by John Boyne
‘Strange to see you up here, Turnip,’ said a voice behind me and I jumped so high in surprise that it was a wonder I did not fall overboard, where no man could have saved me.
‘Mr Christian, sir,’ said I, putting a hand to my chest to feel the heavy thumping of my heart and stop it from leaping through my skin. ‘You startled me.’
‘And you surprised me,’ he replied. ‘I saw a miserable lad standing by the bow, looking out to sea, and thought that’s never young Turnip! He’s always to be found in the safety and security of below decks, not up here among hard-working sailing men.’
I hesitated for a moment, weighing up the level of the insult, for he was surely calling me a coward and if there was one thing that I did not believe myself to be it was that. I had fought every brother in Mr Lewis’s establishment at one time or another and had seen off a few men, too, who had taken more liberties than their payments to my benefactor extended to them and had never once shirked from the confrontation.
‘My duties are below decks, sir,’ said I proudly, unwilling to acknowledge his slur. ‘I have to be on hand for the captain whenever he has need of me.’
‘Of course you do, Turnip,’ said he cheerfully. ‘Of course you do! Why, how else could you eavesdrop into every conversation on board if you were not lingering by doorways, with your ear to the keyholes? Why, if only we had a chimney on board, I swear you’d spend half your time hiding in it.’
I opened my mouth and shut it again in annoyance before shaking my head angrily. ‘There’s a thing to say, Mr Christian,’ I replied finally, falling short of calling him a dirty liar, for to say such a thing to an officer, especially such a favourite of the captain’s, was a sure road back to the gunner’s daughter, and I had sworn that I would never make kiss with her filthy lips again. ‘I can’t help it if my bunk is next to the officers’ cabins, now, can I?’
‘Oh, don’t get all twisted into knots, lad,’ he said, laughing as he placed his hands firmly on the railing of the ship and breathing in the air deeply through his nose. ‘I’ve always said that there is no greater source of information on board one of His Majesty’s frigates than the captain’s servant boy. You hear everything, you miss nothing. You are the heart of the house.’
I nodded. ‘Well, that’s true enough, sir, I suppose.’
‘And you have an opinion on everyone around you too, I dare say?’
I shook my head. ‘Not my place to hold an opinion, sir,’ said I. ‘The captain doesn’t seek my counsel, if that’s what you’re getting at.’
Mr Christian burst into laughter at that and shook his head. ‘Oh, you poor fool,’ said he. ‘You don’t for a moment think that I thought he did, do you? What are you, after all, but an ill-educated boy of no family and no education. Why would a man like Mr Bligh look to you for anything other than a hot cup of tea and to turn his sheets down at night?’
My eyes narrowed when he said that, for it was a lie of the worst nature, a calumny that it was hard to let go by without a swipe at it. To deal with the second count first, I had all the education I needed. I could say my letters and count to a hundred and beyond and knew the capital cities of half of Europe besides, on account of a volume entitled A Book of Useful & Pertinent Information for the Modern Young Gentleman that Mr Lewis kept on his shelves, alongside the penny picture books that his own gentlemen liked to leaf through when they arrived in the evening times for their drink and sport. I could boil an egg, sing the king’s anthem, and bid a lady good morning in French, and there were few lads back in Portsmouth who could say as much.
And to deal with the first count second – the charge of having no family – well, what knew he of that? It was true that I had few memories of my life before being taken in by Mr Lewis, but my brothers at his establishment, tough creatures as they were, were my brothers still and I would have laid down my life for each and every one of them had there been the need.
‘I am not so stupid as you might think, sir,’ said I finally, all bravery now as the winds picked up again and the sea rose, spitting water in our faces, but we held our places, neither of us wanting to be the first to move.
