Hell's Fire

by Brian Freemantle

  The women stood stiffly upright, each seeking an escape.

  ‘Such a pretty dress,’ congratulated Lady Harpindene. ‘I always say, don’t I, Polly, that Mrs Bligh has such lovely dresses?’

  ‘Lovely,’ parroted the companion.

  Elizabeth was glad of the almost complete darkness. Neither would be able to detect her blush, she knew.

  ‘But isn’t it one …?’ continued the woman, trailing the sentence as if embarrassed by it. ‘No, of course not … silly of me.’

  ‘What, Lady Harpindene?’ said Elizabeth. She wouldn’t be harassed by the other woman, she determined.

  ‘… so silly,’ giggled Lady Harpindene. ‘Had the oddest feeling I’d seen the garment before … but I can’t have done, can I?’

  ‘No,’ said Elizabeth, immediately. ‘Such an easy mistake to make, with fashion changing so quickly.’

  Lady Harpindene swirled her parasol, like an animal trainer about to give a command, and Mrs Wittingdon twitched, preparing herself for reaction.

  ‘We must move on, Mrs Bligh,’ apologised Lady Harpindene. ‘Unsafe to be on the streets of London after a certain time, don’t you think?’

  ‘Yes,’ agreed Elizabeth, standing aside. Behind, the girls dipped their farewells.

  ‘We must meet, very soon,’ threw away Lady Harpindene, moving on to the main thoroughfare.

  ‘Very soon,’ echoed Mrs Wittingdon.

  Bligh’s letter from Plymouth was waiting for her when she returned to Lambeth.

  ‘Mama,’ said Mary, worriedly.

  ‘What?’

  ‘You’re crying. Why are you crying?’

  ‘Happiness,’ said Elizabeth, after the briefest pause. ‘Your father is coming home. He’s done all he was dispatched to do … such a wonderful man, your father.’

  ‘Mama,’ said Mary, much later. ‘Are those ladies we met this afternoon very important?’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I didn’t think I liked them very much.’

  ‘No,’ said the woman. ‘They’re not important … not important at all …’

  She hadn’t made the jokes she’d intended, realised Elizabeth. It was becoming increasingly difficult to laugh, she thought. Thank God Mr Bligh was coming back.

  ‘A raft!’

  The interjection came from the President, almost at the end of William Purcell’s evidence. The Bounty’s carpenter shifted, uneasily. He had seen Fryer attacked and had taken the stand frightened, knowing the same thing could happen to him; twice he had carefully avoided mentioning the help he had given to Fletcher Christian the night before the mutiny, even though he knew the disclosure was inevitable.

  ‘Yes, sir,’ he replied. ‘A raft.’

  ‘But what for?’ demanded Lord Hood.

  ‘Mr Christian said he wanted to quit the ship.’

  The stir spread along the officers in the big cabin and several made notes. More evidence of a sort they hadn’t expected, realised Hood. He determined to follow the same practice as the previous day and turn the questioning over early to the defence.

  ‘The second-in-command told you he was going to desert?’ pressed Sir Andrew Snape Hammond.

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  Hood leaned out, restraining the officer, nodding instead to Bunyan, urging him to his feet.

  The lawyer rose, more sure of himself after the success of the previous day. Edward Christian would be interviewing Fryer now, he knew. The mutineer’s brother had become increasingly excited the previous night as the decision to publish an account of the court martial had hardened. Now he wanted to meet all the witnesses, after their evidence had been given to avoid any suggestion of interference, to explore facts revealed but not pursued during the hearing. According to Edward Christian’s clerk, there was a clamour in London for the daily reports.

  ‘Why did he want to desert?’ picked up Bunyan.

  Purcell hesitated, trying to compose an answer that would cause him as little difficulty as possible.

  ‘He was very distressed,’ recalled the carpenter. ‘He said he could no longer stand the treatment he was receiving from Captain Bligh and preferred to take his chance in the water … we were sailing through islands at the time …’

  ‘And you helped him?’

  ‘I gave him some planking … he lashed it between two masts. And some nails, to trade, if he reached an island.’

  ‘Do you think he would have succeeded?’

