Far From Botany Bay

by Rosa Jordan

  Matey began to sing one of the sea shanties which they had often used to keep the rowing rhythm on their voyage.

  “Not that one, Matey,” Charlotte piped up. “You said that one’s only for the sea, and it’s different ones we sing on land.”

  “Right you are,” Matey chuckled, and began to sing one of the land songs he had taught Charlotte, which she and the others soon joined in.

  This gave Mary an idea, which she implemented forthwith. As soon as the song wound down and the group fell back into a depressed silence, she whispered to Charlotte, “Ask your papa to tell you a story of when he was a daring sailor back in England, and how he escaped the men who wanted his hide, and made a good living doing it.”

  Charlotte ran to Will and put the plea to him. Although he pretended to be reluctant, he was soon recounting stories of narrow escapes from the authorities during his days as a swashbuckling smuggler—leaving out the story of the one time his tricks didn’t work and he ended up in gaol.

  Scrapper followed with a tale from his own career as a pickpocket. He had a gift for mimicry, and his imitations of an upper class lady when she discovered her purse had disappeared set them to howling with laughter.

  Pip, with a little urging, recalled a dog he had once owned that he had taught to steal food from vendors’ stands. “That dog knew to wait till a man’s back was turned, and, even if they saw him, wasn’t none could catch him,” he bragged. “I’d lay in hiding a block or two away, and wait for him to come a-running. Whatever he brought, cheese or apple or tart, I always give him half. Like brothers we was, that pup and me.”

  After Pip had his turn at story-telling, Mary turned to James. “Come, James, you’re a well-read man. What stories might you recount to keep our minds away from dark thoughts?”

  “I do know a good story, about the travels of one Mr. Gulliver,” James acknowledged. “It is a long tale, though. I haven’t the voice to tell it all in one sitting.”

  “Very well then,” Mary encouraged. “Tell it in pieces, day by day.”

  And so he did, beginning right then and carrying on for many days to come.

  Mary often followed with a story from the Bible, for as she explained, “’Twas the most beautiful thing you ever saw, that great leather-bound book with gold leaf on the cover. Given to my parents on their wedding day by my father’s best friend and owner of a ship upon which we sometimes sailed. It was the one and only thing of value my family ever owned.”

  She thought for a minute, trying to recall stories her mother had read to her as a child, which she had not thought of for many years. “Here’s one you’ll like, Matey, about how a strumpet teased poor old Samson into losing his hair, and all his great strength as well.”

  So began the habit of telling yarns to help them pass the time. The children listened with rapt attention to all that was told, but no stories delighted them quite so much as Luke’s. His incredible tales were always about the doings of fairies and elves. He claimed that these wee, mischievous beings were numerous in the woods where his own family lived, and he swore he had personally encountered them on any number of occasions.

  Only Cox would not tell stories, claiming he knew none to tell. But when pressed he would sing, in his deep rich baritone, ballads such as Barbara Allen, Lily Lee, Henry Brown, and Bring Mary Home. Although the tales thus told in song invariably ended in tragedy, they had an oddly comforting effect on the group, seeming somehow to draw them together. Often it was to Cox’s sad songs that they fell asleep.

  It was in mid-September, on a day they were confined inside due to pouring rain, that Mira came rushing down the steps, hair streaming with water and her sarong soaked through. Pip ran to the small window to greet her. She stuffed a dozen small bananas through the bars, so quickly that he could not catch them all and some fell to the floor. Breathlessly, she told him, “More Englishmen come!”

  “A ship?” Pip asked excitedly.

  “No ship. No clothes. Like you they come.”

  The jailer arrived just then, and, instead of allowing Mira a few minutes as he usually did, he shouted at her in Dutch, grabbed her by the arm, and dragged her away.

  Pip turned around and repeated in bewilderment what the others had already heard. “Englishmen? No clothes?”

