by John Boyne
‘Does anyone else have a comment to make?’ shouted the captain now and he stared about him with darting eyes. I don’t mind admitting that I was surprised by how quickly the atmosphere on deck had changed from good humour to tension, and was unsure whether I should blame Mr Fryer or the captain for it. It seemed to me that Mr Fryer could do no good whatsoever in the captain’s eyes and I knew not why.
‘Right, that’s the first matter,’ said the captain then, wiping his brow with his ’kerchief. ‘The second concerns the matter of exercise. Every man on board – every man – shall devote an hour a day to exercise in the form of dancing.’
The mutters started again and we all looked at one another, sure that we had misheard him.
‘I beg your pardon, sir,’ said Mr Christian cautiously, choosing his words carefully so as not to suffer the same fate as Mr Fryer, ‘but did you say dancing?’
‘Yes, Mr Christian, you heard me right, I said dancing,’ replied the captain forcefully. ‘When serving on board the Endeavour, I myself was a regular dancer, as were the men, under the orders of Captain Cook, who recognized the health benefits of the constant movement undertaken when one is dancing. That is why Mr Byrn is aboard. To provide us with music. Step forward, if you please, Mr Byrn.’
From the very back of the ranks of men appeared the elderly figure of Byrn – with whom I had exchanged only one conversation during our voyage and that was of the relative merits of the apple over the strawberry – carrying his fiddle.
‘There he is,’ said the captain. ‘Mr Byrn will entertain us with an hour’s music every day between four and five of the clock and I will expect to see every man taking to the deck to dance. Is that understood?’ The men nodded and said ‘aye’ and I could see they were tickled by the idea. ‘Good,’ said the captain. ‘Mr Hall,’ he said then, nodding at the ship’s cook, ‘step forward.’ Mr Hall, who had been kind to me when I first set foot on board, hesitated only a moment before obeying. The captain looked around and his eyes locked on mine. ‘Master Turnstile,’ added he. ‘As we have identified you as the only person on board who has never sailed before . . .’
My heart plunged so deep and so quick in my chest that I thought it might bounce back up inside me and pop directly out of my mouth. I closed my eyes for a moment and imagined the humiliation that I was about to suffer. I would be forced to dance with Mr Hall in front of the men. I would have no choice. In the darkness of my closed eyes, a picture of Mr Lewis appeared in my head, smiling, mocking me, as the door opened and the gentlemen stepped into the room, smiling at my brothers and me while they took their seats for Evening Selection.
‘You may have the honour of choosing a partner for Mr Hall,’ said the captain.
I opened my eyes again and blinked. Had I heard him correctly? I hardly dared to believe it. ‘I beg your pardon, sir?’ said I.
‘Come on, lad,’ said the captain impatiently. ‘Choose a partner for Mr Hall to begin the dancing and then Mr Byrn can start the music.’
I looked around at the men and every one of them looked away. Not a single one of them wanted to catch my eye for fear that I might select him and he would be subject to the same humiliation I had just envisioned for myself.
‘Anyone, sir?’ said I, looking around at the men again, imagining the punishment each might inflict on me at a later date should I choose him.
‘Anyone, Turnstile, anyone,’ he roared cheerfully. ‘There’s not a man on board who couldn’t do with the exercise. You’re a flabby lot at the best of times.’
At that moment the ship tilted slightly to starboard and I felt the spit of water on my face and was taken back a week, to when a bucket of water had been unceremoniously thrown over my innocent person, and immediately my selection was decided upon.
‘I choose Mr Heywood, sir,’ said I, and despite the noise of the winds and waves it wasn’t hard to recognize the sound of indrawn breaths from around the deck.
‘What’s that you say?’ asked the captain, turning to look at me in some surprise.
‘He said Mr Heywood,’ called out one of the men.
The captain threw that man a look before staring back at me and narrowing his eyes, considering it. I had chosen an officer; he had not expected that of me. He had assumed that I would select a midshipman or an AB. But then he had invited me to choose anyone in front of all the crew and he could hardly take that bidding back now and retain his dignity.