  Purcell frowned, sensing a trap.

  ‘We survived the open boat voyage,’ he hedged.

  ‘In an open boat,’ rejected Bunyan. ‘Do you think Mr Christian would have got to an island on the raft he had prepared?’

  ‘I doubt it.’

  ‘So he was, in effect, committing suicide?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Rather than continue on a ship of which Captain Bligh was commander?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘So what did you do about it?’

  ‘Do?’ asked Purcell, uncertainly.

  ‘Yes, sir,’ enlarged Bunyan, aggressively. ‘You were confronted with an officer who sought your help in a scheme that amounted to suicide. What did you do?’

  ‘I told you. I helped him.’

  ‘You helped him!’ echoed Bunyan. ‘Wasn’t your responsibility to prevent it, rather than make it possible?’

  Purcell nodded, head sunken forward. It was going to be worse than what had happened to Fryer, he thought.

  ‘But you did nothing, apart from aid a distressed man in his ambition?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why didn’t you alert Captain Bligh, as was your duty?’

  ‘I didn’t think of it.’

  ‘You didn’t think of it?’

  The astonished question came from the President, pressing forward in his chair in his eagerness for the carpenter’s reply.

  ‘… the Bounty wasn’t like an ordinary ship,’ tried Purcell, desperately. ‘Most people felt sorry for Mr Christian. No one would have done anything to increase the man’s hardship …’

  ‘Was there jealousy of Mr Christian, for his association with the captain?’ asked Bunyan, suddenly.

  Purcell stared at the lawyer, as if seeking hidden meaning in the question.

  ‘Oh no, sir,’ he said, definitely. ‘No one envied Mr Christian that familiarity.’

  ‘Explain further,’ insisted Bunyan.

  ‘Captain Bligh was not the sort of man with whom you attempted friendship,’ asserted Purcell.

  ‘What sort of man was he?’ pounced Bunyan.

  ‘A man impossible to please … I’ve never known anyone for whom it was easier to find fault …’

  ‘And from whom you suffered?’ scored Bunyan, again.

  Damn the Timor enquiry, thought the carpenter. He’d been justified in what he’d done. Everyone in the boat knew that: it was going to haunt him for the rest of his career, he knew, becoming enlarged and distorted as every year passed.

  ‘Sir?’ he tried to avoid.

  ‘Tell us about what happened in the open boat voyage,’ demanded Bunyan. ‘The incident that resulted in your appearing before a Dutch enquiry after your survival.’

  ‘I think the captain suspected there had been some contact between Mr Christian and myself, before the mutiny …’ started Purcell, disjointedly. ‘That was my impression, anyway. He considered me differently from the rest … singled me out … said I wasn’t doing enough. He commandeered my toolchest to store the food and kept the key to himself … the bread supply began going quicker than we had estimated …’

  ‘And Bligh accused you of stealing it?’ intruded Bunyan anxious to get some coherence into what Purcell was saying.

  ‘Oh no,’ rejected Purcell. ‘Only one man had the key. Captain Bligh.’

  ‘Was he taking more than his share, then?’

  ‘No one was ever able to prove it.’

  ‘But you suspected it?’

  Purcell nodded.

  ‘Did the captain know of t
he feeling aboard the launch?’

  ‘He knew, right enough,’ recalled Purcell, definitely. ‘The launch divided into two groups … there was a great deal of distrust …’

  ‘The enquiry at Timor,’ reminded Bunyan. ‘Why were you summoned before it?’

  ‘It happened about halfway through the voyage,’ remembered Purcell. ‘We’d reached an island … we called it Sunday Island, after the day. We’d touched land before and managed to collect some shellfish and berries. Captain Bligh told us to forage again, the understanding being that each man provided for himself. I did rather well, collecting a lot of oysters and clams. But when I got back to the launch the captain, who had little, demanded I hand them over. He said the food was to be communal and everyone should benefit. I said that wasn’t the agreement. He said it had been his order and we began to argue. I called him a confounded liar, as he’d proven himself to be in the past …’

  ‘You called your commander a liar?’ interrupted the President, incredulously. Even allowing for the circumstances, for discipline to have collapsed to that depth was amazing, he thought.

