by John Boyne
‘No, Turnstile,’ he said with a sigh. ‘Who was it? Some friend back home? One of the brothers you have spoken of?’
‘No, not them,’ I replied, shaking my head. ‘I was thinking of the lad Smith. John Smith, I believe his name was.’
The captain frowned and turned to look at me, raising an eyebrow. ‘John Smith,’ he said slowly. ‘The name means something to me, I am sure, but then it is a most common name. Was he—?’
‘He was the lad who had my position before I did,’ I said.
‘Isn’t it curious how everyone thinks they can interrupt me here,’ said he captain. ‘On the launch, I mean. Back on the Bounty, no one would have dared.’
‘No, sir, they mutinied instead,’ I replied. It was a saucy comment, not designed to insult, and one that would have seen me flogged six months previously, but the captain merely shook his head and looked away.
‘I suppose you’re right on that,’ he said sadly.
‘John Smith was your servant-lad,’ I explained. ‘He was due to sail on the Bounty before me. But he cracked his legs in an accident.’
‘Oh, I remember him now,’ he said, nodding. ‘He sailed with me a year before. A terrible fellow, as it happened. Stank to the heavens and back. No matter how often I sent him to the washroom he came back with a malodorous stench that would have brought a corpse back to life. But it was no accident, Turnstile. I think Mr Hallett had at him one day and he fell down the gangway as a result of it.’
‘Well, he had the last laugh, I expect,’ I said, smiling at the irony of it. ‘For here we are, you, me and Mr Hallett, all on board this blasted tub, and he’s most likely back in Spithead with his legs rested, drinking a mug of rum and eating a fine meal in the warmth of a local hostelry.’
‘You were unfortunate then,’ he admitted. ‘I hope you felt that the rest of your voyage, before the . . . unpleasantness, I mean, was of worth.’
‘Aye, sir, I did,’ I said, smiling at the use of the word ‘unpleasantness’ to describe our misadventure. ‘To my surprise I did.’
We sat in silence a while longer before the boredom caught up with us both and he turned to look at me again. ‘So how did you come to join the crew, then, Turnstile? I don’t think I ever heard.’
‘The truth of it,’ I began, feeling no shame for what were the facts of the case, ‘is that I was apprehended by the blues for stealing a Frenchman’s watch and that same Frenchman made a case to the magistrate for me to join you on your voyage rather than face the gaol for a twelvemonth.’
‘A Frenchman?’ asked Captain Bligh.
‘A Mr Zéla,’ I said.
‘Ah, Matthieu,’ he replied, nodding his head. ‘Yes, I have not known him long but he’s proved to be a fine fellow. He is much in favour with Sir Joseph Banks.’
‘Him what bankrolled our mission?’
‘Him what . . . he who bankrolled it, yes, Turnstile.’
‘The funny thing is if Mr Zéla had left me alone, I would have been freed from the gaol by now. My sentence, as it turned out, was a shorter one than the one I have endured here.’
‘He meant you no harm. I dare say both Mr Zéla and Sir Joseph will be distraught when they hear what has happened to us.’
‘But how will they hear, sir?’ I asked, confused. ‘The mutineers will surely never be able to return to England.’
‘We shall return to England, Turnstile,’ he said confidently. ‘And we shall tell them.’
‘And what will happen then, sir?’
‘Who knows?’ he replied with a shrug. ‘I dare say the admirals will send a ship to locate Mr Christian and his followers. I look forward to leading it.’
‘You, sir?’
‘Yes, me, sir,’ he said quickly. ‘Don’t you think I would want to?’
‘I think you would be right enough never to want to venture to this godforsaken part of the world again, Captain. I know I never will.’
‘Of course you will, Turnstile.’
‘I certainly will not, sir,’ I replied. ‘Not wishing to contradict you, Mr Bligh, but I do not intend even to look at water again after my return to Portsmouth, should I ever get there, let alone come here. I’ll be loath to take so much as a bath.’
He shook his head. ‘We shall see,’ he said.
