Mutiny on the Bounty

by Nordhoff

  Mr. Graham came to bid me farewell before leaving Portsmouth. He told me, as Sir Joseph had done, that the Court had no alternative in imposing sentence upon me; and, although he did not say so directly, he gave me to understand that I could not hope for a reprieve. The following afternoon Mr. Erskine came, remaining until dusk, during which time I settled my affairs and made my will. My only living relative was a cousin on my mother's side, a lad of fifteen who lived in India with his father. It was strange to think that our old home at Withycombe and the rest of our family fortune would go to this boy whom I had never seen.

  I shall not venture to say how I would have passed those days without work to engross my thoughts. Once again my dictionary proved to be the greatest of blessings, and it was not long before I was able to give it the whole of my attention. Every one of those manuscript pages was fragrant with Tahiti and memories of Tehani and our little Helen. Some of them the baby had torn or finger-marked, and I could plainly hear her mother's voice as she took them quickly from her, scolding her lovingly: "Oh, you little mischief! Is this the way you help your father?"

  Scarcely a word but brought memories thronging back. "Tafano"—I well remembered the circumstances which added that to my lexicon. The sweet poignant odour of the flower seemed to rise from the page where I had written it, and I lived again the happy day that Stewart and Peggy and Tehani and I had spent on the little island in the Tautira lagoon.

  I worked all day long, and every day, and by the middle of October my task was completed, in so far as the dictionary and grammar were concerned. I proceeded at once to write the introductory essay, for I knew that the time remaining to me must be short.

  The strain of waiting was telling upon all of us. Although he failed to show it, Morrison must have found it hardest to bear. To me, it seemed the refinement of cruelty to keep him so long in doubt as to his fate. A month had passed, and still he received no word.

  I had received several letters from Sir Joseph, but there was no mention of Admiralty news; nor did I expect any. He himself would not know the day set for the execution.

  On the twenty-fifth of October, I was revising, for the fourth or fifth time, the introductory essay for my dictionary, when there came a knock at the door. Every summons of this sort brought a cold sweat to my forehead, but this one was immediately followed by a well-remembered voice: "Are you there, Byam?" and I opened the door to Dr. Hamilton.

  I had not seen him since the closing day of the court-martial. He informed me that he had just been appointed surgeon to the Spitfire , then stationed at Portsmouth. It was one of the ships I could see from my cabin window. She was on the eve of sailing for the Newfoundland station, and the doctor had come to bid me good-bye.

  We talked of the Pandora , the shipwreck, the voyage to Timor, and of those two monsters of inhumanity, Edwards and Parkin. Dr. Hamilton was no longer under the necessity of concealing his feelings concerning either of these men. Parkin he loathed, of course, but his opinion of Edwards was, naturally, more fair and just than my own.

  "I quite understand your feeling toward him, Byam," he said; "but the truth is that Edwards is not the beast you think him."

  "Have you forgotten the morning of the wreck, Doctor, when we were chained hand and foot until the very moment when the ship went down?" I asked. "That our lives were saved was due entirely to the humanity of Moulter, the boatswain's mate. And have you forgotten how later, when we were on the sand-bar, Edwards refused to give us a sail that was not in use, so that we might protect our naked bodies from the sun?"

  "I agree with you there; that was cruelty of the monstrous sort; no excuse whatever can be made for it. But otherwise, Byam...Well, you must remember the character of the man. He has a high sense of what he considers his duty, but not a grain of imagination—nothing remotely resembling what might be called uncommon sense. You will remember my telling you of his Admiralty instructions? He was ordered to confine his prisoners in such a manner as to preclude all possibility of escape, and at the same time to have a due regard for the preservation of their lives. Captains of the Edwards kind should never be given truly responsible positions; they are fitted to carry out only the letter and never the spirit of Admiralty orders. One can at least say this for him: he acted in accordance with what he considered his duty."

  "I'm afraid, sir," I replied, "that I can never take so lenient a view of him. I have suffered too much at his hands."

  "I don't wonder, Byam. I don't wonder at all. You have..."

