Captain Cook's Apprentice

by Anthony Hill

  Isaac found it an amazing spectacle, though no crewman understood what the ritual meant – as always when strangers meet. There was much they didn’t comprehend; and those things they thought they knew often turned out to mean the opposite.

  Natives, beckoning from the atolls they passed approaching Tahiti, were not welcoming Endeavour men as they supposed: they were inviting the crew to come ashore and be killed. The girls who displayed themselves didn’t always intend to be provocative: they were showing the beauty of their tattoos. On Tahiti, everyone had a tatu. They carried much significance.

  Not that the sailors could appreciate that. But they admired the patterns engraved on living flesh, and many wanted one. Banks had a tattoo, as did Sydney Parkinson.

  And so would young Isaac Manley – not on the backside, but a small blue leaf on his upper arm. He sat on a palm mat under the trees while a senior man prepared his implements: a bone carved with many small teeth, like needle points, set into a wooden handle; and a coconut dish filled with a purplish-blue dye.

  The man dipped the bone and, as an assistant held Isaac’s arm, struck it rapidly with a stick. The teeth bit sharply into Isaac’s skin, drawing blood. The boy almost cried out with the first blow; but he clenched his teeth and looked away, and held his peace. There were tears in his eyes when it was over, however – though Isaac grinned bravely as the Tahitians congratulated his fortitude, and he bore the pain like a stoic for the days it took the wounds to heal.

  Thereafter he wore it as proudly as the family’s crest, marking him for everyone to know as a South Seas voyager. For no one in Europe heard of tattoos until Endeavour. Isaac even felt as if a part of him had become Tahitian – and certainly the girl Heimata took to him as if he were.

  Sometimes on Sunday afternoons, when the crew had free time, the young people would go walking through the woods beside the river, deeper into the hills and a valley where a waterfall dropped to an emerald pool. Many came there, for it seemed the very blissful, sylvan landscape imaged in mythic tales from long ago.

  Nick Young demanded to know where they went. But Isaac, who was growing up a lot, told him to stow it. For Heimata would sit on the riverbank stroking his new tattoo, still bruised and hurting, making sounds of admiration.

  ‘Tire . . . Tire . . .’

  There came the day, alone with Isaac in a secluded grove by the pool, that Heimata turned to him as a woman, unwinding her bark cloth skirt – her pareu. As Isaac reached to touch her smooth skin, Heimata laughed and dived like a mermaid into the stream. The boy followed, holding and caressing her as they rose through cascading water. Kissing the girl’s bejewelled mouth – and afterwards, lying in the dappled sunlight – they loved each other. He was awkward and tentative to begin with: Heimata seeming so much more experienced. The youth even felt a little adolescent shame that first time, though exulting in it. And Isaac, an apprentice in love as in life, found his rising assurance led by her guidance each time they went to the forest pool.

  They would swim, and laugh, and eat sweet seeded tropical fruit until the juices ran, and they had to dive into the pool again. So that whenever Isaac returned to his ship, he knew he’d been riding the wave of one more tide race through those bridges on the journey to manhood. Discovering that with passion may come tenderness, and a care for the needs of another as well as the claims of the self. He and Heimata together. The boy and the girl, over those golden weeks, learning from each other. For whatever the cultural misunderstandings between Tahitians and Europeans, human attraction everywhere remains a powerful bond.

  A sailor, Archibald Wolf, was found sneaking a few spike nails ashore. Indeed, several hundred nails had disappeared from the store – but Archie refused to divulge any names. Cook unjustly decided he should be punished for everyone, and ordered twenty-four lashes. Wolf’s back looked like a slab of butcher’s meat when John Reading had finished. But Archie kept his silence and the respect of his shipmates.

  The same couldn’t be said for the other end of the social scale, where Mr Banks and Dr Monkhouse had a severe falling out over a young woman. High words were spoken that sounded like threats; though their friends intervened, and the affair was settled without duelling pistols.

  Even so, love in Arcadia still came at a price. Only days after Endeavour arrived, symptoms of venereal disease appeared. Men complained of a burning when they peed, and a discharge of pus. They tackled the Dolphin crew.

