by John Boyne
‘I had a plunge only this morning,’ I told him, quick as you like. ‘Honest I did.’
‘You may have taken a plunge but your hands . . . your fingernails . . .’ He shook his head in disgust. ‘You must take care of yourself on board, lad. All the men must. Cleanliness and hygiene are the keys to a successful sea voyage. If we all remain healthy, we can stretch ourselves further. Then our ship will be a happier vessel and we shall reach our destination speedily and without incident. The result? We shall return home all the sooner to our loved ones and achieve our mission, for the king’s glory. You understand me?’
‘Yes, sir,’ I said, nodding my head and vowing to scrub my nails every few weeks from then on if it would make him happy. I hesitated, wondering if I dared ask him what had been on my mind since the dinner conversation earlier. ‘Captain,’ I said finally, ‘did you really serve with Captain Cook?’ I was aware of the insolence of my remark but cared little for it; I wanted to know, that was all.
‘I did, my boy,’ said he, smiling a little. ‘I was little more than a lad at the time. Twenty-one years of age when I joined the Resolution, as master. Mr Fryer’s position here, although he is much older now than I was then. Captain Cook called me a prodigy. I suspect it was my skill with chart-drawing that secured me the post, but I made a study of it, my boy, I made a fine study of it. I served with him for many years and learnt my craft by observing him.’ He reached forward and took the frame of the angry gentleman from its place on the desk and stared at it for a moment and I recalled where I had seen that face before: of course, it belonged to Captain Cook. I astonished myself that I had not recognized it before, but then all the portraits I had seen of the great man did not present him in quite such a state of fury. I wondered why the captain had chosen it as his keepsake. ‘I was with him at the end, don’t you know. When he was killed—’ he began, but, foolish me, I interrupted the flow of his story.
‘When he was murdered?’ I asked breathlessly, my eyes opening wide. ‘You were there? You saw it?’
Captain Bligh stared at me and frowned; he could see the hunger within me for information but perhaps distrusted my motives – and he was right to, for the salacious details of Captain Cook’s death fascinated me as they did any boy. I had heard conflicting reports from sailors over the years, them as were stationed in Portsmouth or them as came to visit us lads at Mr Lewis’s establishment, but they differed from each other considerably and were always sourced from a friend or a brother or a cousin who had known a fellow who had sailed with Captain Cook right to the end. I had never known a man who had been there, who had seen the events of that terrible afternoon with his own eyes. Not until now. And I was damned if I wasn’t going to try to earn the report.
‘Get to your sleep now, lad,’ said the captain then, turning away and dismissing me. ‘A long and busy day awaits you; you have much time to make up after your illness.’
I nodded, disappointed, and cursed myself inside for interrupting him. But as I made for the door to leave the dark cabin a sight took my eye; on a shelf inside the door lay a white cloth, the very same cold compress that had been placed about my forehead during my illness by my unknown and gentle benefactor, the same one as had emptied my pot during my ruptions. I stared at it and looked back at the captain, who saw where my eyes had taken me and frowned, as if he would have preferred me not to have seen it.
‘I trust I won’t need to use that again on this voyage,’ he said finally.
‘Captain—’ I began, astonished by my discovery, for I swear that I thought I was for the grave during those first terrible days, but he turned away from me now and waved a hand in the air to dismiss me.
‘Go to sleep, lad,’ he said and in response I did something that I determined to do from that day forward, for as long as our voyage lasted, in both good times and bad.
I obeyed his orders.
