Hell's Fire

by Brian Freemantle

  ‘How do you know that?’ demanded Bunyan.

  ‘He spoke about it often, after we were cast adrift.’

  ‘I’m glad we’ve reached that point,’ smiled Bunyan. ‘Let’s talk about the open boat voyage.’

  Fryer clenched his hands behind his back.

  ‘It was an incredible voyage,’ tempted Bunyan.

  ‘Yes, sir,’ agreed Fryer, cautiously.

  ‘Remind the court of it,’ demanded the lawyer.

  ‘We all thought, in the first few minutes, that we were lost,’ remembered Fryer. ‘The sea was to within inches of the gunwales … there were eighteen of us in the boat and hardly room to sit down. We got the launch as ship-shape as possible and Captain Bligh said we were setting sail for Timor.’

  ‘How far was that?’ intruded Bunyan.

  ‘1,200 leagues.’

  ‘Over 3,600 miles?’ clarified the layman.

  Fryer nodded.

  ‘We landed at Tofoa,’ recalled Fryer. ‘But the natives attacked, trying to stone us. In escaping, John Norton, the quarter-master, was killed. They tried chasing us in their canoes, but we threw clothes overboard. In stopping to pick them up, the natives lost the chance to overhaul us.’

  ‘Whose idea was that subterfuge?’ asked Hood, curiously.

  ‘The captain’s,’ said Fryer. ‘After that, we decided to keep at sea as much as possible. We made land on several islands to gather shellfish and on three occasions we were almost beaten under by storms …’

  ‘Was your food sufficient?’ asked Bunyan.

  ‘Captain Bligh firmly rationed it.’

  ‘To what?’

  ‘An ounce and a half of bread a day … an ounce, raw, of any seabird we captured … we even ate the innards … and a gill of water …’

  ‘Scarcely enough to live?’

  ‘Scarcely,’ agreed Fryer. The man did know of the enquiry demanded by Bligh, the master knew.

  ‘There was an unusual incident when you arrived at the Dutch settlement, was there not?’

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘Was there not, on the instigation of Captain Bligh, an official enquiry into the conduct of yourself and another man to be a witness at this enquiry, Mr Purcell?’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ agreed Fryer.

  ‘Well?’ insisted Bunyan.

  Fryer hesitated. Damn Bligh, he thought. Damn Bligh and the Bounty and Fletcher Christian and the very day he’d become associated with any of them.

  ‘Captain Bligh alleged we were near mutinous on the voyage …’ said Fryer, at last.

  ‘Were you afraid for your life, in that launch?’ demanded Bunyan.

  ‘Aye, sir. All the time,’ agreed Fryer, definitely.

  ‘Yet, afraid though you were, there was serious dissent between you and your captain?’

  Fryer nodded. He felt very tired, he realised.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘We … Mr Purcell and myself … believed he was taking more than his fair share of the food.’

  ‘Was he?’ broke in Hood.

  ‘It was never proven,’ conceded Fryer. ‘In Timor we publicly withdrew the charge and the captain said he would forget the matter.’

  The President sensed the changing mood among the officers around him. This was a very different account than that which they had expected to hear, he thought.

  ‘Would you serve again with Captain Bligh?’ demanded Bunyan, suddenly.

  ‘A naval officer serves upon whichever ship he is appointed,’ replied Fryer, formally. After today, he thought, he’d be lucky to serve with anybody, anywhere.

  ‘Would you serve again with Captain Bligh?’ insisted Bunyan, doggedly. ‘Or would you ask the Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty to reconsider their decision?’

  ‘I would ask the Lords of the Admiralty to reconsider their decision,’ conceded Fryer.

  Bunyan sat down, abruptly, content at what he’d done. He stared at Fryer. Poor bugger, he thought. A shifty, unpleasant man, perhaps, but he’d been mauled in that questioning.

  The prisoner Morrison strained for the President’s attention and Hood nodded, curtly. It took Morrison only minutes to establish that he had provided the castaways with weapons and in full view of the launch been threatened by Churchill because of his action. Hood frowned when the man resumed his seat. He had expected more questioning on the lines opened by the lawyer. Perhaps, thought the President, the prisoner was content with what Bunyan had brought out.