  ‘I thought you said there were no pox in this place?’

  ‘There weren’t when we wuz here.’

  ‘Well, there is now!’

  James Cook was distressed.

  ‘I don’t understand it. I had my men examined most carefully, and all but one were free of distemper. Captain Wallis did the same, I know. Yet here we find it as general as anywhere in Europe. In time it will spread through the Pacific, to the eternal reproach of those who brought it.’

  Cook found some consolation when Tepau assured him the disease had come from men on Bougainville’s ships. But who could say? Wallis and his crew had been there first. And that was of no comfort to the island people who suffered, or half Endeavour’s company. Even Isaac examined himself with a secret anxiety.

  Still, there were also times of much joy. Of going to a heiva in the longhouse at night to watch the arioi dance and wrestle and sing into the resounding darkness. One evening they persuaded the seamen to get up and perform: broad, lusty voices and the breaking trebles of the boys, chanting across the lagoon to the reef and beyond to the ocean that would carry them all the way home.

  Until we strike soundings in the Channel of old England,

  From Ushant to Scilly is thirty-five leagues.

  Old England and Scilly were places the people of Tahiti could scarcely imagine. Yet the priest, Tupaia, had already resolved to sail with Endeavour, as another Tahitian, Aotourou, had sailed with Bougainville. Tupaia was a man of quick learning. He was soon speaking English quite well, and eating with a knife and fork. Fascinated by Sydney’s watercolours, Tupaia even taught himself to paint pictures of island scenes in the English way.

  Captain Cook also tried to bridge the divide – to respect Tahitian ways so far as he understood them. He sought permission to cut down trees, for in this age of the poaching laws he knew about property rights. Men who stole from the natives were punished as severely as if they’d looted the ship. John Thurman, press-ganged from Madeira, was flogged again with two dozen lashes for theft of a bow and arrows.

  But many matters were beyond Cook, especially things to do with the Tahitian view of the sacred, and were therefore untouchable: tapu – taboo – another word that entered the English language from Endeavour.

  Sometimes, men gave offence unintentionally. Dr Monkhouse visited a marae, one of Tahiti’s many sacred places – the site enclosed by a coral rock wall, with a high stepped altar like a pyramid, adorned with carved ancestor figures and offerings to the gods. The surgeon stopped to pick a flower from a tree near the wall, not knowing it was tapu to do so, and was attacked by a young man. Monkhouse tried to defend himself, but was tackled by two others, who seized him by the hair and brought him down.

  Some were just foolish: like the seamen who took rocks from the marae for ballast, until the Tahitians complained and the sailors had to collect river stones. Joseph Banks, who should have known better, caused much upset when he lifted the cloth covering a dead woman to inspect the corpse.

  And some things were inexplicable. One day Isaac saw Purea arrive at the ship with her husband Amo, and their young son. He was a lad of about seven – already promised in marriage – who was carried everywhere on a man’s back. They wouldn’t let him stand or walk, though his legs were as strong as Nick’s. Only later did Isaac learn that Purea wanted her son to be a high chief. It was the cause of the war that led to her downfall. But the boy was still so revered that, wherever he put his foot, the ground at once became tapu. He had to be carried, so that others could walk.

  Many other t
hings ‘walked’ as well, for Hiro, god of thieves, was still active. Matters came to a head one morning when Isaac went ashore with Molineux, to find Cook very angry.

  ‘Those damned robbers!’ the Captain was shouting. ‘They’ve stolen the iron rake from Mr Thompson’s oven.’

  ‘We must get it back, sir.’

  ‘I mean to do more than that, Robert. I intend to make them return everything else they’ve taken . . . the musket, Mr Banks’s pistols – aye, and my stockings, too!’

  ‘How?’

  ‘I’ve given orders to seize all the large sailing canoes on the beach – I’ve counted more than twenty pahi – and bring them here. I want you to secure them in the river. They won’t be returned until the natives restore our possessions.’

  ‘And if they don’t . . .?’

  ‘I’ve told Tutaha we’ll burn their canoes.’

  ‘You wouldn’t!’