  ‘He was, sir,’ defended Purcell, sensing the attitude of the court. ‘Even castaways like we were, he was cheating us on our victuals, like he had aboard the Bounty.’

  ‘Go on,’ coaxed Bunyan.

  ‘He started up at this … said he was going to settle the dispute between us and with it all the disputes that existed in the boat. He grabbed a cutlass and slashed it over my head … I could hear the blade whistling, it was so close … he said I should take up another sword and we should fight, to see who was the better man …’

  ‘This happened in the launch?’

  ‘No, sir,’ clarified Purcell. ‘We were on the beach. Almost everyone was watching. I refused. I said that no matter how badly I thought of him, I would not fight … that he was still the captain …’

  ‘And there the matter ended?’ encouraged Bunyan.

  ‘No, sir. He kept cutting at me with the cutlass, so that I had to keep moving backwards. If it hadn’t been for Mr Fryer, I think I would have been cut down.’

  ‘What did Mr Fryer do?’

  ‘He returned from his foraging at about this time … he interposed himself between me and the captain and told the captain it was not the way to settle any disagreement between us … it took a long time, but gradually Captain Bligh calmed down …’

  Bunyan detected movement beside him and smiled, recognising his neighbour’s agitation.

  ‘Where did you get the cutlasses from … those that were in the launch?’ he asked, helpfully.

  ‘Mr Morrison threw them to us, just before we were set adrift,’ said Purcell, looking to the man on Bunyan’s right.

  ‘You saw him take no part in the uprising?’

  ‘I saw him cleaning out the launch, prior to its being unshipped. But I assumed he was doing that under the instructions from the mutineers.’

  ‘What about Mr Heywood?’

  ‘I can’t remember seeing him at all.’

  Another excellent day, reflected Bunyan. From the evidence they had so far heard, Heywood would have to be acquitted. He nodded his thanks to the court and sat down. Morrison’s cross-examination, already largely covered by Bunyan’s questioning, was again very brief, and then Hood gestured along the table, inviting questions from the officers around him.

  Sir Andrew Snape Hammond responded, predictably, huddled in his chair.

  ‘Did you regard Captain Bligh as a good commander?’ he demanded, directly.

  Purcell hesitated, more concerned at the interrogation from naval officers than he was at that from a civilian lawyer.

  ‘The ship was run efficiently,’ he offered.

  ‘Were the chance to present itself, would you sail again on a ship under Captain Bligh’s command?’ pressed the officer.

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘He frightened me,’ blurted Purcell.

  The reply surprised everyone.

  ‘Frightened you?’ picked up Hood. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘He was a man with whom it was impossible to feel anything but unease,’ replied Purcell, desperately. His earlier reply had been instinctive and the truth. Bligh had frightened him. But he knew it would be impossible for unsympathetic officers, in the calm and safety of a ship at anchor off Portsmouth, to understand what he meant. They sat waiting, staring at him, demanding more.

  ‘… with most captains, you learn what sort of men they are,’ groped Purcell. ‘You come to recognise their ways, anticipate how they will react to certain situations. It’s important, even. It’s the sort of understanding that makes for the running of a good ship. But with Captain Bligh that was never possible. From the time the Bounty sailed from here, in December 1787, I was daily in the company of Captain Bligh for almost two years … in the open boat voyage, I was but three feet from him all the time. Yet today I am no more able to say what sort of man Captain Bligh is than I was on the day I signed articles for that voyage.’

  He’d failed, realised Purcell. Not one of the stern-faced men, examining him from the table eight feet away, had understood what he was trying to convey. Which was hardly surprising, he accepted. He’d never known himself why Bligh had created in him the apprehension he always felt.

  ‘Only one person aboard the Bounty appeared able to understand the captain …’ Purcell struggled on.

  ‘Who?’ demanded Hood, impatiently, anticipating the answer.

  ‘Mr Christian,’ responded the carpenter.

  The President shook his head. The more he learned of the Bounty and its officers, the less he was able to understand why the mutiny had occurred.