  Hood shifted, cramped in his chair. It had been a long sitting, he thought.

  ‘We’ll adjourn,’ he announced, without reference to the other officers.

  ‘An odd affair,’ offered Sir Andrew Snape Hammond, as they filed out of the cabin.

  Hood nodded.

  ‘Can’t see, from the evidence, that there’s any doubt about the guilt of most of them,’ said the President.

  ‘Oh, not at all,’ agreed the officer. ‘The mutiny is clear enough. But Bligh seems to have brought much of the troubles upon his own head.’

  ‘He does that,’ agreed Hood. ‘An odd man … a very odd man.’

  Edward Christian had been reading the notes of Bunyan’s clerk for over an hour, hunched close to the candle and never once looking up from the thick sheaf of paper on the table before him. From the occasional grunt the younger lawyer guessed that Fletcher Christian’s brother was very satisfied.

  At last the older man pushed the transcript away and smiled across at his colleague. Before speaking he went to the decanter and poured them both wine.

  ‘Magnificent, Mr Bunyan,’ he congratulated. ‘I could not have succeeded better myself.’

  And he couldn’t, Edward accepted. The man had exceeded his every hope.

  ‘I detected a very different attitude in the court, too,’ said Bunyan, warmed by the praise.

  Edward went back to the desk and began carefully arranging the papers into their original orderly pile.

  ‘I shall publish this, in manuscript form,’ decided Edward, suddenly. ‘This and whatever else you succeed in establishing, during the hearing.’

  Bunyan frowned, unbalanced by the announcement.

  ‘To what end?’ he asked.

  Edward hesitated at the question, then smiled. Of course, he realised, the other man wouldn’t know the depth of his determination.

  ‘To tell the world about Captain Bligh,’ he elaborated. ‘And wipe away the disgrace from my brother’s name.’

  He lifted his glass, gazing down at the other man.

  ‘I give you a toast, Mr Bunyan. “To the destruction of Captain William Bligh.”’

  No one came to the cave, high in the cliffs on the lower reaches of which he could just see the women collecting their eggs. Christian had found it within weeks of arriving on Pitcairn and withdrawn more and more to it, his own solitary retreat, as his relationship with the other mutineers had worsened.

  At first it had been his look-out point, the spot to which he clambered almost daily, musket and shot in hand for the last redoubt, expecting to see a sail on the horizon that would mean Bligh had survived. As the years had passed, that fear had reduced to the vaguest, rarely considered apprehension, but the hideaway had retained its importance, the place to which he could go, away from Isabella even. To examine his past, as a rich man might study a favourite painting.

  Far below lay the concealed village they had built upon Pitcairn, each plot carefully designated and marked in its irregular circle, like the huge Sunday pies he could remember his mother baking when he was a boy in Cumberland. So many years ago, he thought, nostalgically. And so far away.

  It was a neat village, congratulated Christian, gazing down. He’d planned it, he remembered, going through the pretence of a committee, but cleverly manipulating the discussion to achieve the layout he wanted, every dwelling well concealed from the sea behind thick banyan trees. Each house had been finely thatched in pandanus palm in the Tahitian manner that the women had taught them, and the breadfruit and the sweet potatoes and th
e yams laid out in their tiny plantations, as David Nelson and William Brown had created their gardens in Tahiti all those years ago.

  If he looked very hard, squinting against the sun, he could isolate in the houses the spars and beams they had salvaged from the Bounty before Young and Quintal had fired her. So stupid, he reflected, in constant regret.

  Jack Williams was in his garden, he could see. A good worker, Jack. But growing increasingly discontented since his wife, Pashotu, had fallen to her death egg-collecting on the cliffs upon which he sat. There were only three women to be shared among the six native men they had brought with them from Tahiti and they were already becoming disgruntled at the segregated society that had arisen on the island. Christian suspected Williams intended taking one of their women as a new wife. And that would trigger the threatened bloodshed, he thought. He was surprised the others didn’t seem to realise the danger, casually leaving their muskets and cutlasses unguarded in every house.