9
THOSE EARLY DAYS ON BOARD the Bounty passed by without incident. Although the weather was inclement over Christmas, it stilled finally and the ship chartered a course for the furthermost tip of South America with the intention of rounding Cape Horn. I made it my business to do all that I could to provide good service for the captain, whose initial friendliness towards me following my restoration to good health appeared to melt into indifference as the weeks went by. I cleaned his cabin, served him his breakfast, lunch, dinner and supper, prepared his bunk, washed his undercrackers, all the time hoping that he would indulge my taste for more stories about Captain Cook, but I’ll be cobbled if he ever did. Most of his waking hours were spent on the deck of the ship, where the men appreciated his guidance and advice, and the time that he did pass in his cabin was devoted to maintaining his log and writing his letters. For my part, I made it my particular duty to get to know as many of the men on board as possible, as I quickly developed a fierce sense of isolation and loneliness, but I was quick to discover that this was no easy feat. Most of them seemed unwilling to exchange so much as a pleasantry or even engage in a simple conversation with such a lowly member of the ship’s complement as I and I found that my time was spent mostly below deck in a triangle of opportunity between the great cabin, where the pots and crates were stored, the galley where Mr Hall prepared the crew’s meals, and the captain’s own cabin and pantry, enjoying no man’s company but my own. That being the case, I saw a lot of the officers during those days as they were housed together in bunked cabins near the rear of the corridor that I called mine own, except for Mr Fryer, who, as master, existed in a tiny cabin with a population of one. But they never bothered to engage me in conversation either.
We made good progress through January in fairly calm waters but then one evening, without warning, the storms and gales whipped themselves up into an almighty fury and within an hour the ship was being tossed around on the seas like a rag doll and all hands were brought to the deck to aid the ship’s safe passage through the storm. Happily, my stomach had learned to live with the movements of the tides and I was no longer in fear of mortal collapse, but so violent was the weather and the conditions that we faced that I found myself afeared that we would be lifted from the waves, every man jack of us, and turned upside down.
I made the mistake of stepping on deck when the storms were at their worst and the moment my head emerged into the mêlée, I could feel the full force of rain, hail and sleet attacking my pretty features with such violence that I thought they would draw blood. Around me, men were rushing back and forth, pulling on ropes and changing the direction of the sails, calling out to one another with short, pithy phrases as they each undertook their duty, none of which made any sense to me in my ignorance of sea-faring ways. I turned back to rediscover the hatch from which I had emerged but could barely open my eyes wide enough to locate it and at that moment I heard a great cry from above and looked up just in time to observe William McCoy – an AB, or able seaman as I had finally discovered those letters to mean – tumbling from the fore-topgallant sail, that section of the ship’s mast immediately below the fore-royal, and narrowly avoiding slipping further down the fore-topsail and foresail itself on to the deck, below where he would surely have cracked his skull open and left his brains in a mess like a dropped watermelon. Fortunately for him he managed to grab a hold of a stay just in time and cling on to it with one hand, swinging back and forth like a punished convict, until his feet could make purchase with a line and he could haul himself back upwards to safety. The sight of it gave me an awful turn, though.
I had grown familiar with the design of the ship over the previous days by studying the design-chart affixed to Captain Bligh’s cabin wall. The Bounty was a cutter of three masts, the fore and main masts holding four sails apiece, a royal, a topgallant, a topsail and a sail. At the rear of the ship, the mizzen mast held all but a sail. At the front sat two sails before each other, the jib and the fore-topmast sail, and the aft was served by a spanker, which was there to propel us through the waters and to balance the helm. Of course I had not yet le
arned how each of these might be manipulated to steer the ship and guide us through troubled waters such as we were currently locked in combat with, but I vowed to study further as the voyage continued and prove a more able seaman than my present occupation expected.
‘Turnstile,’ roared Captain Bligh to me, returning to his cabin at the height of the hurricane, his uniform so wet through that I wondered whether he might not catch the influenza as a result. (A lad at Mr Lewis’s establishment had caught it once and, rather than infect every one of us, he’d been turned out on to the street without ceremony. He was a particular friend of mine – we slept alongside each other for a year or more – but I never saw him again after that. I heard he’d passed to his reward but I’ve no proof of it.) The captain’s hands were pressed to either side of the corridor walls to steady himself as he walked along, while the Bounty continued to be tossed upwards and downwards, left to right, with such force that I swore I could feel the lining of my stomach separating from the rest of my body and striking out for a life and career of its own. ‘What the blazes are you about now?’
‘Captain,’ said I, jumping to my feet, for I had positioned myself on the floor in a corner near my own bunk, where my toes could find purchase with the floor below and my hands could press against the walls. ‘What’s happening to us? Are we all lost?’
‘Don’t be an ass, lad,’ he snapped, marching towards his cabin. ‘I’ve known worse nights than this. This is calm, for pity’s sake. Stand yourself up and show a bit of courage before I put a dress on you and call you Mary.’