  ‘How can that be?’ he demanded.

  ‘Until we reached Tahiti,’ said the witness, quite lost now and speaking as the words came to him. ‘Mr Christian was the only person with whom I ever saw the captain conduct himself in a civil manner … they would laugh and talk together …’

  ‘What caused the breach?’ asked Hood.

  ‘I do not know,’ said Purcell.

  ‘Are you sure?’ demanded the President. ‘It was you to whom Mr Christian came for help … you knew he was setting out on a course that would cause his death … he must have said something to you.’

  Purcell shook his head.

  ‘He was much out of sorts, rambling, incoherent almost … all he kept repeating, again and again, was that he had to get away from Captain Bligh,’ insisted Purcell.

  ‘But without saying why?’ asked Hood.

  ‘It hardly made sense,’ said Purcell. The words were colliding in his mind, like small boys released from school. He’d never be able to make them understand, he knew. Never. They’d think him an idiot.

  ‘What didn’t make sense?’

  ‘He said the captain was trying to destroy him,’ recounted Purcell, his voice jagged.

  ‘He said the captain was trying to destroy him,’ repeated Hood, spacing the words in disbelief.

  ‘Yes, sir,’ insisted Purcell. ‘But I don’t think he meant it as it sounded. I don’t think he meant Captain Bligh intended him physical harm …’

  ‘Then what in God’s name did he mean?’ asked Hood, his temper barely controlled.

  ‘I don’t know,’ apologised Purcell, hopelessly.

  Hood sighed, his face reddening.

  ‘I think, Mr Purcell,’ he said shortly, ‘that you had better stop before you succeed in completely confusing this enquiry …’

  The President looked beyond the witness.

  ‘… which will recommence promptly at nine tomorrow.’

  It again took Edward Christian over an hour to read the transcript of evidence. Bunyan sat, contentedly sipping the wine that was now always waiting in the decanter for his arrival.

  The lawyer smiled expectantly when the man finally looked up, but there was none of the euphoria that had greeted the previous evidence.

  ‘Wasn’t your meeting with Mr Fryer satisfactory?’ queried
Bunyan, trying to understand the change of attitude.

  Edward Christian nodded, absently.

  ‘Then surely what Purcell said today reinforces what you’re doing?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ agreed the mutineer’s brother. ‘It’s very good. You’ve done well again.’

  ‘What is it then?’ asked Bunyan.

  ‘The Bounty was an unusual ship,’ said the elder lawyer, reflectively.

  ‘It was certainly that,’ agreed Bunyan, missing the full meaning of the other man’s remark.

  ‘I wonder if Fletcher is still alive?’ mused his brother. ‘Alive and in hiding, somewhere in the world.’

  Bunyan shrugged, confused by the man.

  ‘And I wonder if he’d tell me,’ continued Edward Christian.

  ‘Tell you?’ queried Bunyan. ‘Tell you what?’

  For the first time Edward Christian looked directly at Bunyan.

  ‘Why it happened, of course,’ he said. ‘Why it really happened.’

  His invitation to the council was almost an afterthought, Fletcher Christian decided, a reluctant concession the other mutineers had felt they should make and which they now regretted. Christian sat apart in the village square, the odd one out of their gathering, tormented by their attitude. His confrontation with Quintal should have imbued respect, at least from some of them. Young and Adams should have understood; they’d seen what had been happening. How would they have felt if Quintal had approached Susan or Paurai? He’d been friendly on Tahiti with the other botanist, William Brown. So why was he so hostile? And Jack Williams, the very reason for today’s meeting, should have been more sympathetic than anyone. Since the Quintal episode, the division between him and the other seven white men had seemed to widen: there was, thought Christian, more intercourse between them and the natives whom they thought of as slaves than there was with him.

  Slowly, Christian examined the men with whom he was sentenced to spend the rest of his life … with them, but in virtual isolation from them, the cause of their unhappiness and therefore the person to be avoided, like an insane, embarrassing relative who has to be shut away in an unused part of the house and never spoken of unless for some cruel amusement. They blamed him for their predicament and hated him for it, Christian realised, just as he blamed Bligh and hated him.