Hell's Fire

Hell's Fire - By Brian Freemantle


Introduction




This is a work of fiction, not history.

Fully aware of the irritation it may cause some historians of the period, I have made appear simultaneous events in the lives of Captain William Bligh and the man who led the mutiny against him on the Bounty, Lieutenant Fletcher Christian, which did, in fact, occur some years apart.

I have done this – consciously – for several reasons. For the fictional book it is intended to be, it makes for ease of narrative. I hope, too, that it enables me to highlight the conflicting characters of the two men.

And then it makes it possible to suggest the hidden secret that caused Fletcher Christian to rebel against the man who had been his friend, casting him and seventeen other crewmen adrift to what he could only have believed would be their certain death. For nowhere in the mass of surviving documents, records, first person accounts or on the island of Pitcairn itself is there a satisfactory answer to the question: why?

Bligh was not a tyrant, imposing the lash at the slightest infringement of regulations. He was an irascible nagger, certainly. He demanded a high standard aboard his ships and when it wasn’t achieved, the lash came from his tongue, not the cat-o’-nine-tails. Compared with other recorded punishments by contemporary captains, by eighteenth-century standards Bligh was soft-handed with his crew.

When, on the outward voyage of the Bounty, the crew deck became soaked by the storms of Cape Horn, he turned his own quarters over to his men so they could sleep dry. They didn’t like it, but he made them eat a carefully considered diet, rightly recognising ahead of his time that scurvy came from a vitamin deficiency. He reached Tahiti after a ten-month voyage with only one suspected case of the illness, an unparalleled record for the time.

So why?

Would an educated man like Christian, whose brothers were barristers and whose family was steeped in law, have considered mass murder because he had fallen in love with a native girl in Tahiti? Or because Bligh had harangued him to the point of tears in front of the whole crew for stealing a coconut? These are the explanations offered by Bligh, in the existing log of his amazing, 3,600-mile survival voyage and then in a book he wrote of the incident.

The transcript exists of the court martial of ten mutineers arrested in Tahiti and arraigned at Portsmouth on September 12, 1792. The dialogue and evidence I have created for the participants is based on recorded fact, moving, I hope, towards my conclusion. That recorded fact comes very little from the court hearing, however. Not once were any of the witnesses or prisoners asked to suggest a cause for the insurrection.

Bounty midshipman Edward Young followed Christian to Pitcairn, fomented a civil war on the island between the natives and the mutineers and then, in an act of dying contrition after all but one of the mutineers were dead, wrote a detailed account of events leading up to the mutiny and of their subsequent existence on one of the loneliest islands in the world.

Today that account is, according to the islanders I have met and interviewed, still hidden somewhere on Pitcairn, secreted upon the orders of the last surviving mutineer, Jack Adams. Before he died, however, Adams made the record available to one of the British sea captains who had located their island sanctuary and the man copied sections from it. In his journal, Young confessed to his part as agent provocateur in the mutiny and wrote at length of their early, savage years on Pitcairn.

Missing from the document, however, was any acceptable explanation for why Fletcher Christian went before dawn on that April morning in 1789 to rouse Captain Bligh at cutlass point with the words: ‘I am in hell.’

One man knew. Fletcher Christian told him.

A few minutes before sailing for the last time from Tahiti to form what is today Britain’s smallest colony, Christian took aside midshipman Peter Heywood. Before they pulled too far away, Edward Young, standing nearby, heard Christian begin to talk of ‘the reason for my foolishness’. The Portsmouth court martial exonerated Heywood from any complicity in the crime, accepting his story that he was carried away against his will. Heywood rose to the rank of captain and swore an affidavit that in 1808, walking along Fore Street, Plymouth, he saw a figure he recognised. He called out Christian’s name and the man turned, showing himself to be the mutiny leader. The man fled and although he gave chase, Heywood lost him.

Heywood was quite willing to provide these and other details for a book written about the Bounty uprising by a relative, Lady Belcher. About only one thing did he refuse to talk – that secret conversation with Christian on the greyish-black Tahitian sand.

Could Christian have escaped from Pitcairn?

There are several accounts that other vessels came upon the mutineers before the officially accepted discovery in February 1808, when the Boston-registered whaler Topaz, under the command of Captain Mayhew Folger, anchored in surf-lashed Bounty Bay.

And in the Dictionary of National Biography, Sir John Laughton writes: ‘It is in a high degree probable that, whether in Captain Folger’s ship in 1808 or in some more venturesome way, Christian escaped from the island and returned to England.’

John Adams told several conflicting stories about Christian, finally asserting that he had perished in the civil war that broke out when one of the mutineers demanded from a Tahitian native the woman who had accompanied him to Pitcairn from Tahiti.

Adams and Edward Young’s journal both recorded how Christian was ostracised on the island.

