by John Hunt
“Some stayed behind, however,” Joseph continued. “Several men who had not been part of the mutiny stayed in Tahiti, along with several of the mutineers.”
“I lost you there, Joseph. Some of the men on the ship did not take part in the mutiny?”
“Yes. In fact much of the ship’s company had sided with Bligh. But there was not room enough in Bligh’s longboat for them all to be set adrift. Some stayed on the Bounty. Those men remained in Tahiti, along with several of the mutineers who were willing to take the risk of getting caught by the British. Most of the mutineers were later captured and returned to Britain, where several were hanged, including at least one who had no part in the mutiny — as Bligh had forgotten the man’s innocence during his testimonies.”
“The mutineers shouldn’t have stayed in Tahiti. That was stupid.”
“Yes, but I am grateful for their error, because it’s in the writings and court testimony of these men that we learn something interesting. You see, the Bounty set sail from Tahiti once again, bound for a new home in the Pacific. Christian took a dozen or so of the Maori, mostly women, with him. His own girl came with him, of course. They departed with the approval of the Maori king, and indeed the Bounty was given a friendly farewell by the islanders. But in the court testimony of the mutineers and the others who stayed on Tahiti and later returned to Britain, they mentioned several times a great uproar among the members of the Tahitian royal family just one day after the Bounty left. It is clear that the Maoris were very angry. Hundreds of war canoes were sent out after the ship, laden with men painted as warriors. Some of the canoes were gone for weeks, and some never returned. But as far as we can ascertain, they did not catch up to the heavily rigged Bounty. The Maoris never revealed to any of the white men the reason for their anger.”
“Christian had stolen the chest with the sphere, hadn’t he?” Peter asked.
“I don’t know, Petur. But you have to wonder.”
“Is there any way to know?”
“Perhaps. Let’s consider that Christian was the only other man on the Bounty who knew the real mission. He had been a good friend of Bligh’s, and indeed Bligh hand-picked him for this voyage. Bligh was Christian’s mentor. So, if the Admiralty allowed anyone else to know about the mission, that man would be Fletcher Christian.”
“So what do you think happened, Joseph?”
“Well, when Bligh, Christian, and the Bounty first arrived at Tahiti, they had planned on spending only two to three weeks there. Instead, they spent months there. Purportedly, the reason for the long stay was that the breadfruit could not be transplanted during that season, but I think it was that Bligh and Christian were looking for the chest. I believe that Bligh, fatigued and beaten and eager to return home, gradually lost all faith in the existence of the sphere. He gave up.”
“But Christian did not give up, did he?”
“No. As I imagine it, he kept looking. Bligh watched as Christian endeared himself to the Maori, and essentially became one of the Maori. Christian would tell his friend that he was making progress, that he would soon learn where the sphere was. But weeks, and then months, passed. Bligh instinctively believed that Christian was dawdling. He thought that Christian had fallen in love and did not want to leave. Bligh soon gave up on the quest for the sphere, and then became obsessed with completing the other mission: to transport the breadfruit to the Caribbean.”
“So he set sail.”
“Right. And Christian, who may have been very close to locating the chest, was unable to do so.”
“So, when the Bounty went back to sea,” Petur cut in, “Christian arranged a mutiny.”
“Only after three weeks of begging and pleading with Captain Bligh. But Bligh wouldn’t believe him. Christian, perhaps sworn to secrecy by the Admiralty, would not enlist the crew’s support by telling them the truth. So instead, he manipulated them. He manufactured the most famous mutiny ever. But in reality, it was most appropriate for him to assume command.”
“It is an awesome tale you tell, Joseph. But it’s pure conjecture.”
Joseph held up his finger. “I have in my possession the diary of Alexander Smith, the one mutineer left alive on Pitcairn’s Island in 1808 — two decades after the mutiny, when an American sealer came upon the island.”
“A sealer?” Petur interrupted.
“They hunted the seals for fur and used their blubber for oil.”