  His one-time friend, Edward Young, appeared, child on hip, and almost immediately Alexander Smith, who had years ago confessed to sailing on the Bounty under an assumed name and had now reverted to his proper identity, Jack Adams, joined him from the house next door. As Young’s friendship with Christian had soured to a mutual dislike, Young’s comradeship with Adams had grown and now the two men were almost inseparable. It was a useful association, accepted Christian, realistically. Apart from the bruised pride of rejection, he didn’t seek to be the community leader. It was a role that came far more naturally to the two men gossiping far below. They had both accepted completely that they would end their days on the tiny, high-rocked island and were content with it. Not for years had he heard either of them recriminate about what had happened on the Bounty: tomorrow’s crop of yams was far more important than yesterday’s mistakes.

  As high as he was, Christian heard the singing and isolated first Quintal and then his friend Mickoy, slowly picking their way from the spot on the outskirts of the village where Mickoy distilled his taro liquor.

  The trouble-makers, identified Christian. If Williams hadn’t appeared so determined to take one of the native women, Christian would have guessed Quintal and Mickoy the likeliest cause of dissent with the Tahitians. Both men treated the natives like slaves, driving them to tend their gardens and plots and beating them at the slightest indication of defiance.

  He saw Young and Adams turn but even from that distance there did not appear to be any conversation: both men despised the seamen as much as he did, Christian knew. Irritated at being ignored, Quintal and Mickoy performed a charade of greeting, bowing and shouting, and finally Young and Adams responded, choosing the easy way out. It was becoming the demeanour on their island, Christian thought. The easy way out, to avoid a confrontation that might destroy the uneasy calm of which they were all aware but did not want to recognise.

  ‘… not a day without torment …’

  The daily thought … the daily memory. Bligh haunted him, realised Christian, the spectre always at his shoulder, cackling and gloating. He hoped that whatever death the man had suffered had been a painful one. How much better it would have been, reflected Christian, suddenly, if Bligh had survived to undergo the agonies in which he lived, like a man with an illness slowly eating away at his flesh. But Bligh wouldn’t be in torment, had he survived. Victims of mutinies were heroes. Bligh had always thought himself a hero, remembered Christian. One of his favourite dinner-table conversations was of encountering Nelson and realising how similar he was in stature to the admiral revered throughout England.

  For a while, until he had realised Christian had identified it and was laughing at the stupidity, Bligh had even aped the man’s mannerisms, stumping the quarter-deck with the impatient tread regarded as one of the great admiral’s affectations.

  Bligh had had many acts, Christian recalled. He had been a man of pretence, adopting manners and attitudes to suit the mood of a moment, like a chameleon colouring itself to its surroundings.

  Not even Elizabeth really knew her husband, he reflected, closing his eyes to picture the full-nosed, gentle woman, conscious of her plumpness and always slightly in awe at the bustle of London, compared to the calm of her Isle of Man home. To her, Bligh had been a man destined for greatness, someone in whom there was no fault.

  She had indicated as much, he remembered, on the last occasion he bad been at Bligh’s house in Lambeth. Bligh had just selected him for the Bounty and on that occasion the act had been that of the magnanimous benefactor, patronisingly accepting the gratitude of a young man benefiting from his influence and largesse.

  ‘Mr Bligh is so good,’ the woman had confided eagerly. ‘Such a good husband. And father to the girls. And bound for such great things …’

  The head had come forward, a habit of the woman when excited.

  ‘… the King knows of him, would you believe …’

  Poor woman, thought Christian.

  Far below the stumbling seamen continued their promenade of the village. The native men stood aloof, contempt visible in their attitude, but the women giggled as they passed, nervously amused.

  They were approaching his house, Christian realised suddenly. He saw Isabella appear with the baby after its feed and carefully place him in the crib that Christian had made, then straighten at the men’s approach. Thursday bustled importantly around from the back of the house and stood, plump arm around his mother’s legs.

  She was very beautiful, thought Christian, gazing down. Taller than most Tahitian women and with an aristocratic, commanding bearing that came from her birth as a chief’s daughter. It was too far away to see, but Christian did not think she was laughing, as the other women had done.