On September 17, 1814, a British sailor, Captain Pipon, interviewed Adams and then wrote of Fletcher Christian:

It appears that this unfortunate, ill-fated young man was never happy after the rash and inconsiderate step he had taken but always sullen and morose, a circumstance which will not surprise anyone; this moroseness, however, led him to many acts of cruelty and inhumanity which soon was the cause of his incurring the hatred and detestation of his companions here; one cannot avoid expressing astonishment when you consider that the very crime he was then guilty of towards his companions who assisted him in the mutiny was the very same they so loudly accused their captain of.



Bligh’s mission in the Bounty had been to transplant the breadfruit plant from Tahiti to the West Indies, to provide cheap food for the slaves on Britain’s sugar plantations there.

He returned to England after that 48-day, 3,618-mile voyage to be lionised in eighteenth-century London. He was presented a hero to George III, became a friend of the King’s son, the Duke of Clarence, was cleared of any blame in losing his ship and promoted full captain.

Within three years – after completely succeeding with the breadfruit transplantation during a second expedition – his reputation was publicly smeared by the powerful families of Fletcher Christian and Peter Heywood.

Throughout a lifetime of spectacular dispute, Bligh was involved in the North Sea Fleet mutiny in the Nore in 1797; in 1805 he was reprimanded at a court martial for tyranny, unofficer-like conduct and ungentlemanly behaviour on the complaint of one of his lieutenants; and in 1808 he was overthrown as Governor-General of New South Wales, Australia, in an illegal rebellion.

In 1817 he died, aged sixty-five. His tomb is in St Mary’s churchyard, Lambeth, London.

Christian died, according to legend, in Cumberland, where he was born.

On the wall of Cockermouth Grammar School was recorded the fact that he was once a pupil, together with the poet William Wordsworth.

Other than that, there is no monument to him.

Neither is there on Pitcairn.

Southampton, 1977

J.M.

‘… I would rather die ten thousand deaths than bear this treatment any longer … I always do my duty as an officer and as a man ought, yet I receive this scandalous usage … I am in hell …’

Fletcher Christian, April 28, 1789,

at the moment of mutiny





Like an occasional fly on the chest of a sleeping man, the Bounty rose and fell softly in the Pacific swell. It should have been cool, so early in the morning, but there was no wind for the sails that sagged empty from the masthead and the heat draped over the tiny, almost stationary vessel like a thick blanket.

And few people slept comfortably.

Only Captain William Bligh appeared undisturbed. He even wore a nightcap and nightshirt, but the door of his cabin was ajar, to catch any breeze. He stirred from time to time, mumbling in some private dream, but did not awaken. The difficult part of the voyage was over now: he was returning home, in triumph. He was a contented man.

It was too hot in his bunk for the ship’s master, James Fryer. Seeking some relief, he had arranged bed-covering into a mattress and was lodged precariously on top of his sea chest, dozing fitfully and half aware of the ship’s sounds around him. The two loaded pistols he always kept at hand were on the far side of the cabin, locked in a small cupboard. They were at sea now, miles from the nearest island and safe from any surprise attack, so the precautions weren’t necessary any more.

Charles Norman, the carpenter’s mate, had abandoned sleep altogether. He stood at the rear of the vessel, gazing down at the bubbled whiteness the huge, scavenging shark created, arcing and scything around the Bounty, Charles Norman liked fish, much better than human beings. He’d told people that, several times. But they hadn’t taken much notice, because Charles Norman was thought to be mad.

He would have warned Fletcher Christian, had he known what the second-in-command was planning. But the carpenter’s mate was the last person to whom any confidence could be entrusted.

It was only a few minutes before the end of midshipman George Stewart’s watch. It would stink down below, among the sweating, unwashed men, he knew. He stayed aloft, breathing deeply, like a swimmer about to make the plunge. The volcano on Tofoa, twenty miles away, was a spectacular sight, belching towards a full-scale eruption but already with great gouts of fire and lava shooting from it, like a roman candle.

The island was too far away for Fletcher, thought George Stewart, worriedly. And too dangerous, now, with the prospect of its being destroyed by the volcano.

Christian was insane, Stewart decided. With good reason, perhaps. But definitely insane. The man would have to be dissuaded, for his own safety. Stewart began making his way towards the hatchway, pausing to look towards the stern. What was Norman staring at so intently? he wondered. He shrugged, uninterested. Norman was soft in the head. Nothing he was doing could be important.

Like Norman, William Muspratt had decided to get up on deck. For’ard, near the galley, he inhaled the fresher air. A hatchet lay near the breakfast logs and on impulse he decided to split some for the cook. It would be a guaranteed way to get extra rations. Almost immediately came the protest from Michael Byrn, the ship’s sightless fiddler.

‘Hell’s teeth, shut up and let’s get some sleep. It’s not four yet.’

‘Shut up yourself, you blind bugger,’ shouted back Muspratt. He stopped though: it was too hot to chop wood. And who needed extra rations anyway, in weather like this?