Petur nodded his understanding.
“Now, Alexander Smith was not educated. He grew up in London as an orphan, and joined the Navy. He was thirty-five years old and could neither read nor write when the mutiny occurred. But he was taught both by one of the young gentlemen from the ship, Edward Young, ten years after the mutiny. It’s through his writings that we glean almost all of what we know about the life of the mutineers after they left Tahiti for the second time.”
“Don’t tell me he mentions the chest and the sphere!” Petur stated excitedly.
“No. Unfortunately he does not. No one at all mentioned them. Remember, Christian would have been sworn to secrecy. From what I have learned about the man, he would not break that oath.”
“How about the journals of the other mutineers from the Bounty. Do they tell us nothing?”
“Most kept none. The officers did, but they were all lost. All we have is Smith’s, which was not even started until a decade later, and therefore leaves us questioning his memory. He tells us that the Bounty was burned soon after they found Pitcairn’s. You have seen that island, Petur. Without a harbor, and nothing but steep cliffs on all sides, there was no way they could hide a sailing vessel from a passing ship. So, Smith reports, they decided to burn the vessel. He reports that they took her apart, keeping all the fittings and planking they could easily get, and then burned her to the waterline.”
“Christian must have had some help to get that heavy chest with the sphere off. People must have wondered what it was.”
“Well, Petur, if we continue with this conjecture, we must remember that there were Maoris amongst the Bounty mutineers now. In fact, there were more Maoris than white men. I cannot imagine that Christian would wish the Maoris to discover that he had stolen their most treasured relic. So, either he was very careful, and enlisted only the help of his fellow crew, or the chest never left the Bounty.”
“We have to assume that he got it off. Christian would not allow it to be burned. Not after all he had gone through.”
“I think you must be correct, Petur. Either he got the chest off, or the Bounty was never burned.”
Petur was silent for a moment. He was trying to figure where this was leading. Already the conjecture was wild. If true, then Fletcher Christian followed his secret orders to the end. British courts termed him a traitor, and his name had become a foul epithet amongst the officers of the King’s Navy. He was perhaps the most unjustly thought of man in the history of seafarers… if this was true.
“What’s the chance that the Bounty was not burned? Smith says it was. Why would he lie?”
Joseph smiled. “I cannot begin to know that. But, logically, why would they burn the Bounty? Certainly, they could not hide it along the shores of Pitcairn’s. But there were other islands within several hundred miles where they could conceal her. Those other islands were within the trade winds, and more likely to be passed by British ships, so, not good places for the mutineers to settle. But with a little ingenuity and work, they could hide a ship in a secluded harbor on an unoccupied island. And then, the men who had concealed the ship could have taken a well-supplied long boat and sailed the few hundred miles back to Pitcairn’s within a week.
“Yes, but did they do that?”
“Well, I have two questions for you. First, if you were Christian, and you were dedicated to this secret mission, would you burn your only means of completing it? And second, if you were one of the mutineers, and you were settling on a remote island, would you willingly eliminate your only way of ever leaving the place, when it was within
your power to keep the ship safely hidden? I think the answer must be ‘no’ to both of those questions. So, it makes no sense that the ship would be burned.
Petur ignored the itch of the flaking skin on his left leg and asked, “Why wouldn’t Christian just take some of the Maori and sail the ship back to Britain?”
“I don’t know, Petur.”
“Isn’t the wreck of the Bounty at Pitcairn’s Island? The cannonball you gave me, the cannons they found underwater in Bounty Bay: aren’t they evidence of it?”
“Maybe they are, maybe they aren’t.”
“So if not there, where is the Bounty, Joseph?”