  They did not have to wait long to discover the meaning of Mira’s cryptic message. Within the hour they heard the tread of many men coming down the dungeon stairs. Mary went to the small barred window to see what she could out in the corridor. James came to stand behind her, his arm about her waist. The others crowded around, hoping to catch a glimpse of the newcomers. The first to pass by was the turnkey. He was followed by a group of men, heavily manacled, starvation-thin, and utterly naked. One, who looked no older than Pip, passed close to the barred window. Glancing in, his startled blue eyes met Mary’s.

  Several English-speaking guards followed. With blows and other forms of brutality, they drove the naked men into a dungeon room on the opposite side of the corridor. Next came the clanking sound of iron against iron, which suggested that, in addition to the manacles on their hands, these prisoners were being chained to the wall or floor. No one spoke until the guards’ steps echoed away. Then James called out, “Hello there! Are you English?”

  “Indeed we are,” called back a rumbling voice. “Late of His Majesty’s armed transport Bounty. And you?”

  “Bolters from Botany Bay,” Luke called.

  “The Bounty?” Matey exclaimed. “By God! You must be mutineers!”

  “Convicts!” came a voice from across the way. “I’d have no dealings with this lot!”

  “Dare you imagine yourselves better than we?” Mary shot back. “Why, not one among us has such a crime as mutiny on his conscience!”

  “By Jove!” exclaimed a boy’s voice. “It was a woman’s face I saw!”

  “Aye,” Matey told them. “’Tis Mary Bryant, our captain.”

  “Captain?” The word was followed by a chorus of disbelieving laughter.

  “If Mary’s not our captain then we have none!” Cox shouted defiantly.

  Others, save Will, who crouched sullen and shamefaced in the far corner, echoed confirmation. Their declaration was greeted with more derisive laughter from across the corridor.

  “Laugh if you like, scoundrels,” Luke told them. “But the lass navigated us safe from Botany Bay to here, and upon my word, we arrived in better shape than you. Mutineers! Ug!”

  “Withhold judgement, if you will,” suggested one of the newcomers. “You know no more of us than we of you. We were not all mutineers, and it could be said that those who were had reason.”

  “All of us to a man refused to go with First Mate Christian after he seized the ship, and we asked to be left on O’Tahiti,” explained the deep-voiced man. “There we remained for two good years. Our troubles began when Captain Edwards came searching for the mutineers. He made no effort to distinguish between those who had known of the plot and those who were its victims, and confined us all in irons aboard the Pandora.”

  Another voice picked up the story. “This same Captain Edwards ran the Pandora on a reef about a thousand miles to the east of here. There were then fourteen from the Bounty aboard, but four drowned, along with a good number of the Pandora’s crew.”

  The Bounty men called out their names: Joseph Coleman, William McIntosh, William Muspratt, James Morrison, John Millward, Charles Norman, Michael Byron, Thomas Burkitt, and two boys, Thomas Ellison and Peter Heywood.

  “You can’t imagine what it was like crammed in an oven of a box on the Pandora’s deck and manacled hand and foot,” one of the men recounted. “Five months we was, wallowing in our own sweat and vermin. Now looks like more of the same, minus the sweat. How long did you say you’d been chained up in this godforsaken hole?”

  “We’re not chained,” Matey called bac
k, drawing a chorus of cries from the other side about the injustice of common criminals being better treated than His Majesty’s loyal mariners.

  By the next day the rains had passed, and things went on as before, with Mary, Pip and the children out all day, joined by Will, Matey, and Scrapper in the morning, and James, Luke, and Cox in the afternoon. The Bounty prisoners, though, were not allowed to leave their cell. This was a puzzle to all of them, until Mira recounted to Pip what she had overheard.

  “Captain Edwards not want prisoners take exercise,” she whispered. “Gouverneur Wanjon tell Bruger this Englishman have no compassion.”

  Upon hearing this, Mary’s dread deepened. That a man who did not hesitate to imprison small children considered Edwards to be deficient in compassion bespoke a future too horrifying to contemplate.