‘Oh, indeed not,’ he said with a smile. ‘No, you’re wise enough to read the captain’s correspondence so as you might learn any information that he might not pass on to the rest of us.’ I declined to answer the charge, but looked away, and I could feel my face taking on the reddenings, even now in the night-time, with the darkness around us to hide my betrayal. ‘You’ve gone very silent now, Turnip,’ said he then. ‘Hit a nerve, have I?’
‘That was a mistake on my part,’ I replied. ‘A misjudgement, such as any one of us might make.’
‘And do you think the captain would see it that way?’ he asked me then. ‘Do you think he’d clap you on the back and call you a fine fellow for making such a mistake, or would he hang you by the ankles from the top foresail, shake the life from your body and then leave you for the wind and the sleet to finish off?’
I bit my tongue, for there was a stream of names I wanted to call Mr Christian, but I had no one but myself to blame for getting myself into this trouble in the first place. Finally, I turned round and made to go back below decks, but as I did so he took hold of my arm, his thumb and finger pinching the bone in it, and pulled me close to him.
‘Don’t walk away from me, you young pup,’ he hissed, and I could smell the stink of the beef broth from his breath. ‘Forget not who I am. I’ll have your respect or know the reason why.’
‘I must return to the captain, sir,’ said I, anxious to get away from him, for he had a look of violence in his eyes that I wanted to escape.
‘And how long is he to keep us at this madness?’ he asked me then and I frowned, unsure that I understood his meaning.
‘What madness?’ I asked. ‘Who are you talking of?’
‘The captain, ignoramus,’ he hissed. ‘How long is he going to keep us trying to round the Horn before accepting defeat?’
‘A lifetime, I’d warrant, and another day on top of that,’ I replied, standing to my full height to defend the captain’s honour. ‘He’ll never accept defeat, you may count on it.’
‘I may count on every man jack of us perishing in Davy Jones’s Locker is what I may count on if this lunacy doesn’t come to an end soon,’ he said. ‘You’re to tell him, do you hear me? Tell him that enough is enough. We must turn around!’
Now it was my turn to laugh. ‘I can tell him no such thing, sir,’ I cried. ‘You said it yourself, he doesn’t listen to me. I’m there to tidy his cabin and keep his uniforms washed and pressed, nothing more. He doesn’t ask my advice on the moorings.’
‘Then, let him know there is dissatisfaction among the men. If he asks you, say they are sinking beneath the weight of it. You have his ear and it’s a valuable commodity on board a tub as small as ours. Let him know the feeling. Let him know they think he is leading them to their doom. I have promised the men that we will turn about and—’
‘You have promised them, sir?’ I asked, surprised now, for while I knew that Mr Christian did everything in his power to keep in with the men he was a terrible two-face behind their backs, insulting each and every one to the captain whenever the mood took him.
‘Someone needs to maintain sanity around here, Turnip,’ he said then. ‘And someone needs to recognize that we have a mission to accomplish, not a dead man to emulate.’ I said nothing to this; I knew to whom he was referring and didn’t want to acknowledge that he might have been speaking sense. ‘And if it falls to me—’
I pulled free of his grip then and stood staring at him for a moment before stepping back a pace or two. ‘If it falls to you . . . what?’ I asked, narrowing my eyes, unsure of what he meant.
Mr Christian bit his lip a little and looked as if he would enjoy nothing more than taking both his hands and throttling me where I stood. ‘Just see that he understands,’ he hissed, standing so close to me that his spittle was hitting my face.
‘I must
go below,’ I said, panting as the storms roared about me and my clothes stuck to my skin, so soaked were they by the sleet.
‘Then, think on what I say,’ he shouted at me as I left, turning away now so that I could barely hear his words.
I ran back towards the stairs and below decks to find that all the work I had done earlier had been wasted, for the floor there was as sodden as I had ever seen it. I ran for my mops and went back to work before the captain might emerge from his cabin, but when I reached in and peeped my head inside he was not there and his greatcoat was gone and I realized that he was on deck too, helping at the worst of times, a captain among his sailors, a man among his own men, and I admired him all the more for it.