66
Day 26: 23 May
BY NOW IT FELT AS if the days when the weather did not torment us were always followed by the days when it did, and yet again we found ourselves thrown around the ocean, clinging to the sides of the tub for safety, hoping that this would not be the day when we would finally perish. Later, exhausted and starving, I found a patch of comfort near the fore of the boat, lay my head down and closed my eyes, desperate for sleep and the peace it would offer. A quiet conversation was taking place between the captain and Mr Fryer and I heard some of it.
‘A week,’ said the captain. ‘Maybe two at the most.’
‘Two weeks?’ came the whispered reply. ‘Captain, some of the men have less than two days left in them, I would warrant. How can we survive two weeks?’
‘We survive because we have no choice,’ he replied with an air of resignation. ‘There is nothing that either you or I can do to alter that fact. What would you have me do?’
Mr Fryer sighed and breathed heavily through his nose. The captain had a point. We were all in this together and it was not as if he was gaining something from this voyage that we were losing. ‘Perhaps we should alter our course,’ he said finally. ‘We seem to be drifting aimlessly.’
‘We are not drifting aimlessly,’ replied the captain quickly and I could hear that note of irritation creeping into his voice that had for so long been a marker of his relationship with the ship’s master. ‘We shall make our way north of New Holland, through the Endeavour Strait and onwards to Timor. There is a Dutch settlement there. They will feed us and nurse us to health and send us home on one of their boats.’
‘You know this for a certainty, sir?’
‘It is what we would do if a launch of half-dead Dutchmen appeared at one of our settlements. We can do no more than rely on their Christianity. To alter course now, Mr Fryer, would be disastrous.’
‘I know it,’ he said sadly. ‘I am, like all of us, simply exhausted of this constant trudging through water.’
‘You want to go home,’ replied the captain. ‘It is what we all want.’ He hesitated for a few moments before speaking again. ‘You will sail again when we return?’ he asked.
‘Perhaps,’ he said. ‘My wife and I . . . we have spent little time together.’
‘Yes, I heard you had remarried,’ replied the captain. ‘I was glad of it. I met the first Mrs Fryer on one occasion and thought her a hearty woman.’ Mr Fryer said nothing and a long silence ensued before the captain broke it. ‘You are happy with your new wife?’
‘Very happy,’ he said. ‘After Annabel died, I thought I would never find such happiness again. But then I met Mary and within a week of our marriage I left her for this voyage. Am I a fool, Mr Bligh?’
‘Not a fool, no,’ he replied. ‘Men like you and me . . . our duties are to the king and to the sea. Our wives must understand that. Mrs Bligh knew the kind of man she was marrying.’
‘But if we have only so few years in front of us,’ continued Mr Fryer, who was clearly given to contemplation, ‘then why should we spend it among other men, thousands of miles from home? Why should we do it when there is the comfort of a hearth and a family to be had in England?’
‘Because it is how we are made,’ said the captain, his tone implying that this was simply the way the world was designed and he would hear no more on it. ‘The men on this launch, how many of them do you think will sail again when we return home?’
‘None, sir,’ he replied.
‘And I would say most. It’s in their blood. You mark my words, by this time next year they will be on another ship, seeking adventure and excitement, leaving their wives and sweethearts at home.’
From my vantage poin
t I wondered whether this was true or not and thought that perhaps the captain had a point, but it would not be true of me. I tried to imagine what my own future would hold, but sleep caught up with me then and I allowed it to sweep over me and drag me under.
67
Day 27: 24 May
TERRIBLE TROUBLE THIS DAY AND I swore that maybe we were headed for a fight the like of which we had not yet seen on the tub. Around midday I was sitting next to the sail-maker Lawrence LeBogue, reminiscing with him about the island of Otaheite and the sport we had had there before our troubles began. After some time had passed, however – perhaps more time than by rights it should have taken me to notice – I realized that Mr LeBogue had passed into a state of unconsciousness and was not hearing a word of my prattlings.
‘Captain!’ I cried, raising my voice so that it might carry from the rear of the boat, where I was seated, to the fore, where Mr Bligh was in his usual place. ‘Captain! Ho there!’