  ‘Well, of course not, but he doesn’t know that.’

  ‘But is this sensible, Captain? Most of the pahi belong to people who had nothing to do with stealing.’

  ‘I’ve made up my mind. The thieving must stop, and seizing their canoes is the only way to achieve it.’

  ‘But sir . . .’

  ‘I will be obeyed in this, Mr Molineux!’

  So, as the big double canoes were hauled around the point and into the river, there was no option but to make them fast and set a sentry to prevent their owners removing them. Isaac agreed with the Master, for what that was worth. The exercise seemed both unfair and unwise – and so it proved.

  Certainly the oven rake reappeared that afternoon, though none of the other stolen objects did. Nor were they recovered in the days that followed. Despite the protests of the pahi owners, Cook refused to return them. Relations turned sour. Tutaha departed in a passion, and fresh food supplies again ran very low.

  The chief even exacted his own revenge. One evening a Portuguese sailor, Manuel Pereira, was attacked on the beach by three men. Manuel was a strong fellow, who’d been taken aboard at Rio after Peter Flower drowned, but he was no match for his assailants. He was bound, carried to a canoe, and taken a prisoner to Tutaha.

  Next morning a messenger arrived at Endeavour with the news. He was offered an axe if he’d go back to Tutaha and return with Pereira. Which he did, by nightfall. No doubt Tutaha wanted an axe all along, as recompense for his canoe.

  Still, it was plain that Endeavour was beginning to outstay its welcome. Soon it would be time to leave. But before they did, the Captain and Mr Banks made a five-day tour of the island in the ship’s pinnace. The crew returned with tales to curdle the blood of every sailor boy.

  ‘We saw this huge marae Purea built in the south . . . the biggest one ever!’

  ‘Aye, and we saw the whitened bones of her warriors, scattered where they’d been killed in battle.’

  ‘Crunching ’em underfoot like cockle shells, as we walked up the beach.’

  ‘All except for their jawbones, which had been hacked off and strung up as trophies by the victors.’

  ‘Very pretty!’

  Nick and Isaac stroked their own chins. Even on Tahiti, darker streams of human nature ran into the greenwood pools.

  So the preparations for departure gathered pace. The ship’s biscuit was taken ashore, aired in the sun, and sifted for weevils. The gunpowder was dried. Wood and fresh water taken aboard. The small anchors were stowed, and the sails unbent on the yards.

  Fort Venus began to be dismantled. The guns were removed to Endeavour, tents taken down, and Mr Banks spent his final evenings ashore. They were all saying farewell. Isaac went for a last time with Heimata to the waterfall. Cook released the canoes to their owners, knowing it had been a futile gesture. And in this atmosphere of fond nostalgia, Purea and Tepau arrived to say goodbye.

  The visit, it seemed, would end pleasantly after all.

  When something happened to upset everybody again.

  On the morning all hands were to come aboard, it was found that two marines – Sam Gibson and Clem Webb – had disappeared from the fort. They’d gone off with their girlfriends into the hills, hoping to start a new life on the island: the first of many who’d seek escape in a Tahitian idyll.

  ‘Those damn young fools have listened to too much idle talk!’ said Molineux. But the Captain was more phlegmatic, not wanting to repeat his earlier mistake.

  ‘They’d not have deserted without someone’s encouragement – and I dare say Tutaha is that someone. I’ll give them another day, before taking steps to find them.’

  Gibson and Webb hadn’t returned by next morning. With Tupaia as interpreter, Cook asked Purea and her brother Tepau where the men were hiding? They professed ignorance. So the Captain took them hostage for the marines’ return: he seized the owners, not their canoes.

  ‘I’m afraid you’ll have to stay here in Mr Banks’s marquee until my men are recovered,’ he said. As he knew that Tutaha carried most political weight, Cook sent Lieutenant Hicks in the longboat to decoy the ari’i into his custody.

  It wasn’t very difficult. Hicks simply said that Toote had a farewell gift, and Tutaha came straight away. Though when he arrived at the fort and found himself a prisoner again, eagerness turned to dismay. Tutaha had been deceived and, for all he knew, his life put in peril once more.