I looked around and there, standing at the very edges of the men, his face like thunder, the pustules on his face seething with righteous anger, was the scut himself, glaring at me with such venom in his eyes that I wondered whether I had just made the worst mistake of my life.
‘Mr Heywood it is, then,’ said the captain finally and looked towards the officer.
‘Captain, I object . . .’ began the young officer quickly, but Mr Bligh was having none of it.
‘Come along, Mr Heywood, no objections, I pray of you. Every man must take exercise and a young chap like yourself should revel in it. Step forward this instant. Mr Byrn, do you know “Nancy o’ the Gales”?’
‘I do, sir,’ said Mr Byrn, grinning wildly. ‘And I knew her mother too.’
‘Then, strike her up,’ said the captain, ignoring the remark. ‘Come on, Mr Heywood, sir, no dawdling!’ he roared, his voice attempting to sound humorous while teetering on the edge of the same anger he had displayed towards Mr Fryer not five minutes before.
As the fiddle began to strike up, the captain clapped his hands together loudly in time with the music and in no time the men were clapping along with him, while Mr Heywood and Mr Hall stood facing each other hesitantly. Then, with great courtesy, Mr Hall took a step back and delivered himself of a deep bow, taking his cap off and offering it low, thus establishing himself as the gentleman in the equation and winning a huge round of applause and laughter from his fellows for his efforts.
‘Mr Heywood’s the strumpet!’ cried one, and the officer turned in fury, ready to lash out, but the captain was quick to intervene.
‘Dance, Mr Heywood,’ he shouted. ‘Smile and you might just enjoy yourself too.’
Mr Hall was dancing as if his life depended on it, his hands in the air, his feet bouncing up and down in an Irish jig as he grinned madly, reasoning that if he was to look a fool in front of the men the best he could do of it was to win them on his side and save himself from their mocking afterwards. Mr Heywood, on the other hand, danced hesitantly, looking more and more embarrassed by the moment, and it was only when the captain ordered every other man to begin dancing alongside them that he was surrounded by the crowd and lost to me, although I had hardly dared to catch his eye since selecting him.
‘Do you think that was wise?’ asked Mr Christian, stepping up behind me and speaking directly into my ear, making me jump a little with the nerves, but when I turned to face him with a reply he had disappeared too and the captain was taking my arm and throwing me into the mêlée, urging me to join in the dancing.
Hands slapped my back in appreciation, for I had made a selection that delighted them all and managed to make a farce of an officer – one they particularly disliked – into the bargain, but I couldn’t help but wonder whether the choice I had made had been the most foolish of all my choices since deciding to pick the pocket of the French gentleman two days before Christmas.
I had paid for that with my liberty; I suspected Mr Heywood would hope to exact a harsher payment yet.
15
IT WAS NOT LONG BEFORE he took his revenge on me, and when that moment came I felt sure that I was going to pay for my insolence with my life. In recalling the events of that dreadful morning, I still find myself trembling with rage and feeling such despairing fear for my existence that I wish I were in that creature’s company once again in order to make him feel the same level of terror and panic that I suffered. I confess that in starting this part of my story I have had to walk three times round my parlour and take a glass or two of spirits, such is the pain
of recollection.
Two weeks had passed since I had been chosen by Captain Bligh to select Mr Hall’s dancing partner and my standing on board had risen considerably in the meantime. When I was on deck, the men would occasionally call me ‘Master Turnstile’ rather than ‘Turnip’; they would speak to me with a newly discovered sense of equality between us all and I began to feel that I could converse with the ABs more confidently than I had when I had first set foot on the Bounty a few months before. Even the toughest of the sailors failed to give me the intimidations as much as they once had and while I took my share of ribbing during the evening dancing sessions – for they did point out that I was as pretty as some of the mollies they had known in their time – I made sure to give back as good as I got. In short, I felt as if I was becoming one of the men.