  The doctor was in the very midst of a sentence when the door was flung open and Sir Joseph entered. He was breathing heavily as though he had been running, and I could see that he was labouring under great emotion.

  "Byam, my dear lad!"

  He broke off, unable to say more. I felt an icy chill at my heart. Dr. Hamilton rose hastily, and looked from Sir Joseph to me and back again.

  "No...Wait...It's not what you think...One moment..." He took a stride into the tiny cabin and gripped me by the shoulders. "Byam...Tinkler is safe...He is found...He is in London now; at this moment!"

  "Sit you down, lad," said Dr. Hamilton. I needed no urging. My legs felt as weak as though I had been lying in bed for months. The surgeon took a small silver flask from his pocket, unscrewed the top, and offered it to me. Sir Joseph sat in the chair at my table and mopped his forehead with a large silk handkerchief. "Will you prescribe for me as well, Doctor?" he asked.

  "Please forgive me, sir," I said, handing him the flask.

  "Good heaven, Byam, don't apologize!" he replied. "Necessity knows no laws of deportment." He took a pull at the flask and returned it to the surgeon. "Damn fine brandy, sir. I'll wager it has never done better service than here, this day...Byam, I came from London as fast as a light chaise would bring me. Yesterday, at breakfast, I was glancing through my Times . In the shipping news I chanced to see an item announcing the arrival of the West Indiaman Sapphire with the survivors of the crew of the Carib Maid , lost on a passage between Jamaica and the Havannah. I need not tell you that I left my breakfast unfinished. When I arrived at the dock I found the Sapphire already discharging her cargo. The Carib Maid people had gone ashore the evening before. I traced them to an inn near by. Tinkler was there, on the point of setting out to the house of his brother-in-law, Fryer. Like the other Carib Maid survivors, he was still dressed in various articles of clothing furnished by the Sapphire 's company. He looked the part of a shipwrecked mariner, but I gave him no time for excuses. I bundled him into my carriage and carried him straight to Lord Hood. As luck would have it, the Admiral was in Town; he had dined with me the night before. Tinkler, of course, was in the greatest bewilderment at all this. I said nothing of my reason for wanting him—not a word. At half-past ten Lord Hood and I were at the Admiralty with Tinkler between us, dressed just as he had come ashore, in a seaman's jersey and boots three sizes too large for him.

  "Now what has happened, or what will happen, is this: Tinkler will be examined before the Admiralty Commissioners, who alone have the power to hear his evidence. By the grace of God and my copy of yesterday's Times , that evidence cannot be impeached as biased or prejudiced. Tinkler knows nothing of the court-martial. He has not seen Fryer, and he does not know that you are within ten thousand miles of London. I left him at the Admiralty, in proper charge, and came in all haste to Portsmouth."

  I could think of nothing to say. I merely sat, staring like a dumb man, at Sir Joseph.

  "Will the court-martial be reconvened to pass upon this evidence?" Dr. Hamilton asked.

  "No, that cannot be done; it is unnecessary that it should be done. The Admiralty Commissioners who will receive Tinkler's evidence have the power, in case the new testimony warrants it, of reversing the verdict of the court-martial in Byam's case, and completely exonerating him. We shall have their decision within a few days, I hope."

  My heart sank at this. "Will it require days, sir, for the decision to be made?" I asked.

  "You must bear up, lad,"
Sir Joseph replied. "I understand, God knows, how hard the waiting will be; but official wheels turn slowly."

  "And my ship, the Spitfire , sails to-morrow," said Dr. Hamilton, ruefully. "I shall have to leave England without knowing your fate, Byam."

  "Perhaps it's just as well, Doctor," I replied.

  Sir Joseph opened his mouth to speak, and then gazed blankly at me.

  "Byam, I'm afraid I've made an unpardonable mistake! The realization has only this moment come to me! Good God, what have I done! You should have been told nothing of all this until the decision of the Commissioners has been given!"

  "Not at all, sir," I replied. "You shan't be allowed to condemn yourself. You have given me reason to hope. Even though the hope prove unfounded, I shall be none the less grateful."