I returned to the vertical, anxious not to be seen as a coward by the captain, and tried to follow him into his cabin, but the rocking of the boat and the sounds of dismayed shouting from up above held me back.
‘Jesus Suffering Christ,’ shouted I, forgetting my station for a moment in my trepidations. ‘What’s happening up there? What’s wrong with the men?’
‘The men?’ he asked, turning round and frowning. ‘There’s nothing wrong with the men, lad, and I’ll thank you not to take the Saviour’s name in this cabin. Why would you ask such a question?’
‘But the screaming,’ I said, my face no doubt taking on a look of abject terror as I spoke to him. ‘Can’t you hear it? Perhaps they’re falling over the sides and we’ll have no one left to steer the ship. Shouldn’t we help them? Or send someone up to help them anyway?’
As I spoke, a great sheet of water hit the window of the cabin with such force that I almost fell over again in a faint. The captain merely glanced towards it as if it was an irritant, a fly that he might sweep out of his presence with a flick of his hand. ‘That’s not the men screaming, you damned fool,’ he said. ‘Good Lord, lad, don’t you recognize the pipe of the wind yet? It’s sweeping across the decks, challenging us, daring us to go further. The screams are its battle-cry! The roar its strength! Know you nothing of the sea yet?’ He shook his head and stared at me as if I was a terrible fool and he was a martyr to have to suffer me. ‘As if the men on this ship,’ he continued then, ‘on my ship, would scream in panic. They are kept busy about their tasks. As you should be about yours, so go on about your duties, lad, before I give you something to scream about. I need boiling water for tea, this minute.’
‘Yes, Captain,’ said I, watching him for a moment as he pulled his maps and charts out from their storage place upon the shelves and unfurled them, placing weights on their corners to keep them flat.
‘Now, Turnstile!’ he roared at me. ‘Enough for three, if you please.’
I ran into the galley and looked around for Mr Hall, but he was not to be found; at moments like this I had discovered that almost every man of the ship’s complement was to be found on deck, assisting in the attempts to keep us afloat. Only a few remained below. I was one of that number for the moment as I was neither use nor ornament to anyone. Another who steered clear of the hard work, I noticed, was the ship’s surgeon, Dr Huggan, who I had only eyeballed on two occasions to date and who appeared to be permanently in his cups and confined to his quarters. A third was young Mr Heywood, who never seemed to be on deck in times of trouble and always perceived a matter of urgency that needed attending to in a safer part of the ship, the cowardly scut.
When I returned with the kettle and the tea, I found the captain examining charts and maps with an eyeglass while the master, Mr Fryer, and the master’s mate, Mr Christian, looked on. They were a study, the two of them, that was for sure, the first with his red face and anxious expression, his every word striving to be heard, the second looking as if he had recently taken a plunge and attended to his coiffure and scarcely appearing to think we were in any danger at all. In fact at the moment I entered the cabin he was examining his nails for dirt. He was a pretty fellow, I’ll give him that.
‘Captain, we can’t continue to compete against this storm for much longer,’ Mr Fryer was insisting as I entered. ‘The waves are coming at us in great sheets; the deck is near drowned in sea water as it is. We must lie a-try.’
‘Lie a-try?’ cried Mr Bligh, looking up from the map and shaking his head. ‘Lie a-try?’ he roared. ‘Unthinkable, sir! The Bounty does not lie a-try, not while I am her commander! We scud ahead!’
‘Without a drogue, sir?’ asked Mr Fryer, his eyes widening. ‘Is that wise?’
I knew little then of how much use a drogue could be to prevent a ship from being pooped by the waves, but it sounded important and I regretted the fact that we had none.
‘Yes, Mr Fryer,’ insisted the captain. ‘Without a drogue.’
‘But, sir, if we trim the sails and helm a-lee, we stand some chance at least of maintaining our position.’
‘What a bore to maintain one’s position, though,’ sighed Mr Christian in a distracted voice, as if the matter was of little consequence to him one way or the other and he would be perfectly happy to return to his bunk until the matter could be brought to a satisfactory conclusion. ‘Personally I would rather advance. We have a schedule to keep to after all, do we not? And lying a-try would be a waste of all our time. I didn’t board the Bounty for that.’
