Mutiny on the Bounty

by Peter Fitzsimons

  •

  All is in readiness.

  For the last few weeks, all of the Natives have been on their best behaviour, working hard and co-operating with every request. At all costs, they must allay the suspicions of the Mutineers, even as they get ready for the big day to come.

  But no more; the big day is today. The Mutineers are all separated from each other. The women have gone to the cliffs, to collect eggs and hunt seabirds.

  To get things started, the cunning Native, Tetaheite, approaches Jenny’s husband, Isaac Martin.

  ‘Can I have your gun,’ he asks politely, ‘as I would like to go hog shooting today.’

  Certainly. Martin hands the gun over, and returns to ploughing his fields.

  Taking the gun, Tetaheite meets the waiting Timoa and Nehow at Jack Williams’ property.

  Are we going to do this?

  We are going to do this.

  There is Jack Williams now, working in his own fields, the very Jack Williams who had first stolen Talalo’s wife, Toofaiti.

  He deserves this.

  Stealthily, they approach Williams from behind.

  Ready?

  Now!

  As Timoa and Nehow fall upon Williams and cover his mouth, Tetaheite brings the muzzle to Williams’ belly and shoots him point-blank, killing him all but instantly.

  They return to Isaac Martin, who hails Tetaheite heartily.

  ‘Well done!’7 he calls out, sure that the Native must have killed his first hog, for he has heard the shot. ‘We shall have a glorious feast today!’8

  With no warning, Tetaheite turns the musket muzzle towards Martin and again pulls the trigger. Isaac Martin too is cut down with one blast.

  Several hundred yards away, Menalee is obediently working for Mr Mills and Mr McCoy, just as he has for the last four years, when they all hear the shots.

  ‘May I help the other men bring home the hogs they have just shot?’9 Menalee asks politely.

  Mr Mills gruffly nods his agreement, and Menalee quickly joins his co-conspirators, as planned, at Fletcher Christian’s property. If Christian is in a notably happy mood today – even for him – it is because his dear Isabella is so heavy with child that she has already been ‘confined’, and he is about to be a father for the third time.

  As ever, the hard-working Christian – like all of them, dressed in what used to be sails, before they became tents, before they became clothes – is using the time while he waits to till the yam plot and is taking a hoe to it as the four Native men approach from behind with their weapons. Two of them, Timoa and Nehow, are armed with muskets taken from those they have already murdered.

  Absorbed by his work, pulling out a stubborn yam, Fletcher hears the rather wildly chattering men – odd, they’re usually a lot more circumspect in their conversation – getting closer. For the sake of politeness, at least, he is just about to stand up and turn around to greet them, when ……… their chattering stops.

  Behind him, as the story will be told afterwards, Nehow levels the musket, aims right at Fletcher’s back and … pulls the trigger.

  Fletcher hears the sudden pffft sound as the flint on the hammer strikes the very small amount of priming powder in the firing pan and ignites it. Just a split instant later, there is a massive roar, as the main charge of powder inside the barrel is ignited and the musket-ball bursts forth, and catches Fletcher Christian right in the back, hitting him between the shoulderblades and bringing him down, hard. The big puff of dirty white smoke from the muzzle is blown away by the wind, even as Fletcher cries out …

  He is still alive, but entirely unable to defend himself, and the four Natives are quick to move in to finish the job, shattering his head with an axe. Fletcher Christian’s mutilated body, which had been writhing and gushing blood, goes limp. And now it simply lies there in the dirt, ghastly and lifeless, with freshly picked, blood-spattered yams scattered all around him.

  •

  A few hundred yards to the east, John Mills is working beside Billy McCoy when they hear another musket shot … and other strange noises.

  It has come from the direction of Fletcher’s plot.

  Perhaps they should go and see?

  ‘Surely there is some person dying?’10 McCoy jokes.

  No need, replies Mills.

  ‘It is only Mainmast11[going into labour].’12

  The two keep working until a few minutes later they see a Native running fast towards them, across the furrowed fields.