‘What is it, lad?’ he asked, turning his head to me.
‘It’s Mr LeBogue, sir,’ I replied. ‘I think he’s only gone and died on us.’
Every man’s head turned in our direction now and I swear that I could see a look of greed in some of their eyes; if LeBogue was gone, then there was one-eighteenth of our tub space left for us to spread our arms and legs into, and one-eighteenth of our few provisions available for us to eat.
‘Step aside, lad,’ said Surgeon Ledward, making his way down towards us, and I did as he said as he knelt down and felt for a pulse at Mr LeBogue’s wrist and neck. We waited silently for a response, but before offering one the doctor placed his ear against the patient’s chest and sat up, turned towards the captain and nodded. ‘He’s not dead, sir,’ he said. ‘But he’s in a bad way, that’s for sure. Passed out. I’d say he’s completely dehydrated and starved.’
‘An excellent diagnosis, Surgeon,’ said William Peckover with a snarl. ‘Now, how many years did you spend at the ’varsity in order to learn so much about human anatomy?’
‘Quiet there, that man,’ said Mr Fryer, although in truth Mr Peckover had a fair point. We were all starved, after all. We were each of us dehydrated. It took no great genius to identify that.
The captain hesitated for only a few moments before reaching into his crate and producing some bread and water; the bread would scarcely have satisfied a field-mouse, it was so feeble, but to each of our eyes it was a feast, weighing as much in one sitting as our meals weighed in a day. The water was no more than half a minute’s rain would fall into a cup but, again, to us it was an ocean of fresh supply.
‘Pass this along, Mr Fryer,’ said the captain, clever enough not to trust any of us with it; it might surely have disappeared in the time it took to travel the twenty-three feet of the launch.
‘Captain, no!’ cried Robert Lamb immediately, and at the sound of his protest at least half a dozen found themselves complaining too.
‘It’s too much!’
‘What about us?’
‘Must we each pass out if we are to survive?’
‘Silence!’ roared the captain, raising his voice now, although it was a shadow of the voice that had been raised before on either boat or island. ‘One of our fellows is ill. He must be saved.’
‘But at what cost?’ asked Mr Samuel. ‘At the cost of our own lives?’
‘The cost will be counted as the days go on,’ said the captain. ‘But we won’t start to sacrifice each other simply because our bodies let us down. Where would it end if that were the case? By noon of the morrow there would be just one man left on board, the strongest of us all.’
We all murmured and griped under our breaths, but it was obvious that he was right. If we started to get a notion that we could allow one another to die at the first sign of weakness, then there was no telling how soon we would each find ourselves thrown overboard to end our lives as fish-food. Still, it was a terrible harsh thing to see all that food disappearing down Mr LeBogue’s throat and scant compensation when he opened his eyes and returned to our company a few hours later, licking his lips and looking around as if he could scarcely understand the looks of contempt being thrown in his direction by his fellow passengers.
‘What?’ he asked, looking for all the world like a member of the Angelic Boys’ Choir. ‘What am I supposed to have done now? I’ve been asleep, after all!’
68
Day 28: 25 May
ABETTER DAY IN THAT MANY birds were seen in the skies and there was a chance that we might catch one. After the incident almost a week before with the gannet whose darkened entrails suggested a bad omen for us all, there was a tension among us that should we be successful in our catch we would receive further ill portents, but on this occasion that was not the case. To our great delight a bird landed directly on the deck of the tub before we could even conceive of a plan to trap one, and stood there with its head bobbing back and forth as it examined us all before we jumped almost an entire crew atop it; when the throng disassembled and equilibrium was restored, its neck was broken and it was handed to the captain directly by the hand of Lawrence LeBogue, who had much recovered from the previous afternoon’s misadventure.
‘Men, we are lucky today,’ cried the captain cheerfully, for truly after a month at sea this was a great delight to us all. I can scarcely recall such a feeling of elation as when the captain slid his knife into the gut of the bird to produce a healthy stream of blood and flesh of the most delicious hue. ‘A feast is before us today, my fellows,’ said the captain. ‘We shall divide the bird equitably and dine off it in lieu of bread today. We are agreed on this?’