‘Mr Christian, you are not best placed to discuss this matter, I fear,’ replied Mr Fryer, turning on him with a look of fury in his eyes. ‘And if I may say so, your place is on deck at this time with Mr Elphinstone. This is a matter for the captain and me.’
‘And I tell you, Mr Fryer, it’s a matter for the captain who he invites into his cabin and who he does not,’ shouted Mr Bligh, standing up to his full height and glaring at the ship’s master with a fury in his eyes. ‘It was I who invited Fletcher into this conversation and it’ll be I who dismisses him, not you, Mr Fryer. Not you. Is that understood?’
There was a silence for a moment as the victim of this assault glared from one man to the other, his face growing ever redder by the moment, before he looked directly at the captain and nodded his head.
‘Now, Mr Christian,’ said the captain, pulling on his jacket tails tight as he attempted to compose himself while he turned back to the master’s mate, and I swear I had not seen him grow as angry as this since I had first made his acquaintance. ‘What say you? You believe we should scud ahead?’
Mr Christian hesitated for a moment, gave a quick glance to Mr Fryer, before shrugging his shoulders and replying in that same bored, disaffected voice of his. ‘My feeling is that the Bounty can do it,’ he said. ‘The storms are dreadful, as Mr Fryer says, I don’t dispute that, but are they to rule o’er the seas or are we? We are Englishmen, after all. And let us not forget that Captain Cook managed it, did he not?’
The magic words, I knew, had just been uttered – Mr Christian was nobody’s fool – and the captain turned back to Mr Fryer with a look of triumph on his face. ‘Well?’ he said. ‘What say you to that, John Fryer?’
‘Captain, you are in charge of this vessel and I will of course follow your orders,’ he replied, defeated.
‘You damn well will,’ replied the captain, and I thought it short of him at the t
ime, as Mr Fryer’s answer had been a gracious one. I couldn’t help but note the look of amusement on Mr Christian’s face, though, and wondered about it. ‘Both of you,’ said the captain then, wiping a line of perspiration from his forehead and marching over to open the ship’s log. ‘Atop with you both. Give the order to scud ahead, Mr Fryer. We shall force our way through the storm throughout the night and the next night, and the night after that if needs be, aye, even if we are to drown in the attempt. I want every man on deck with the ship perfectly balanced from port to starboard, tack to clew, and we cut through, we cut through, I say, until we are clear of these conditions. We have a mission to complete, gentlemen, and with the grace of God we shall achieve it. Do I make myself clear?’
The two men nodded and took their leave of the cabin and I poured tea for the captain – there would be no need for the other two cups now – before placing it on the table beside him. He neither looked up at me nor offered his thanks but continued to make notes in the log, his pen digging sharply and with such ferocity that I feared the paper might be torn asunder; whenever he reached back for the ink-pot he did it in a fury and spots of blue ink spat out on the desk, leaving marks for me to wipe clean later before they settled in. I opened my mouth to say something to him, thought better of it and turned to leave, closing the door quietly behind me.
10
THAT NIGHT WAS A DARK one. I lay in my bunk, unable to sleep, not knowing whether every lift of the ship would see us overturned with every man jack of us drowned. I couldn’t help but think back to that late December morning in Portsmouth when I had been wandering the streets without a care in the world, looking forward to my Christmas dinner, little knowing what fate had in store for me. I even thought of Mr Lewis, him as took care of me since I was a nipper, and wondered whether he had discovered the truth of my whereabouts since my disappearance. I hoped not. He’d have been expecting me back around dinner-time with my earnings, or at least the part I handed to him, and when I failed to appear he would have started to grow angry. And when the night-work began he’d have become furious, for I had grown popular with his clientele over the previous twelve months, more popular than I wished to be. Strange to recall, and to my eternal shame, I’d never planned on leaving him, despite the participations at his establishment, and even if I had tried to forge a plan from my wits it probably would have failed and I would have found myself in even worse trouble than I was now. He was probably hopping with anger, the monster, that I had managed to get away from him. I could imagine him at the courthouse, demanding compensation for my kidnapping and being refused it, for what rights had he over me anyway? He wasn’t my father, and what did I do for him only steal and con. And the other things.