  "You truly mean that?"

  "Yes, sir."

  He gave me a keen, scrutinizing glance. "I see that you do. I am glad I came." He rose. "And now I must leave you again. I shall go back to London at once. I must be there to expedite matters as much as possible for you." He shook my hand. "If it is good news, Byam, Captain Montague shall receive it for you by messenger riding the best horses that ever galloped the Portsmouth road."

  CHAPTER XXV.—TINKLER

  Sir Joseph Banks carried my completed manuscripts back to London with him. Having finished my work, I asked permission to take up my quarters in the gun room again, and returned the same evening. The strain of waiting was less hard to endure in company. I told only Morrison of Tinkler's return; it would have been cruel to have informed the others, men deprived of all hope of life.

  Morrison's Bible proved a resource to all of us during those last days. It was the same copy he had carried with him on the Bounty , and had been preserved even through the wreck of the Pandora . We read aloud, in turn, to the others, and we continued for hours so as to prevent ourselves from thinking of what was soon to come. Millward and. Muspratt had aroused themselves from their stupor of despair. My liking and respect for these men increased greatly at this time. Tom Ellison had never for a moment lost his courage. It was a bitter thought that this lad, who had not an ounce of harm in him, was to lose his life as the result of a boyish indiscretion, at a time when he was most fitted to live. Only Burkitt remained as he had been from the day when sentence was pronounced. Except for brief intervals at mealtime, he paced up and down, hour after hour. Occasionally he would sit down for a moment, his head between his hands, staring dully at the floor; then he would lift his great shaggy head and glance around the room as though he had never seen it before, and a moment later spring to his feet and resume his pacing.

  On the morning of October 26, we watched the Spitfire getting up her anchors. It was a windless day, and boats' crews from the Hector and the Brunswick were sent to assist in towing her out of the harbour. We saw, or thought we saw, Dr. Hamilton standing on the poop as the ship moved slowly out toward Spithead. Whether or not it was the surgeon, we knew that he was thinking of us that morning as we were thinking of him and wishing him Godspeed.

  We welcomed every diversion, however slight; not a ship's boat crossing our line of vision escaped us. We criticized the way her men handled the oars, and conjectured as to where she was going and why. And every time the door of the gun room opened, every time the guard was changed or food was brought, I felt the cold chill about my heart that every condemned man must have known. Many a time during those weeks did I wish that the Admiralty Commissioners might have stood in our places for one day. The needless cruelty inflicted upon six men, prolonged during a period of more than a month, gave me a disgust for official routine which I retain to this day.

  On the Sunday afternoon, Morrison was reading aloud to the rest of us. It was a cold day of drizzling rain, and Morrison was sitting close to one of the ports, holding his Bible on a level with his eyes that he might benefit by what dim light there was. All of us, excepting Burkitt, were gathered around him as we listened to that most beautiful of all the Psalms:—

  The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.

  Morrison read on in his clear musical voice, choosing those psalms that had comforted many generations of men in time of trouble. Of a sudden he halted in the midst of a sentence, and turned his head quickly toward the door. In so far as I remember we had heard nothing,—no sound, no voice, no tread of feet,—and yet we rose together and stood waiting, our eyes turned in the same direction. Burkitt stopped short and looked from the guards to us and back again. "What's up?" he asked, hoarsely. There was no need to reply. The door opened and a lieutenant of marines entered, followed by the master-at-arms and a guard of eight men.

  It was all but dark in the room and we could scarcely distinguish the faces of the men who had entered. The master-at-arms carried a paper in his hand. He crossed to one of the ports and held it up to the dim light.

  "Thomas Burkitt—John Millward—Thomas Ellison."

  "The prisoners named step forward," the lieutenant ordered.

  The three men moved to the centre of the room. Handcuffs were snapped upon their wrists, and they were placed in the centre of the guard, four men in front and four behind.

  "Forward, march!"