“Again, I don’t know. But that brings me back to those mulberries on the zebra beach. That is what prompted this whole story, remember?” Leaning over, Joseph picked up the box that he had brought with him. “At first I thought that those mulberries we found had been seeded by birds flying from the other islands to Paradise. Or maybe some of the fruit had been carried by the ocean currents and took hold here. But if that were the case, then why would those mulberries, which are really breadfruit, be found in only one spot on the Paradise Island chain? One tiny spot only. It must have been relatively recent, Petur. The ocean currents have been the same forever, and the birds have been around for eons. So, such an isolated growth can mean only two things. First, that by sheer coincidence we happen to be present within a few hundred years of the first natural seeding of this island with breadfruit. In other words, an event that could have happened anytime in the past several million years happened just when we were here to observe it. Or, much more probably, humans did the seeding. And since it was recent, perhaps in the past few hundred years, one must naturally suspect that it was the white man who did it. Now, Petur, what white men were carting breadfruit around the Pacific?”
“You are saying that the Bounty was here in Paradise?” Petur asked incredulously.
“What we found on Zebra Beach makes me very suspicious that she came here at least at some point. And we are too far from Tahiti for her to have come before the mutiny. She must have come afterward.”
“Joseph, there is an obvious flaw in your thinking. Had the Bounty stopped here after the mutiny, then why didn’t they stay? Paradise is nowhere near the trades, and as we know, it’s much more hospitable than Pitcairn’s. It has never been inhabited, as far as we can tell. They should not have gone on to Pitcairn’s.”
“You and I think alike. They would not have left here, had they come here before Pitcairn’s.”
“You talk in circles, Joseph. Not before the mutiny, and not after. A fruit tree is your only evidence to support any of this!” Petur was shaking his head. “For a while, I was beginning to buy into all this stuff, but Joseph, you are really stretching the imagination beyond all reasonable limits!”
As he listened to Petur chastise him, Joseph calmly opened the box in his lap. He pulled out an object. Petur stopped talking in midsentence.
The brass had been polished to perfection, and it beautifully reflected the midday sun, which streamed through the skylights above. The carefully blown glass lenses were intact and clear. Joseph held it lovingly in his hands.
He said quietly, “This was found right here on Paradise 1 by the men working on the observatory while they were building the solar array. It was sitting inside a rocky crevasse at the very summit of the mountain. It’s a ship’s lantern.”
“My God, Joseph. Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I love being dramatic.” Joseph handed the lantern to Petur. “Read the inscription.”
He read the deep and bold engraving. “HMAV Bounty. May 14, 1787.” Petur spun the lamp around, and when he found nothing on the other side, looked up at Joseph. “Was that the date she was commissioned?”
“No. Rechristened. She was built in 1784, and initially called the Bethia.”
“No chance this is a fake?”
“None, Petur. It’s the real thing.”
Petur considered this for a moment. “Well, I guess this proves that someone brought one of her lamps to Paradise. It does not show us when, though.”
“Petur, you need to look again.”
Joseph watched as Petur again turned the lamp in his hands. The glass lens moved inside the brass frame, making a muffled clang. Petur turned it over carefully and looked at the base. Joseph smiled.
“I did not see that at first, either, Petur. I had to buff it up a great deal.”
Petur squinted his eyes, trying to make out the roughly scratched engraving. The engraving had not been done when the brass lamp was manufactured, but clearly later, without proper tools. It was a message.
He turned the lamp in his hands as he read aloud. “Look to the bell of the sunken Bounty, resting below. Believe no evil of me. F.C.”
Joseph could not conceal his excitement any longer. “F.C.! Fletcher Christian! Fletcher Christian was on Paradise, Petur. And the Bounty rests on the bottom, nearby, just waiting for us to find her!”
30. Women
PETUR WATCHED AS Elisa strode confidently down the ramp from the commercial aircraft and into the warm and relaxed Saturday morning atmosphere. She had been away for only a few weeks, and he had only met her once, but he had been eager for her return. There was just something about her….
He wondered if she expected anyone to welcome her. With the small population, remote location, and a somewhat limited number of opportunities for scheduled entertainment, people had to make close friends quickly. There were likely several people among the waiting crowd who would pop up to greet her.
