by John Boyne
I nodded but held my tongue. It sounded to me like one of those speeches that were not intended for reply.
‘Bring the letters up on deck,’ he told me after a moment. ‘I will say nothing about this incident to the captain, for if I recall my old days as a lad I know how easy it is to make a mistake.’
I breathed a heavy sigh of relief, for as much as I didn’t want to be flogged, I knew that I didn’t want the men to think me a snooper either or for the captain to think badly of me. ‘Thank you, Mr Christian,’ said I. ‘I’ll not do it again, I swear I won’t.’
‘Yes, yes,’ he replied, waving me away. ‘On deck with you now. And who knows, Turnip, maybe someday I will call on you for a favour and you will not turn me away?’
He said this very quietly and I hesitated at the door. ‘You, sir?’ said I. ‘But what could I possibly do for you? You’re an officer and I’m just—’
‘Yes, I know,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘The idea is preposterous. Still, let’s keep it in mind, shall we? Just in case.’
I had no choice but to nod my head and run to the deck, where I could hear Captain Bligh shouting for me, ready to lose his return, so great was my delay. And here I am, talking about how any change in routine can be of great interest and break up the normal dull days of life at sea, but the rest of that day I spent in the jolly boat with Mr Fryer, sailing towards the British Queen, where we delivered our letters and paid our respects, and then sailing back to the Bounty again, and yet during all that time and all that voyage, do I recall anything that was said or done? I do not. For through it all I could think of nothing but my gratitude to Mr Christian for saving me and I determined that if he did call on me at some time – which I could not imagine he would – I would do whatever I could to repay my debt.
I was an ignorant lad, back then. I knew nothing of the world, truly, or the ways of men.
17
WHEN I LIVED IN PORTSMOUTH at Mr Lewis’s establishment, I never gave much thought to the sea, which was such a familiar neighbour that none of us ever so much as acknowledged its presence, but my mornings and afternoons were filled with the noise of the sailors who strolled around the town, flirting with the women, drinking in the public houses, causing the Saviour only knew how much trouble when they came to port after months, maybe years, at sea with only one thing on their mind. But when their filthy needs had been satisfied, these men, who had spent so much time together that anyone would have thought they might have liked a little time apart, drank together and from the window that my brothers and I shared above the Twisty Piglet we could hear them talking.
‘He were a tartar,’ one might say of his then former captain. ‘If I live to be a hundred years old, I’ll refuse to serve on board with him again. I swear an oath on it.’
‘If I saw him walking up this street now,’ another might reply, ‘I would stand up and spit in his face and say, “Begging your pardon, sir, I regret to say that I was unaware you were stood before me”.’
And then there was always one, a third man, seated at his table with less drink than his comrades, who would shake his head and say in such a quiet voice that I had to poke my head out of the window and strain my ears in order to hear him, ‘If I saw Captain Such-and-Such now, the stinking bastard,’ he would say, ‘and believe me, my lads, his path and mine will cross again one day soon, I would split him from belly to throat with my knife and cut out his tongue. And when I left him bleeding in the gutter, I would hang the cat-o’-nine-tails from his mouth.’
Such talk was greatly exciting to a lad like me and I had it in my head that every captain on His Majesty’s frigates was a monster of sorts, violent in the extreme and one who instilled such hatred in the men serving under him that it was a wonder he ever managed to spend years at sea and return without them killing him first. It was why I had, at first, feared Captain William Bligh, for what knew I of men like him except that which I had overheard from drunken sots and unhappy sailors? As the months passed, of course, I found that he was not what I had expected at all and I wondered whether I had just been lucky enough to find the one kind captain in the navy or whether the men were wrong in the first place and they were all like this. Perhaps, I wondered, it was the men who were bad. Either way, I had grown to like and respect the captain, although I still held my humiliation at the Equator against him, and thought that when the day came for our paths to part – for part they surely would, as nothing would persuade me to return to England – I would be sorry to say goodbye to him.