Another week passed and still nothing changed. The weather got worse; the men grew more and more exhausted. The boat was tossed around the seas with such little regard that I wondered on a hundred, a thousand, occasions whether tonight was to be the last night that I drew breath and whether my lungs would not be filled with sea water before daylight broke. The captain had changed the shifts again so the men were on deck for no more than a few hours at a time, but the result of it was that they came back to their bunks glassy-eyed, half-blinded and shivering, confused from the lashing they had received in the storms, lost in their timings and insufficiently rested to battle the storms better on their next trip above decks.
We came close to the 60th parallel and needed only another few degrees of longitude before lieing to and turning the boat around the Horn, but it became more and more clear that such a thing was not going to happen. Each morning the captain recorded our position on his chart and in the log-book and by the following morning we had barely advanced at all; some mornings, in fact, we had been routed backwards and had lost an entire day in the attempt.
Finally, the officers gathered in Captain Bligh’s cabin as per his instructions and I poured each of them a mug of hot water with a little port in it, for the taste and comfort, as they awaited his presence. When he appeared, he was wet from head to foot and seemed a little surprised to see them there, even though it was he who had issued their summons, through me, not an hour beforehand.
‘Good evening, gentlemen,’ said he in a depressed tone, accepting my offer of his own mug with an exhausted nod of the head. ‘Bad news, I’m afraid. We have barely advanced in eight days now.’
‘Sir, no man could have run through this sea,’ said Mr Fryer quietly. ‘Not with these storms.’
The captain said nothing for a moment, but finally sighed deeply, a heavy inhalation and exhalation of breath, and I could see that he had finally been defeated. ‘I really thought we could do it,’ he muttered after a moment, looking up and offering them each a faint smile. ‘I remember . . . I remember when I was on the Endeavour and we struggled with such a moment and one of the officers – I forget his name – said to the captain that we could never triumph over nature and he simply shook his head and said his name was Captain James Cook and King George himself had issued his orders, so nature must be tamed, it must obey the king. And tame it he did. Sadly, I don’t appear to have his abilities.’
There was an embarrassed silence in the room. It was true that he had not managed to do what his great hero had done, but, still, the mission was there and we could not be without a captain for the remainder of it. For an awful moment I thought that he was about to resign his commission and place Mr Christian in charge of us all, but instead he stood up and ran a finger along his chart, coughed to clear his throat, and then announced to no one in particular: ‘We shall turn round.’
‘We shall turn round,’ he repeated then in a louder voice, as if he had needed to hear himself say it again to believe that it would be so. ‘We shall turn the ship and head eastwards, rounding the Cape of Good Hope at the southernmost tip of Africa, and then continue on towards Tasmania, beneath New Zealand and along north towards Otaheite. It will add ten thousand miles to our voyage, I’m afraid, but I see no alternative. Any who do, speak now.’
The silence continued. There was relief that the decision had finally been made, for none of us could imagine staying in these storms for very much longer without losing our minds entirely, if not our lives, but the idea of adding such an extension to the length of our trip sunk our hearts.
‘It’s the right decision, sir,’ said Mr Fryer finally, to break the silence, and the captain looked up and smiled a little; I had never seen him so downhearted.
‘When we turn, Mr Fryer, and when we reach calmer waters, I want all the men’s clothing washed and dried and extra rations provided for all. We shall let them rest and all officers will take on whatever extra duties are necessary. I shall take them on myself if need be. We can secure ship’s provisions and replenishments when we reach Africa.’
‘Of course,’ he replied. ‘Shall I give Mr Linkletter the order?’ Linkletter was the quartermaster, and the man responsible for the ship’s steering during that shift.
The captain nodded and Mr Fryer left the cabin, followed in turn by the other officers when it became clear that there was no more to be said on the matter.
‘Well, Master Turnstile?’ said the captain when they were gone, turning to look at me with a half-smile about his face. ‘What do you think of that? Are you disappointed in your old captain?’