  Several days later, each of the Botany Bay bolters had an opportunity to form their own opinion of Captain Edwards. The day began ominously, when the turnkey did not come as usual to let Mary and the children go outside. An hour or so later, two guards appeared and ordered Will to come with them. There was considerable speculation as to what this might mean. It was Matey who guessed correctly.

  “Edwards is wanting information about us,” Matey surmised. “Who’d be the likely one to ask but the one what blabbed before? Could be he’ll have questions for the rest of us, too.”

  “What ought we to tell him?” Pip asked fearfully.

  “We might as well tell the truth, as Will has probably done already,” James advised. “Inventing stories that don’t agree will only incur his wrath.”

  “With one exception,” Mary interjected. “I propose we tell him that Pip and Scrapper, being just boys, didn’t know that a bolting was planned, and were brought along without their consent, on account of being on Will’s crew and needed for the rowing.”

  “Why let them off the hook?” Matey grumbled. “My neck don’t fit a hangman’s noose any better’n theirs.”

  “There’s no way we can escape responsibility for our deeds,” Mary argued. “What’s the harm in trying to save the ones we can?”

  Although her words rang of charity, and the others agreed to stick by that story, Mary’s motives were not selfless. Once back in England, there was every chance that all would hang, herself included. If that was her fate, Charlotte and Emanuel would be left alone in the world. But if Pip and Scrapper could be presented as innocent victims, they might be spared. Pip truly loved her children, and Scrapper, out of gratitude, might act as their protector on London’s harsh streets as well.

  James was the next to be taken out, and after that, Luke, Matey, Cox, Scrapper, and Pip. Apprehension grew, as none were returned to the cell, so the others had no way to know what lay in store for them. Eventually, Mary was alone with the children, pretending calm for their sake. Nevertheless, Emanuel seemed to sense how frightened she was and began to cry. When at last the cell door swung open, she tried to take the children with her but the guard would not permit it. There was nothing to do but put the sobbing toddler down on his pillow and tell Charlotte to sit beside him and tell him a funny story.

  Charlotte looked up at Mary, blue eyes wide in her thin little face, and said, “All the ones I can remember are scary.”

  Mary would have reminded her of some of the humorous tales Pip had told about his clever dog, but the guard shoved her roughly to hasten her along.

  Why the hurry Mary failed to see because, when she reached the upper level, she was kept waiting out in the corridor a good long while. Voices coming from inside were those of Wanjon and, she surmised, Captain Edwards. At first she could not make out what they were saying, but as the conversation continued their voices rose. She soon gathered that they were discussing the information gleaned from the men.

  “Impossible!” came the Englishman’s voice. “Only a fool would believe such a story.”

  Wanjon, perhaps taking this as an oblique reference to his having believed the bolters’ lies to start, and not pleased to have his credulity called into question a second time, gave a reply just short of a taunt. “Who then, Captain Edwards? They all say she vas at the helm the whole three thousand miles. That is three times the distance of your own open-boat voyage. Nearer that of Captain Bligh’s, ya?”

  “Sir!” snapped Edwards, his voice rising. “Common sense tells us that if both Cook and I ran upon the reefs crossing the Coral Sea, no ignorant wench of the criminal class could have navigated the whole length of it.”

  “Perhaps,” Wanjon replied coolly, “you vill form a different opinion once you have interviewed her.”

  “I am not in the habit of reforming my opinions,” Edwards asserted, and called out, “Bring in the prisoner.”

  Mary scarcely registered the indirect compliment paid her by Wanjon, so alarmed was she by Edwards’s apparent rigidity. Here is one who lacks the power to think, thus seizes upon a single notion and uses it like a stick to beat all who would disagree, she thought as she was led into the room.

  Edwards was a smallish man with smallish eyes and a rosebud mouth already puckered with contempt. Wanjon stood a little apart, thin lips faintly curved in a cynical smile. Although Mary did not glance his way, she sensed that he took some satisfaction from watching two people whose nationality he detested, and whom he had come to loathe, in an exchange which was likely to result in the humiliation of one or the other. She stood mute as Edwards looked her up and down.