  It is a breathless Tetaheite, and he has horrifying news …

  ‘Mr McCoy, those two rascals Menalee and Timoa, they are stealing things out of your house this very minute! Come quickly!’

  Those bastards!

  With a roar of anger, McCoy races towards his hut, followed by Mills, and a fair bit further back, the exhausted Tetaheite.

  McCoy flings open his front door, whereupon …

  He has a split second to take it all in – three Natives are waiting for him, with Menalee pointing the gun right at him – before the shot is fired.

  Astoundingly, the musket-ball misses McCoy. Dumbstruck, trying to comprehend what is happening, the scarred Scot stands rooted to the spot. With no time to reload, Menalee throws down the musket, grabs McCoy and tries to wrestle him to the ground. But McCoy is the stronger man, and with the added power of one who knows he is fighting for his life, he is able to stagger out with Menalee still clasping and grasping at his body. Out the door they rumble and tumble, with McCoy managing to throw Menalee into a pigsty, before running from the house in terror. No longer is he dumbstruck …

  ‘Mills!’ he shouts as he runs. ‘Seek shelter in the woods!’ Mills simply stares at him. McCoy clarifies things for the puzzled Mills. ‘Run into the bush, the Natives are trying to kill all the white men!’13

  Extraordinarily, or at least it seems to McCoy, Mills shows no signs of panic, doesn’t move a muscle.

  ‘I do not believe,’ he calls after McCoy, ‘my friend Menalee would kill me.’14

  Well, good luck to him.

  McCoy is not waiting to find out. Instead, he keeps running, knowing how urgent it is to tell Christian that the Natives are rising, that the Mutineers must gather themselves to fight back. As he keeps running, however, he hears another shot fired. Remarkably, though he instinctively steels himself, he is not ripped apart by a musket-ball, and he risks a quick glance over his shoulder.

  Jesus Christ!

  John Mills had been right.

  Menalee would never kill him.

  The man standing over Mills’ corpse with the still smoking musket is Tetaheite.

  Arriving breathless at Christian’s patch, the first thing that McCoy sees is Christian’s corpse in the field, with a nearly severed head, and without pause he continues running into the house to tell Isabella the news: the Natives are rising! Fletcher is dead, just over there in the field!

  Leaving her shattered countenance behind – Fletcher, dead? Really, DEAD? – McCoy pauses only long enough to tell her that she must spread the word to any Mutineers she sees.

  Meanwhile, he keeps going, running to find his surest ally, Matt Quintal.

  Behind him, he leaves the weeping Isabella, lying prostrate over the shattered form of Fletcher Christian, the woman with a baby in her belly about to burst through, embracing the bloodied form of the love of her life, and the father of that child. Her first lad, Thursday, now just three years old, soon joins her, howling as never before.

  •

  And here is Quintal now!

  We must head for the hills, and head now! The Natives are rising. They have already killed Jack Williams, Isaac Martin, John Mills and Fletcher Christian! They tried to kill me, but missed! Within seconds, pausing only to gather their muskets, the two are on their way.

  Meanwhile, Alec Smith is working his own patch when he looks up to see Tevarua, Quintal’s wife, running across his field.

  ‘Why are you working at such a time?’15 she calls, wild-eyed, as she passe
s, with no explanation.

  A very odd thing to say?

  What is such a time? What is happening?

  Alec continues working.

  •

  With four Mutineers murdered, the armed Natives now move to their next target, Billy Brown, and close accordingly on his hut … only to come across … a spirit!

  Well, it is not quite a spirit, but it is the form of a man they thought they had already killed, Isaac Martin.

  Though badly wounded, with blood still pouring from his chest, he has crawled over to warn Brown. This time, to make sure of it, Tetaheite shoots Martin in the heart, and to be doubly sure, they take a sledgehammer that Brown keeps just inside his house, and stave Martin’s head in.

  For Billy Brown, it is all happening so quickly. The Natives, murder in their eyes, close in around him.

  ‘Please,’ he sobs, ‘do not kill me until I have seen my wife!’16

  Menalee nods his agreement, just a moment before Timoa moves behind Brown and shoots him dead. Timoa did not agree.

  Who next?