‘Aye, sir!’ we all shouted in reply, for there was ne’er a man among us who was not happy to forfeit his share of the daily bread if it meant that we might eat some meat. The captain sliced the bird – flesh, organs, even the small bones – into eighteen parts, trying his best to cut evenly, although there were some pieces that were a little bigger than others. In truth, a man on shore looking at the meagre offerings that each of us was about to enjoy would scarcely have found the interest in opening his mouth to receive them, but we were not men on shore. We were eighteen parts of skin and bone, gathered in twenty-three feet of damp wood, trying to keep our blood pumping and our hearts beating. We looked at the portions when they were ready, waiting for the captain to hand them out, each of us with our eyes focused on pieces that looked particularly satisfying to us.
‘Mr Fryer?’ said the captain.
The master nodded as the captain turned away from us all with the plate of bird pieces, and his second-in-command assumed his place at the fore, looking from man to man. The captain could see none of us now and held up the first morsel for us all to lay eyes on. The only man who could not see it, in fact, was Mr Fryer himself.
‘Who shall have this?’ asked the captain loudly.
Mr Fryer glanced around the waiting faces, selected one, and announced in an equally formal tone, ‘William Purcell.’
The captain handed the piece – a good-sized chunk – to Mr Fryer, who in turn passed it to Mr Purcell, who looked at it with astonishment, as if he could not believe his luck to be served first, before nibbling the side of it cautiously and then devouring it in one.
‘Slowly, men,’ chastised Mr Fryer in a cautious tone. ‘Allow your mouths to savour the meat before sending it to your stomach.’
‘Who shall have this?’ asked the captain again, holding another piece in the air, and we held our breaths; it was larger than the first.
‘Peter Linkletter,’ said Mr Fryer, and the named man gave a whoop of delight before claiming his prize, which he nurtured carefully, eating small amounts at a time, trying all that he could to make the piece last longer. I stared at him, my mouth salivating with desire, hopeful that I too would receive a piece of such value.
‘And who shall have this?’ asked the captain, who appeared to be enjoying his new role as much as Mr Fryer was.
‘Surgeon Ledward shall have it,’ came the reply and
the third piece was gone.
‘And this?’ asked the captain, lifting the next morsel, which, to our starving eyes, was clearly a lesser amount than the three pieces that had gone before. ‘Who shall have this?’
We all held our breaths, not wanting to influence Mr Fryer in any way by the look of panic in our eyes.
‘The master’s mate,’ said Mr Fryer. ‘William Elphinstone.’
We were men enough not to give a cry of joy that the piece was not for any of us, and Mr Elphinstone, to his credit as an officer, claimed his food with a ‘thanking you most kindly, sir’ and did not betray any disappointment or seek a second vote. The men nodded; we approved of him whole-heartedly.
‘Who shall have this?’ asked the captain time and again, and on each occasion a man stepped forward, betraying neither delight not disappointment. I felt a warmth in the pit of my stomach at what a crew we were, what a decent crew, what unity we held. There was such feeling during those moments that day that I swore we could sail directly to England and each man would survive.
Finally there were only four pieces of the bird left, and Thomas Hall the cook and I were the only men yet to eat besides the captain and Mr Fryer.
‘Who shall have this?’ asked the captain, raising the largest of the four remaining pieces; it struck me that, whatever happened, our two leaders would see the harsh end of this game.
‘John Jacob Turnstile,’ said Mr Fryer, and I reached forward and accepted my dinner gratefully. It was no bigger than the length of my thumb, and no thicker either, but I gave thanks to the Saviour, for it was as grand a meal as ever I could have wished for, and when I chewed into it, it gave up both a meaty texture and a rich sauce. My mouth came to life in an instant: the taste-buds on my tongue woke up with a start and wondered why they had been ignored for so long; my stomach turned nervously, receiving early signals that it was soon to begin the act of digestion. Salivating, I ate it as slowly as I could, savouring every texture and moment of flavour; I didn’t even see the piece that Mr Hall got in the end.