His attention to hygiene on board the ship, however, was a thing to behold, for never in the history of Christendom had there been a man so attentive to the cleanliness of the flesh. Time and again he would s line the men up and examine their fingernails for fear that they were dirty and any man who did not come up to scratch would find himself scrubbing his fingers clean in a pail of water until they were red raw in the noonday sun. The men’s knees – aye, and mine too from time to time – were blistered from the time we spent upon them with brushes in hand as we scrubbed the decks clean, but the captain insisted that an unsoiled ship would keep us all in good health and lead to a successful voyage, which was his one true aim. And on an evening when Mr Elphinstone enquired of the captain over dinner whether it was true that Captain Cook had disinfected the decks with vinegar, our own captain roared that it was just so and looked as if he had the mortifications for forgetting to do so himself and demanded that it be carried out before the hour was passed. But if there was one thing above all others in which the captain took pride – and the letter that, to my disgrace, I had read to his wife bore this out – it was the fact that no man on board had been disciplined during our months away from home. Certainly, there were moments of tension on the ship and on most days an officer could be heard telling a man to look lively or he’d know the reason why, but there had been ne’er a flogging and ne’er a beating since we sailed from Spithead before Christmas and I knew only too well that the captain hoped to keep this record intact until we – they – returned to England once again, whenever that date might be.
And so I was not surprised to note the look of unhappiness and disappointment on his face on the afternoon that we passed through the 47th degree latitude, when every member of the crew was summoned on deck for the trial of Matthew Quintal.
Now the Saviour knows that I am not, and never have been, a violent lad. For sure, I ended up in my fair share of scraps with my brothers over the years but they were small things – name-calling that would lead to a punch being thrown, then a wrestle on the ground with legs and arms a-flailing – but we would soon bring these moments to an end when we saw how much pleasure they were giving Mr Lewis. He would take his seat by the fireplace and watch us with his demented eyes, cackling like an old hag, crying, ‘That’s right, Turnstile, have at ‘im’, or ‘Show him no mercy, Michael Jones, pull his nose and tweak his ears!’ We brothers fought, of course we did, but we did it for ourselves, not for his amusement, and when he became involved we would separate and shake hands and declare each other fine fellows as we strolled off, an arm around the other’s shoulder. And I was glad that they ended so, for I do not like the fight and take no joy in watching the suffering of others.
But Matthew Quintal? Oh me, oh my, it was a difficult thing not to take pleasure in the sight of him, brought before the men to answer the charges for which I knew he could have no reply, for of all the sailors on board the Bounty he was the man I liked the least and feared the most. Why was that? Because I had known him before, that was why.
There’s a twist in the tale, I’d warrant. That I have gone this many pages and not told of my prior acquaintance with one of my fellows on board our merry boat? Well, I have not been quite so dishonest as you might think, for when I say I knew him I mean I knew his type, and could see from the look in his eye and the way that he watched me that the moment would come when he would want from me what I had been forced to surrender before but did not want ever to have to give again.
Wherever I went, I could feel his eyes on me. While I was on the deck of the ship, scrubbing it clean perhaps or learning (as I was) the ways of the sails and the manner of our navigation, I could sense his eyes on my back, burning through me. Below deck on stormy nights, if I was in the men’s bunk-cabin listening to the fiddle play, I could rely on him to find his way to a spot beside me, where he would force me to sing a song, which I hated to do, for my singing voice has always been low on my list of talents and would make a crow fall from the sky with a conniption if raised too loud.
‘Oh, stop it!’ Quintal would cry, putting his hands to his ears and shaking his head as if a banshee herself were singing to him, despite him being the one who insisted on my performance in the first place. ‘Stop it this instance, Turnip, or condemn us all to deafness. That a voice so dreadful could emerge from a boy so pretty . . . which of us would have thought it, eh, lads?’ And the men would laugh, of course, and hold me down to silence me and the weight of their bodies above me put me in the trepidations, for it reminded me of home and I was trying all that I could not to remember that place or the things I had done there and been forced to do. And whenever something like this happened, I could be assured that it was Quintal who had brought matters to a head and Quintal who would bring them to a close.