  Too far away. The fear was like a hand, feeling at his stomach. He’d sat so long in the damned cave, awash in self-pity, that he’d exposed Isabella to risk.

  ‘… always be there, when you turn to look for me …’

  The promise echoed in his mind. She was looking for him now, he knew. So where was he?

  He thrust away through the opening, crabbing along the narrow ledge that girdled the cliff in the first of the haphazard criss-cross of paths, like the sandal thongs around the legs of the ancient Greeks.

  The ledge was narrow here, in places only half as wide as a man’s foot, which was why his cave was so secure behind its screen of banyan trees. Christian shuffled along it carelessly, whimpering in the frustration of having to move so slowly, stones and displaced rock cascading into the sea heaving hundreds of feet below.

  Normally he descended with his face against the rock, arms and legs spread for hand- and footholds. Now he traversed facing outwards, only his heels on the ledge and the musket clutched desperately in his right hand like a balancing pole, so that he could watch constantly the scene being enacted in miniature below.

  They were bowing and genuflecting again, but this time he detected an anger in their movements that had been missing when they had confronted Young and Adams.

  And he knew why, thought Christian, embarking on another path that would take him at the commencement of its descent even further away from the woman. The drink had removed the cover from a feeling that even they, the scum, normally managed to conceal. Only Isabella had remained utterly faithful since their arrival on Pitcairn. The other women had continued as on Tahiti, sleeping as the mood or inclination took them with different mutineers and even, occasionally, with the Tahitian men who had accompanied them into exile. In the later years the relationships had become more monogamous, but even now none of the mutineers could ever be sure that his partner wouldn’t lift her skirts or open her mouth for another of the men if she felt like doing so. Isabella had been approached, of course. Christian knew that. In the early days, there had even been a strange pride that Isabella, unquestionably the most beautiful woman on the island, had been so attractive to the other men, the feeling heightened by his confidence that she would always reject them.

  His heel skidded off the rock and he grop
ed to his left, feeling the skin scrape off his ankle and then even further, into his calf. He drove the musket down on the ledge, and hung there, his body bent and supported on one side by his right foot and at the other by his left arm, propped against the gun. There was hardly any sensation at all in his left leg, hanging limply in space. He could feel the warmth of the blood, though, sticky as it pooled in his shoe. He would unbalance completely, he realised, if he brought his right arm over to put himself into a crawling position. And there was insufficient room to crawl on the ledge, anyway. The muscles began to cramp in his back and his arm started to shake with the strain of supporting the weight of his body. He moved his hand backwards, along the rock face, fingers flickering for a crack or an outcrop he was unable to look back to locate.

  Below he could see the charade continuing. Quintal, the more daring of the two, had actually gone into the garden, gesturing the reluctant Mickoy to follow him. The older boy had instinctively sensed danger and had started to cry, Christian saw, and Isabella had lifted him into her arms, nudging her face reassuringly into his head. She wouldn’t be afraid, he knew. Not Isabella. She’d never known the feeling, in her youth on Tahiti. And here, on Pitcairn, she’d always been so sure of Christian’s protection.

  He felt something. It wasn’t a wide crack; little more than a fissure splitting downwards through the rock. Gently, frightened of losing it, he traced his forefinger along, hoping it would widen. But it didn’t. Desperately, feeling them split and chip, he drove his nails into the tiny crevice, struggling his body up. He pressed against the gun butt, levering from the other side. If the rock broke away under his fingers, he’d go over, he realised. He’d be dead before he hit the water, he knew; all the air would be driven from his lungs by the fall. And as he fell, Isabella would be defiled. Debris began slipping over the edge, disturbed by the swivelling action of the one foot he still had anchored. The feeling was returning to the other leg now, the pain snatching up almost to his groin: it would swell very quickly, he guessed. Damn the sweat, he thought. It was running into his eyes so that he could hardly see and making slippery the hand that gripped the musket. He tried lifting his left foot, very slightly, moving his heel for it to catch on the ledge. At the first attempt he missed, and again grated it against the rock, stripping off more skin, but got a foothold when he tried again. The whole leg burned with the pain now and he could hardly put any pressure upon it. He manoeuvred fully upright, feeling his legs and arms tremble with the strain imposed upon them.