  But Tutaha was not one to show fear in front of his enemies. So when the situation was explained, he laughed softly and attempted to make light of it. The missing marines? Was that all? And he spoke briefly to Tupaia.

  ‘What does he say?’ asked the Captain.

  ‘If Toote will send two men with the chief’s servants, he will ensure the marines are here by nightfall. The ari’i is as anxious as you for their safe return.’

  Cook at once sent Corporal Truslove and Midshipman Jonathan Monkhouse on foot with four Tahitians to find the deserters. Evening drew on without any sign of them, and the Captain began to get worried. To prevent any surprise attack, Cook had his captives taken out to Endeavour and held comfortably enough in the Great Cabin, where the servant boys brought them food and drink.

  ‘You may tell the chiefs that this is for their better safety – and my security,’ he advised Tupaia, confident of success.

  But it seemed Toote was mistaken. At nine o’clock that night there were shouts from Point Venus. Soon afterwards, a bedraggled Clem Webb was brought aboard. Alone. With news that Truslove and Monkhouse had themselves been taken prisoners, and so had Sam Gibson.

  Cook acted decisively.

  ‘Mr Hicks, I want you to take the longboat with a strong party of armed men and native guides to bring those men back.’ And turning to Tupaia he added, ‘The Corporal and Midshipman Monkhouse are two people I value highly. If any harm comes to them, your chiefs will answer for it.’

  Tutaha fully understood the position he was in. Cook, after all, had the guns. He spoke briefly to the priest, and Tupaia replied to the Captain. ‘I will go with your men, Toote. They will be here by morning.’

  ‘Thank you. I would appreciate that.’

  So it transpired. By breakfast time everybody was safely back aboard: Gibson and Webb confined in irons below, the junior officers and seamen enjoying fried rat, washed down with a warming tot of rum.

  Isaac, who was serving in the wardroom, heard what happened as Jon Monkhouse told the tale to his brother the surgeon, and the other officers at table.

  ‘Corporal Truslove and me spent all day searching for those marines in the mountain valleys without finding any trace of them. None of the natives would help us, whatever Tutaha may have said.

  ‘We were giving it up for a bad job and returning to the ship at nightfall, when suddenly we were rushed by a body of men hiding in the woods, armed with spears tipped with our own iron nails, and evil-looking clubs. They surrounded us before we had any chance to use our own weapons, and led us away to a clearing – where we saw Webb and Gibson, prisoners just like ourselves, looking very foolish.

  ‘The w
arriors kept shouting Tutaha! Tutaha! to our faces, and waving their clubs. I began to wonder if our jawbones might be strung up as trophies, for plainly we were being held hostage for Tutaha’s safe return, as we had taken him! They seemed unsure what to do next, and started arguing among themselves. Some were for letting us go, others for keeping us. Before long, words came to blows. They began fighting each other, and left us well alone.

  ‘Finally they agreed that Webb should be taken to the Fort to say what had occurred and secure our release. And I must say I was relieved to see firelight approaching through the darkness, and Mr Hicks with Tupaia and his men enter the clearing. The priest only needed to say a few words and we were released – at least Corporal Truslove and myself were. Gibson was placed into our custody!’

  Jonathan Monkhouse was only a few years older than Isaac. But the ’prentice boy listened to him with admiration, anticipating the day when he might be a Midshipman with responsibilities and a chance to shine in adventures.

  In one respect, this adventure ended well enough. Nobody was seriously hurt, and the two marines were recovered. Yet in every other way it was upsetting. With his men aboard, Cook told Tutaha and the other hostages they were free to leave. Although they offered Toote four pigs, they were seething at the insult and Cook refused to accept the gift. He didn’t deserve it, and the chiefs departed in fury.

  The Captain was as upset as they were at how things had turned out, and he showed it in the severity of the floggings he gave to Webb and Gibson. Two dozen lashes each. And he made them wait several days in irons for punishment, for all hands were occupied getting Endeavour ready to leave. Final repairs were completed. Stores brought from the Fort. The last water casks filled. On the night of 12 July, Captain Cook and Mr Banks made a farewell visit to Tutaha.