‘You don’t much care for me, Turnip, do you?’ he asked me once, and I shrugged my shoulders, unable to look him in the eyes.
‘I don’t like or dislike any man on board,’ said I. ‘I’m not a man of opinions.’
‘But do you think you could grow to like me?’ he asked then, leaning forward and sneering at me with such danger in his eyes that what could I do but run away from him and seek sanctuary in my bunk outside the captain’s cabin, and I don’t mind admitting that I thanked the Saviour on more than one occasion for its lucky position.
The seas had grown calmer on the afternoon that we were all brought on deck. The crime for which he was charged had actually taken place two days earlier, but until we were through the storms – whose number was increasing almost every day at this time; in fact it was such a rare treat to be in still waters that it seemed a shame to waste them on matters such as this – it had been impossible for the indictment to be read. The captain stood on the deck with the men gathered round and Mr Quintal was before him, his head hanging low.
‘Mr Elphinstone,’ cried Captain Bligh in what I thought was something of a theatrical voice; the men at the stern could hear him, that was for sure. ‘List the charges, sir!’
Mr Elphinstone stepped forward and looked Quintal up and down with contempt in his eyes; behind him Mr Christian and Mr Heywood stood together as ever – for those two were like a pair of peas in a pod, the one so perfectly set out with his hair pomaded and his uniform starched, and the other looking as if he’d been keel-hauled six times before breakfast for playing with his pimples – and Mr Fryer was behind them, looking even more troubled than usual, the lanky streak of piss that he was.
‘Matthew Quintal,’ said Mr Elphinstone, ‘you stand before us today accused of the crime of theft. I say that you stole a cheese and then, when challenged on it, were insubordinate to an officer.’
‘Are the charges fair, Mr Quintal?’ asked the captain, his fingers in his lapels. ‘What say you to them?’
‘Aye, they’re true,’ said Quintal, nodding his head. ‘I took the cheese; I can’t say otherwise and keep a clean conscience. I were hungry and it took my eye and, though I don’t recall the crime, I can’t forget how good the dairy felt inside me.’
The men let out a roar of appreciation and the captain glared at them before shouting them down to silence.
‘And the second charge,’ said he. ‘Of an insubordination. Who was it against anyway, Mr Elphinstone?’
‘Mr Fryer, sir,’ he replied.
The captain frowned at the name and looked around him. ‘And where is Mr Fryer?’ asked he, for from his position of standing the ship’s master was blocked to his sight by the door to the galley. ‘Damn it anyway,’ shouted the captain, growing red about the gills. ‘Didn’t I give orders that every man, sailor and officer alike were to attend on deck—’
‘I’m here, sir,’ said Mr Fryer, stepping forward, and Captain Bligh spun round to stare at him and for a moment I thought that he was almost disappointed to see him there, for had he failed to report to the deck there was always the possibility that he could be found guilty of an insubordination too.
‘Well, don’t hide in the shadows like a mouse afeared of a cat, man,’ shouted Mr Bligh. ‘Step forward into the sunlight and let me take a look at you.’
A low murmur went up among the men and I could see them taking sideways glances at one another; the fact that the captain and the master did not get along well had escaped no one’s notice, but it was a rare thing to hear him being spoken to in such a contemptuous fashion in front of the men. Mr Fryer’s face was scarlet when he stepped closer to the captain, knowing as he did that we were all watching him for a sign of weakness.
‘This man here, if you were listening,’ continued the captain, and I couldn’t help but wonder whether his anger was as much about the fact of losing his perfect disciplinary record as anything else, ‘is accused of an act of insubordination towards you. Is it true?’
‘He was not respectful, sir,’ said Mr Fryer. ‘I’d say that much. But I think insubordination might be overstating the case rather.’
Captain Bligh stared at him in surprise. ‘Overstating the case rather?’ he asked, twisting his voice in a manner so that he sounded almost as posh as Mr Fryer, which led to a general titter among the men. ‘Is that an answer, sir? None of your linguistic machinations now, if you please. Was he insubordinate or wasn’t he?’