  Well, here he comes now.

  Alec Smith has finally laid down his tools and now arrives to investigate all these gunshots, first approaching Brown’s hut.

  His fierce face flashes dismay.

  For there, by Billy’s house, he notes four Natives casually standing and, ‘leaning on the muzzles of their guns, the butts being against the ground’.17

  Outrageous! After everything they have done to teach the brutes how to handle a gun safely, and here they are, flagrantly breaching the rules they have put in place and …

  And, hang on. The Natives have an entirely different aspect about them today. Instead of looking away, or at their feet, they are staring him right back in the eyes, almost as if they are … equals? Suddenly a terrible suspicion comes over Smith. But surely, he must be mistaken. They couldn’t really be …

  ‘What’s the matter?’18 he asks as casually as he can muster.

  In an instant, he has his answer.

  For instead of an explanation, what Smith gets is one of the Natives lifting his gun, and pointing it right at his chest as he growls, ‘Mamu!’ Silence!19

  (Oh, the bitter irony! ‘Mamu’, the very word used by Fletcher Christian to bring Captain Bligh to heel – ‘Mamu, sir, not a word, or death’s your portion!’20 – is now being hurled by Natives as they mutiny against the Mutineers. How amusing the vindictive Bligh would find it, if he could but know.)

  Well, Smith wants no part of death being in this portion, or in whatever second helpings might be offered, and in a return to his roots of growing up tough, but not the toughest, on the streets of the downtrodden town of Hackney in Middlesex, his instincts kick in as he turns and runs for his life. Behind him, there is the crack of a musket shot, but, mercifully, there is only a whizzing sound as the ball sails past.

  The Natives give only casual pursuit. Having already killed five Mutineers, including their Captain, and having secured their weapons, they need do nothing frantically anymore. From this day forth, they are no-one’s servant, nobody’s slave.

  Smith keeps running, arriving first at Jack Williams’ house, hoping to warn him, and also get some thick clothes so they can hide out in the woods, and have some protection from the rain, for as long as this murderous madness goes on. What he finds, of course, is Jack’s bloodied corpse.

  Good Lord! Taking the clothes, he staggers away, still scarcely believing it can have come to this.

  And yet, after three hours hiding in the woods, he realises just how hungry he is and, very carefully, circles back to his own plantation to gather some yams. A ragged rascal, he carefully makes his way round the rugged rocks, hoping to be unseen.

  With all quiet now, no sign of anyone, let alone a Native with a gun, he gains a little confidence and ducks back inside his hut to retrieve the cloth bag hanging on the door that he can use to hold the yams. Off in the distance, he can hear his hogs snorting, and – yes, he thinks it is – the sound of women wailing in grief. Or, just maybe, it is Isabella Christian giving birth.

  Bag in hand, he returns to the yam patch, staying low to the ground, and starts digging, knocking off the biggest clumps of earth before putting the yams in his bag, when, in the near distance, there is the sudden crack of a gun, and he suddenly feels a stinging sensation in his right shoulder, followed by dribbling wetness as blood starts to flow freely down his front. Yes, a musket-ball has pierced him through the top of his shoulder and come out the side of his neck. The Natives were lying in wait for him to come into the open.

  Devils!

  Though it is not a mortal wound, the shot has knocked him over. He cannot flee. All he can do is watch as death approaches – in this case in the form of four Natives looming larger. Obviously, they have decided not to waste another musket-ball on the stricken white man, for as he lies there, they soon crowd around, and he can see Tetaheite lift the butt of the musket, ready to dash it down on his skull, and crush it like an egg.

  Desperately, instinctively, he flashes his massive right hand out, just in time to deflect the blow, breaking his finger, but leaving his skull intact. Tiring of this, Tetaheite now simply brings the muzzle of his musket down to Alec’s chest and … as Smith holds his breath and steels himself … pulls the trigger.

  (Click.)

  The hammer has indeed come down on the firing pan, but the attached flint has failed to ignite the gunpowder, and the stunning silence that follows is the sweetest non-noise Alec Smith has ever not heard.

  A miracle!