Anyone who knew me when I was a lad would have cheerfully offered evidence to the fact that I was terrible fond of my sleep. Even the relative discomfort of a low-slung bunk outside the captain’s cabin could never have kept me from my slumbers for long, but I had discovered that since setting sail my dreams had become far more vivid than they had ever been when I was sharing a bed with my brothers at Mr Lewis’s establishment. Whether it was the rocking of the ship or the effects of the despicable mess that Mr Hall had the good humour to call dinner, I knew not, but my reveries were filled with mysterious creatures and strange lands, populated by beautiful maidens who beckoned me to their chambers and escapades of such a nature that they gave me the motions on an almost nightly basis. Such dreams had ceased to scare me as they once did and I had grown so accustomed to them that it did not come as an immediate shock to open my eyes in the dim light of this particular early morning to see a colourful beast standing over me, its teeth bared, its eyes wild, a finger pointing directly at my heart, hissing a word over and over in a venomous manner. ‘Pollywog,’ the creature was saying, the syllables whispered aggressively beneath its deep voice and repeated again and again. ‘Pollywog, pollywog, slimy pollywog.’
I stared back at this vision for a few seconds, blinking my eyes furiously, and wondered why I was not awakening from this curious dream – for a dream it surely was – and returning to the relative banality of my shipboard home. After a moment, the picture failing to dissolve before me, I put a hand to my face and retreated a little in my bunk as my consciousness returned, pulling away from the hideous creature as I realized with growing horror that this was in fact no trance, no concoction of rum and cheese taken too soon before sleep, but real life. My own waking life. The creature that stood before me was flesh and blood, but both masked and painted. I gasped in surprise and, as I did so, I considered whether it would be sensible to jump from the bunk and run as fast as possible through the great cabin and out on to the deck, where the men would surely come to my defence, such was my new heroic status. However, before I could do so, a handful of similarly attired figures emerged from behind the creature and each one was offering that awful hissing sound as an echo of its master’s voice. ‘Pollywog,’ they shrilled repeatedly. ‘Pollywog, pollywog, slimy pollywog.’
‘What is this?’ I cried, lost somewhere between fear and disbelief, for now that my eyes were fully opened I could see that the creature and his five slaves were no mythical beasts summoned from the depths to torment me, but the midshipmen, dressed in outlandish garb that they had found I-knew-not-where, their faces painted, their attitudes those of stage-players in a farce. ‘What do you want with me?’ I asked, but before another word could be said, two of the slaves – who I recognized beneath their paint to be midshipman Isaac Martin and the carpenter’s mate Thomas McIntosh – rushed towards me and hoisted me aloft between them; each had one hand under my shoulder and another beneath the joint of my knee, and they raised me in the air to a cheer from the others before their leader, the cooper Henry Hilbrant, led the procession through the great cabin and towards the stairs that led to the deck.
‘Put me down,’ I roared, torn between defiance and despair, but my voice was lost within myself, so astonished was I by this sudden and unexpected turn of events. I knew not what possible purpose it could serve. The men who held me were among those I had formed pleasant alliances with over the previous weeks; they had shown no sign of wanting to assault me before now. I could think of no insult that I had offered their way; their reasons for collecting me from my sleep, not to mention the nature of their curious vestments, made no sense to me at all. A part of me was afraid, but I confess that I also felt a modicum of bemusement, wondering where I was being taken and for what purpose.
Daylight was breaking when we emerged on to the deck and the men who were gathered there were each bathed in the pale yellow, cloudy light that surrounded us, while a light rain drizzled down about our heads. To my surprise the full complement of the Bounty’s crew seemed to be waiting for me on deck, with the exception of the captain and the majority of the officers – Mr Fryer, Mr Christian and Mr Elphinstone were all absent – but I could see my nemesis, Mr Heywood, standing away from the men, watching events from a distance and smiling, as if he could barely wait to enjoy the delights of what was to come, which was understanding enough that I was not to receive my congratulations for that earlier sequence of events. I only glanced at him for a moment, though, for the sight that confronted me in the opposite direction was enough to hold my gaze still and take my very breath away.