‘Proud of him, sir,’ said I fiercely. ‘I swear that if I’d been forced to stay in these storms another day I would have surrendered myself to them entirely. The men will be grateful to you too, you know. They were at their wits’ ends.’
‘They are good men,’ he replied, nodding his head. ‘They have worked hard. Still, the voyage ahead will not be easy. They realize that?’
‘Aye, sir,’ said I.
‘And you realize it, Turnstile? We still have a long way to go before we reach our destination. You are ready for it?’
‘Aye, sir,’ I repeated, and for the first time I felt that I was, for now that I saw an end to our voyage in sight I had become even more determined not to go through all this torment any longer than necessary and instead to find a way off the Bounty and avoid the journey home. My fate, I knew, was in my own hands.
19
THERE WAS A CURIOUS ATMOSPHERE on board the Bounty in the days following Captain Bligh’s decision. There wasn’t a man on the ship who didn’t feel relieved that we were no longer trying to round the Horn, but the notion of adding such an extra distance to our journey brought a gloom on all our heads that even the captain’s offer of extra rations did little to dispel. We were a rum bunch during that week, I can tell you, dancing together on the deck in the evening time for exercise with scowls on our faces and boredom in our hearts. Still, the captain would have been right to ask us what we would have had him do, as it was the men themselves who believed we could never follow our original route; I believe he would have spent years stuck in the one spot trying to go round the Horn had the men been behind him on it.
I had taken to eating my meals with Thomas Ellison, a lad of my own age, who had been mustered as an able seaman and seemed at times to be one of the most unhappy fellows I had ever come across, on account of how he had been put on to the ship by his father, an officer in the navy, despite the fact that he had no aptitude for or interest in the sea. Sweet mother of divine Jesus, he didn’t half like to complain. If the sun wasn’t too hot, the winds were too chilly. If his bunk wasn’t too hard, his sheet was too heavy. Still, for all that, we had age in common and spent a few passable hours together, even if he did like to lord it over me a little owing to his position as an AB and mine as naught but a servant boy. The distinction didn’t mean pennies to me. If anything, my work was easier.
‘I hoped to be back home by the summer time,’ Ellison told me one afternoon as we ate, staring out at the sea ahead that would bring us to Africa, and the face on him would have curdled milk. ‘My local cricket team will feel the loss of me, that’s for sure.’
I couldn’t help but give a snort of laughter when he said that. The local cricket t
eam indeed! It was a long way from local cricket teams that I had been raised.
‘Cricket, is it?’ said I. ‘I’ve never played the game myself. Never took an interest.’
‘Never played cricket?’ he asked me then, looking up from whatever muck Mr Hall had prepared for us and staring at me as if I had a second head growing out of my left shoulder. ‘What kind of Englishman has never played cricket?’
‘Listen here, Tommy,’ said I. ‘There’s them as has things like that in their background and there’s them as don’t. And I’m one of them as don’t.’
‘It’s Mr Ellison, Turnip,’ said he, quick as you like, because although he suffered the indignity of talking to me on account of the fact that no one else much talked to him, he liked me to remember my place too, which was a thing I noticed on board ship just as much as on land. Them as have confidence in themselves never need to remind you of their superior social status, whereas those as don’t have to ram it down your throat twenty times a day. ‘I’m an able seaman, remember, and you’re just a servant.’
‘You’re quite right, Tommy,’ I replied, bowing my head in adoration. ‘Mr Ellison, I mean. I do forget the difference, spending so much time with the captain and officers, I mean, on account of my position, while you lads are up here scrubbing the deck. I quite forget myself in my deliriums.’
He narrowed his eyes and glared at me for a moment, but then shook his head and looked out to sea, giving a long, dramatic sigh, such as he might have offered if he’d been the lead actress in a bawdy play on the stage.
‘Of course, it’s not just the cricket I miss,’ said he, fishing for me to ask more.