  “Well, woman, what have you to say for yourself?” he demanded.

  “What would you have me say, Sir?”

  “I will have you tell me what became of the navigational instruments purloined in Botany Bay,” he snapped.

  Mary met his stare directly, and said, “They were not purloined, but freely given.”

  “Ah yes.” Edwards smiled sarcastically. “Bryant claims he traded fish for them. Of course, he gave Governor Wanjon a completely different account.”

  To this Mary said nothing, although she was surprised to hear that Will had changed his story. Perhaps, once sober, Will decided that it was less humiliating to claim that he had traded fish for the instruments than to admit he had traded his wife. Or allowed her to trade herself.

  “Well?” Edwards said impatiently. “Where are they?”

  “I do not know.”

  “Your companions have confirmed that these instruments were in your keeping always. That you wore the compass in a bag about your neck, and both chart and quadrant were always within your reach.”

  “They spoke the truth,” Mary said.

  “Well then. Governor Wanjon tells me your room was thoroughly searched, and nothing of the kind was found.”

  “This would surely be true,” Mary replied. “As well as the governor’s suspicion as to what became of them.”

  “That you gave them to the African? That is absurd!” Edwards snapped. “What use would he have but to sell them for drink?”

  Mary shrugged. “Perhaps he did.”

  “Ve do not think so,” Wanjon interjected. “Every merchant and marine in the colony vas questioned, and these things have not been seen.”

  Mary hesitated a moment, thinking through the implication of her words, then spoke carefully. “In my experience, the governor of this colony is very thorough. As he has more information than I, and his word carries more weight than mine in every particular, perhaps you are wasting your time with me. I cannot tell you what I do not know.”

  By Mary’s calm demeanour, no one could have guessed the struggle going on within her. Fear of the interview had vanished before she entered the room, blotted out by a rising tide of rage. It was that rage she battled now, knowing that, for all their sakes, she must not incur Edwards’s wrath as she had Wanjon’s. And yet, never having been taught how to behave around those who presumed themselves to be her betters, she offended unknowingly by looking Edwa
rds straight in the eye and by making suggestions that implied that he was not likely to achieve his ends by the method he had employed. That, and her failure to show fear, greatly annoyed him.

  “Perhaps your memory will improve when you face a hanging judge,” Edwards said menacingly, and motioned to a guard standing nearby to take her out.

  As the door closed behind her, and as the guard was exchanging some information with another assigned to escort her to the dungeon, Mary overheard Edwards say, “You can see as well as I, Governor, that the strumpet is a thoroughly hardened criminal. It is an astonishment to me that you allow them to leave their cell.”

  “It is to prevent pestilence that ve see to the health of our prisoners,” Wanjon said reasonably. “Our doctors say a little fresh air is useful.” There was a pause in which he appeared to consider the matter. “Of course, these are English prisoners, now under your jurisdiction.”

  “Just so, Governor, and confined they shall be until I acquire a vessel to transport them to England.”

  “As you please,” Wanjon said stiffly.

  The door opened and Edwards stepped out. Seeing that Mary was still in the corridor, awaiting an escort back to the dungeon, Edwards said loudly, no doubt for her benefit, “What they suffer here is but a foretaste of what awaits them on the gallows, and beyond.”

  From inside the room came Wanjon’s cold question, “And the children, Captain?”

  “Bad seed, Governor. Bad seed. With luck they will not survive the voyage.”

  And so it was that during the final ten days of imprisonment at Kupang, all of the captives, including Emanuel and Charlotte, were confined to the dungeon. Deprived of fresh air and exercise, their spirits sank lower by the day. Mary realised that the need for diversion in the form of song and stories was greater than ever, but it was not easy to persuade the men to continue, or, indeed, to go on herself. Depressed as they were, they might not have made the effort had it not been for encouragement from the Bounty men. Once they heard the singing, and learned of stories being told, they begged the teller to stand by the small barred window that faced into the corridor, and to speak loudly so that they too might have some relief from the interminable boredom.