I had noticed in the past that whenever Captain Bligh assembled the men on deck to address them, they shuffled forward and jostled with one another for position, stepping from foot to foot throughout his speech and holding no proper lines or order, a fact that did not seem to trouble our commander. This morning, however, disorder or unruliness was not on display. The men were stood in single rows of about a five-man depth with half a dozen lines across. As those men who had carried me set me back on my feet they gripped me strongly by the shoulders to prevent me from running away and I confess that the tightness of their fists about my person began to worry my young heart and I wished that I could escape from whatever hideous event was about to take place.
But what was the most fearsome aspect of this? Was it the fact that they had taken me without warning from my sleep, or the strange clothes they wore, or the fact of their presence on deck when some should have been snoozing in their berths and others should have been tending the watch? No, it was none of these things. It was the silence. No man spoke and the only sound I could hear was the splash of the waves on the sides of the boat as we made our slow progress through the water.
‘What’s this, then?’ I shouted, trying to sound hearty, as if none of it mattered a jot to me and it had been my own choice to appear on deck at that particular time on that particular morning in that particular fashion. ‘What goes on here?’
Instantly the lines parted down the centre and revealed a chair which had been elaborately painted a bright yellow and placed at the fore of the deck. John Williams, another of the midshipmen, and one who was regularly to be found in conversation with Mr Christian and his toady, Mr Heywood, was seated on the chair, his face painted red and a garland placed above his forehead. He raised a finger and pointed at me.
‘This is the pollywog?’ he cried in a deep, booming voice, which he was affecting for the sham. ‘This the slimy pollywog?’
‘This is he, Your Majesty,’ replied the two sailors who were holding me. ‘John Jacob Turnstile.’
Your Majesty? thought I, wondering what game this was, for if John Williams was royalty then I was a scaly lizard.
‘Bring him to me,’ said Williams.
I would have been happy to have stayed where I was, my feet rooted to the deck, but my two guards pushed me forward between them and, as they did so, the men circled around me until I was standing before this ridiculous fellow while the sailors watched on, their eyes aflame with a mixture of violence, lust and the demon himself.
‘John Jacob Turnstile,’ said he then. ‘You know why you are brought before King Neptune’s court?’
&nb
sp; I stared at him and knew not whether I should laugh in his face or fall to my knees and beg for mercy. ‘King Neptune?’ I asked. ‘Who’s he when he’s at home, then?’ I tried to keep the nerves out of my voice but even I could hear them and cursed myself for my cowardice.
‘Before you is King Neptune,’ said one of the sailors around me and I frowned and shook my head. ‘Tremble in his presence, slimy pollywog, tremble!’
‘He never is,’ said I. ‘He’s John Williams, him as looks after the mizzen-sail.’
‘Silence!’ cried Williams. ‘Answer the question which is put of you. Do you know why you are brought here before this court?’
‘No,’ said I, shaking my head. ‘If it’s a game, no one’s told me the rules, so—’
‘You stand accused of being a pollywog,’ said Williams. ‘A slimy pollywog. How say you?’
I thought about it and looked around, wishing that I could return downstairs to the comfort and safety of my bunk, but the looks on the men’s faces were enough to make me think that any attempt on my part to run would only end in tears. ‘I don’t know what that is,’ I confessed finally. ‘So I don’t think I can be one.’
Williams stretched his arms out and surveyed the men. ‘This morning we finally pass that magnificent central line that divides the globe in two,’ he announced in a booming, theatrical voice, ‘north from south, hemisphere from hemisphere, that mark we call the Great Equator, and, having done so, King Neptune demands his sacrifice. One pollywog. A person on board who has never passed through the equatorial contour before.’
I opened my mouth, but words came there none. I started to recall stories I had heard about the rituals of what happened when ships crossed the Equator, the things that were done to virgin sailors who had never sailed across that line before, but I could not recall the exact details. I knew, however, that it was not good.