‘Sir, I discovered the missing cheese,’ said Mr Fryer, ‘and had a notion that Quintal had taken it, for I had observed him hovering around the stores earlier and had sent him on his way for an indolent. I sought him out on deck immediately afterwards and challenged him on the theft and he told me . . .’ He hesitated now and looked at Quintal, who grinned back at him as if the whole thing was a terrific farce, before staring down at the wood beneath his feet and frowning, as if he wanted as little a part as possible in what was to come next.
‘Well, spit it out, man,’ shouted the captain. ‘He told you what? What did he say?’
‘I’d rather not speak the words, sir,’ said Mr Fryer.
‘Rather not speak the words?’ asked the captain, laughing for a moment and looking around him in surprise. ‘Did you hear that, Mr Elphinstone?’ he asked. ‘Mr Christian? Mr Fryer would rather not speak the words! And why, might I ask?’ he continued, pushing up the poshness even further. ‘Why would you rather not speak the words?’
‘Because, sir, if I may, I think it inappropriate for public consumption.’
‘And I think that when your captain asks you a question, you will answer it or face a charge of insubordination yourself!’ shouted Captain Bligh. I drew in my breath in surprise. Glancing over at Mr Christian, I could see that even he was a little shocked by such a line emerging in front of the men. ‘So I ask you again, Mr Fryer – and I won’t ask a third time, Mr Fryer, and stand idly by – what did Mr Quintal say to you when you challenged him on the theft of the cheese?’
‘Sir, his exact words were that he was sorry for stealing the vittles,’ replied Mr Fryer, loudly and firmly now, and without a moment’s hesitation. ‘But he was happy to confess to doing so and it had tasted as good to his lips as the titty of the captain’s old ma.’
My mouth fell open in shock – no exaggeration either; it literally fell open – and I swear I thought that the very seas had come to a standstill in amazement at Mr Fryer’s words. I believed I could hear the sea-birds hesitating in their flight overhead and looking at one another as if even they couldn’t credit the phrase. I was sure that the earth hesitated in its rotation while the Saviour did a double-take and looked down at us for clarification of the sentence. Not on
ly were his words unexpected, but Mr Fryer himself was known to be a man of God and never uttered so much as a ‘blast it’ or a ‘damn his boots’, let alone made reference to a lady’s titty. Time passed slowly in those moments after he spoke and no one uttered a word. In my mind, I started to recall a bawdy poem that one of my brothers had taught me a year or so before – it referred to a poor little girl in the city, on whom no one had ever took pity – and recited it again and again in my head, counting the times I reached the final line (it was three) before Captain Bligh’s voice was heard again.
‘I beg your pardon, sir,’ said he, sounding as stunned as he might have been had Mr Fryer pulled a sea trout from his back pocket and slapped him about the face with it, three times and hard. ‘I think I must have misheard you, Mr Fryer. Repeat, please.’
‘I said that Quintal admitted stealing the cheese but he stated that it had tasted as good on his lips as the—’
‘Silence, man, I heard you the first time!’ roared the captain, which I thought a little unfair, considering he had asked for the repetition. ‘Quintal,’ said he then, looking towards the man with fury in his eyes, ‘what manner of dog are you anyway?’
‘A bad ’un,’ said Quintal, still jesting, knowing that he would get the cheers of his fellows for it later and there was no point trying to find his way out of the situation at hand, for the lashing was there to be taken. ‘A bad dog, that’s for sure, with an unhappy strain in me. There’s no taming a cur like me.’
‘We shall see about that, sir,’ said the captain. ‘We shall certainly see about that and before the hour is out too. Mr Morrison, where are you, sir?’ From the rear of the crowd, the boatswain, Mr Morrison, stepped forward, the cat-o’-nine-tails already flexed in his hand. The poor man had spent months waiting for his debut and was delighted by the chance. I half expected him to clear his throat and wait for a little early applause. ‘Two dozen lashes for Mr Quintal, if you please,’ he shouted then. ‘We shall soon find out whether this dog can be tamed or whether he is past redemption.’