But nobody did. Petur pressed the accelerator of his electric cart and steered it to her side as she walked in toward the baggage-claim area.
“Welcome home, Elisa! It’s good to have you back!” After several weeks of healing, his vocal cords were functioning normally and his voice was clear.
Elisa turned with a start. When she recognized Petur, she smiled and swept a hand through her hair, as if to brush back the ill effects of many hours of flight time. Her hair was not pulled back in its usual tight bun; and it was lovely as it blew in the gentle breeze. Under the out-of-style clothing and heavy lenses, Petur knew, a woman was hidden. Sophia had told him she was beautiful. Elisa seemed to be trying to hide that.
His hand indicated that she should climb into the passenger seat.
She said, “But I need to pick up my suitcase.”
“No problem. I know people.”
Elisa nodded and climbed in next to Petur and he swiftly drove the cart under the belly of the plane from which the baggage was being offloaded. “We’ll just intercept your luggage before it gets into the terminal.”
“Thank you, Petur. It is so nice of you to help me out. Lucky for me you were here!”
Petur shook his head. “There is no luck involved. I saw your name on the incoming-passenger manifest this morning.”
“And you came just to meet me?” she asked hesitantly.
Petur was embarrassed, and his ears reddened too quickly for him to conceal them. “Well, I guess that’s just what I did.” He changed the subject. “I was hoping to talk with you again about the Mexico situation. You left me with a great opportunity to worry, you know.”
She patted his shoulder and said, “Your recovery should be occupying more of your energy right now than worries about Mexico. I read about your adventures on and around the OTEC. Your picture, which wasn’t flattering, was in the newspapers.”
“They didn’t get my good side, then?” Petur asked wistfully.
“I am not sure you had a good side at the time.”
Petur nodded toward the various suitcases that were now being placed on the tarmac. “Did yours make it?”
She pointed to the middle of a large group of bags, and Petur hopped out to retrieve hers. It took a moment for Petur to work his way through the other luggage, and he turned back to the cart so she could guide him to hers. In the moment that Petur’s back was turned, Elisa had pulled her dark brown hair back
tightly. Petur’s forehead creased as he looked back at this woman: she had just intentionally made herself unattractive.
She directed him to an old, decrepit brown case. He had to push several bags out of the way to get to it, and she laughed as he fell over a hefty duffel bag and landed half on the tarmac and half on her suitcase. After he brushed the little black grains of tar off his hands, Petur pulled himself to his feet and smiled. He was not embarrassed. He did not feel foolish. It was just an opportunity for a chuckle, and he was glad he could give that opportunity to the people who were watching. One of the baggage handlers gave him a thumbs-up and said, “Have a nice trip? See you next fall!” Petur made a face at him, and hustled with the suitcase over to the cart and tossed it in the rear.
As the electric cart made its way out of the terminal area and onto Harbor Road, Petur turned to Elisa. “You know, I don’t know where you live.”
“I live in a small house near the resort. Easier to play tennis and golf, you know, when you live so near. By the way, I really appreciate the ride. And the welcome.”
“My pleasure.”
They rode in silence as Elisa directed Petur down several small roads to her house. It was essentially a bungalow: a single floor and a thatched roof. There was no view from this place. It was surrounded on all sides by the jungle. They had driven by other houses just moments ago; so it only looked to be secluded. Nonetheless, clearly her house was off the beaten path. It fit rather well the librarian look that Elisa maintained: calm, quiet, boring.
Petur pulled up to the front door, heaved the suitcase from the back seat, and followed Elisa up the three steps to her porch. As she opened the door, Elisa turned to Petur.
“Thanks again. After I take a nap and freshen up a bit, would you like to have dinner?”
Petur replied, “Since you asked first, does that mean you’re going to pay?”
“You’re a bum!”
“Always have been,” said Petur with a wink. “Eight o’clock okay?”