyes with the captain for five, six, seven, seconds and it was anyone’s guess whether he might come back at him again and attack him. I saw Mr Fryer and Mr Elphinstone ready to pounce should the situation become untenable, but holding their muster for the moment. I was half off the seat myself, ready to defend the captain should he need assistance, but it was all in vain, for the stare of power was enough for Tinkler and his face collapsed in a mixture of pain, upset, starvation and madness, before he sank to the deck and wept like a molly. The captain’s hand lifted again for a moment, preparing to touch his shoulder, I believed, but he thought better of it and turned back for his seat.

  ‘You shall eat when I say you shall eat,’ he shouted for us all to hear. ‘And you shall eat what I give you. I swallow no more than any man on board, you know that. We shall survive, do you hear me? We shall survive this! And you will obey me!’

  There was a low murmuring of cheers, but, in truth, we were half the men we had been and even a scene like this could do little to break the monotony of our voyage and the terror of our new lives. A few minutes after it had begun we were back at our duties and it was all forgotten, except for that one fact which had so incensed Robert Tinkler to begin with.

  We were, every man jack of us, the captain included, starving.