  They were gone in an instant without a word of farewell being said. Morrison, Muspratt, and I stood where we were, and the door was closed and locked once more. A moment later, as we peered from the ports, we saw one of the Hector's cutters put off from the gangway, and in the last grey light of the autumn afternoon we could distinguish the three shackled men on a thwart astern. Moored abreast of the Hector and about four hundred yards distant was H.M.S. Brunswick . We saw the cutter pass under her counter and disappear.

  The anxiety of the night that followed is painful to recall. Morrison, Muspratt, and I made no pretense of sleeping. We sat by one of the ports, now and then peering out into the darkness toward the Brunswick , talking in low voices of the men who had gone. We knew well enough that it was their last night of life. The fact that we had been left behind gave us reason to hope that their fate was not to be ours. My heart went out to poor Muspratt, whose anguish of mind may be imagined. I did not dare hint, even now, at what Sir Joseph had told me concerning him, but I was glad that Morrison encouraged him to hope.

  "Your case has been taken under consideration, Muspratt; I am sure of it," he said. "I have never doubted that it would be. The fact that we have been left here proves that there is something in the wind concerning us."

  "What do you think, Mr. Byam?" asked Muspratt.

  "That Morrison is right," I replied. "He has been recommended to the King's clemency. The Court's appeal on his behalf must have been granted. You and I have been left here with him. Don't you see, Muspratt? If they intended to hang us, we would have been sent to the Brunswick with the rest."

  "But maybe they want to hang them first? Or what if they're going to hang us on the Hector ?"

  So we talked the night long, and God knows it was long. We considered every possibility, every conceivable reason for our separation from the others. And the minutes and the hours dragged by, and at last the darkness was suffused with the ashy light of dawn, through which the huge mass of the Brunswick grew more and more distinct.

  Our guard was changed with the watch, at eight bells. No news came. One of the few prohibitions imposed upon us—and a quite just one—was that we should not speak to the guards, so we had no means of knowing what news was current on the ship. At nine o'clock, Morrison, who was standing by a port, turned and said, "They've run up the signal for punishment on the Brunswick ."

  On all British ships, eleven o'clock in the morning was the hour for inflicting punishment. We had no doubt as to whom the Brunswick's signal concerned. Ellison, Burkitt, and Millward had but two hours to live.

  At half-past ten we saw one of the Hector's longboats, filled with seamen, put off to the Brunswick . Boats from other vessels in the harbour followed; the men in them, we knew, were being sent to witness the execution. Muspratt remained at the port, gazing towa
rd the Brunswick as though fascinated by the sight of her lofty yards. Morrison and I paced the room together, talking in the Indian tongue of Teina and Itea and other friends at Tahiti, in a desperate attempt to occupy our minds. It was getting on toward the hour when Captain Montague entered, followed by the lieutenant who had come the night before. A glance at the captain's face told us all we needed to know, but if there was still doubt in our minds it was banished when the lieutenant ordered the guard to dismiss. The men filed quickly out, glancing back at us with friendly smiles. Captain Montague unfolded the paper in his hand.

  "James Morrison—William Muspratt," he called.

  The two men stepped forward. Captain Montague glanced at them over the top of the paper he held, a kindly gleam in his blue eyes. He then read, solemnly:

  "In response to the earnest appeal of Lord Hood (Admiral of the Blue, and President of the Court-Martial by which you have been tried, convicted, and condemned to death for the crime of mutiny on His Majesty's armed transport, Bounty ), who, by reason of certain extenuating circumstances, has begged that you may not be compelled to suffer the extreme penalty prescribed by our just laws, His Majesty is graciously pleased to grant to you, and each of you, a free and unconditional pardon."

  "Roger Byam."

  I took my place beside my two comrades.

  "The Commissioners for executing the Office of Lord High Admiral of Great Britain and Ireland, having received and heard the sworn testimony of Robert Tinkler, former midshipman of His Majesty's armed transport, Bounty , are convinced of your entire innocence of the crime of -mutiny, for which you have been tried, convicted, and condemned to death. The Lord's Commissioners do, therefore, annul the verdict of the Court-Martial as it respects your person, and you stand acquitted."

  Captain Montague then stepped forward and shook each of us warmly by the hand.