  Re-priming it, Tetaheite brings the gun to Smith’s side a second time, and pulls the trigger again.

  (Click.) The gun misfires again.

  A second miracle!

  Partially recovered from the shock of it, scarcely daring to believe that he is still alive, Smith suddenly leaps to his feet and runs, with the Natives, again, in pursuit.

  Ah, but they are not running for their life as he is, and he quickly starts to outstrip them. Tiring, the Natives call out: ‘Stop!’21

  ‘No,’ replies Smith, following up with the rather obvious explanation for his reluctance to halt. ‘You want to kill me!’22

  Extraordinarily, Smith now hears the words that are far more terrifying than the sound of any gunshot would have been.

  ‘No, we do not want to kill you. We forgot what Young told us about leaving you alive to be his companion!’23

  WHAT?

  Ned Young is behind all this?

  Even as he continues to run, Smith realises that it makes a certain amount of sense. Young has always been close to the Natives because of his mixed race, and the hallmarks of this attack have his stamp of organisation. It all makes sense. Very well, then. He stops running. The Natives soon catch up, and could easily shoot him down, or at least stave in his skull. But, they don’t. They really mean it. In the excitement of all the killing, they really had forgotten Young’s instructions to leave Smith alive.

  Ned Young is indeed the local Master of Murder, telling the Natives who to kill, how to do it, and in what sequence. After being led, dazed, to Young’s house by the Natives, it is to find the former officer of the Bounty sitting calmly, chatting with a number of Tahitian women. Ned has always been ‘a great favourite with the women’24 and he is now very popular with the Native men too. He shows no surprise at Smith’s arrival, and for his part, Smith makes no mention of the fact that he knows he is only alive because of Young’s good graces.

  The two talk lightly, of everything bar what has just occurred – though Smith is certainly chattier than usual – even as the four Natives go out into the woods, muskets in hand, to see if they can kill Quintal and McCoy before darkness falls.

  This part of their venture remains fruitless, but they have an idea. Might one of the white men be stupid enough to return to his house, just as Smith had done? Carefully, they circle up around the house, high on the hill, belonging to Billy McCoy. Peering in, they find McCoy on one bunk, and Matt Quintal and
his wife, Tevarua, on another! All are asleep.

  Carefully, a musket is aimed through the window, and the trigger pulled. This time there is no misfire, just a blast to wake the dead … but the musket-ball misses all three.

  In the mad scramble that follows, McCoy, Quintal and Tevarua manage to flee in only the clothes they are standing up in – or, more accurately, running for their lives in.

  The following morning, a gloomy pall has fallen over Pitcairn. In and around the village, the bodies of the dead Mutineers lie as they fell, with Christian still face down in his garden, yam roots still in his hand.

  Isabella, of course, would have covered him, or buried him, but only instants after embracing him, the upset of it all had brought on her labour, and she has just given birth.

  In fact, Young has carefully noted in his journal the key events on Pitcairn of the last day.

  ‘Massacre of part of the mutineers by the Tahitians’25 which is true, Young wisely not adding ‘orchestrated by me’.

  Mary Christian Born.26

  Of those bloody events of the day before, it will be Smith who sums them up most concisely, from his unique perspective, while perhaps noting that Young is half-black:

  ‘It was a day of emancipation to the blacks, who were now masters of the island, and of humiliation and retribution to the whites.’27

  And yet, still all is not well in paradise.

  For while it is one thing to have killed off five Mutineers and have two of the others on the run, it is quite another to decide who should get their wives. And, as before, while it had been a big step to first start murdering, it is a whole lot less of a step to do it again. As a matter of fact, only a week after the Mutineer massacre, while Young’s wife, Teraura, sits outside their hut singing a Tahitian melody, Timoa is sitting by her side, accompanying her on the flute.

  It is a pleasant, bucolic scene, spoiled by only one thing.

  Menalee, holding a musket, strolls up behind the two of them, points his musket at the back of Timoa – with whom he has been in dispute over the favours of one of the widows – and pulls the trigger.

  This time there is no misfire, no mistake, and Timoa goes down hard, bleeding from his side.