In his bunk below, the sleepless Christian heard the footsteps approaching and drew back, instinctively, as the canvas screen was pulled aside from his starboard berth. From childhood, Christian had been bothered by excessive perspiration, so bad he stained things the moment he touched them. He was soaked now, his shoulder-length hair coiled in wet ringlets, his face smeared and greasy. And it wasn’t the heat, decided George Stewart, staring at the man who was to take the watch at 4 a.m. The acting midshipman was shocked by the appearance of Christian, with whom he had become friends during the sixteen months they had been at sea. Christian was as mad as Norman, on deck above, thought Stewart again. Maybe even madder.

‘For God’s sake, Mr Christian. What is it?’

‘You know, well enough.’

Stewart sighed. Bligh was a bastard, an unmitigated, bullying bastard, to have reduced a man to this state. Perhaps another officer wouldn’t have been so badly affected, but Christian was a sensitive, highly strung man and Bligh should have recognised the effect of his behaviour. They’d known each other long enough, after all.

‘You’ll not escape,’ insisted Stewart.

‘I’ve got to. Somehow.’

There would be a lot of men who knew of Christian’s plan to desert the ship, reflected Stewart. The ship’s carpenter, William Purcell, was certainly aware, because he’d provided the planks with which the second-in-command had lashed together a make-shift raft, utilising the masts of the ship’s launch. He’d given Christian some nails, too, to trade with the natives if he reached an island. The cook, Tom Hall, had supplied a roasted hog. So he knew. And any intelligent man, having seen the petulance with which Bligh had treated. Christian during the two weeks since they had sailed from Tahiti and witnessed how, the previous night, after that blazing, childish row, Christian had gone from friend to friend, bestowing his personal belongings as gifts and finally throwing letters and papers overboard, must have guessed the man was in a desperate, almost demented, state of mind.

‘There’ll be sharks near the boat,’ warned Stewart, unaware of Norman’s interest in the stern of the vessel.

Christian gestured, uncaring.

‘It could be a year before we finally get back to England,’ reminded Christian. ‘Do you think I can stand the man for that long?’

‘If you reach an island, you’ll be slaughtered,’ predicted Stewart. ‘This isn’t Tahiti any more. The natives are hostile, cannibals maybe. If you get ashore, you’ll be killed.’

‘Maybe I’ll find a friendly island.’

Stewart sighed, exasperated. Enough of Christian’s friends knew, thought Stewart again. Should he round them up, to overpower the man for his own good? But that wouldn’t work. Bligh would have to be informed. Yet Bligh couldn’t be told the truth because the reason for their action would put Christian in irons for the rest of the voyage, then get him hanged at Spithead for desertion. So the captain would construe it as an attack upon the second-in-command and accuse them of mutiny. And they would be hanged at Portsmouth.

But the word lodged like a burr in Stewart’s mind. They were thousands of miles from England, in an area where few Europeans had explored before. And God knows they had reason enough to take command of the ship. You only hanged for mutiny if you were caught.

‘You’re not alone in your feelings for the captain, Mr Christian,’ said Stewart, suddenly.

Christian shifted in his cramped bunk. He smelled, he realised. Damn the sweat. Yes, he thought, he hated Bligh now. He felt suffocated by the man. He was always conscious of him. Of those staring, pale eyes that followed every movement, eager for mistakes, either real or imagined, any cause for yet another irrational outburst.

‘But I’m the victim of his madness,’ complained Christian.

‘You’re badly treated, right enough,’ sympathised Stewart, detecting the self-pity. He paused.

‘Yet there’s hardly a man better liked than you aboard this ship.’

Once the praise would have pleased him, Christian accepted. Always he had enjoyed being liked and respected. Doubtless the reason he’d welcomed Bligh’s friendship, all those years ago.

Now Stewart’s assertion brought him no pleasure. Bligh had drained him of all the feelings he had once had.

‘It’s no good, Mr Stewart. I’m trapped with the man and can stand it no longer. Even to die would be a better fate than staying aboard the Bounty a moment longer.’

Christian shuddered, unexpectedly, reminded of Stewart’s warning about sharks. Sometimes the men had amused themselves by throwing bones and rotting meat into the water, watching those huge mouths with their saw-edged teeth crush and tear at the bait. He closed his eyes, imagining a leg or an arm being ripped away from his body as he spread-eagled on his raft, trying to paddle towards the uncertain safety of an island he couldn’t see.

Stewart frowned at the shaking of his friend. Christian was chilled, he decided. Men’s minds often went when they were fevered.

If Christian were caught trying to slip over the side, Bligh would make the man’s life hell on earth, Stewart knew. Or even more of a hell than he was making it at present. He’d clap him in irons, of course. And keep him, like a pet bear or dog, paraded every day to be goaded and taunted. Before the voyage was over, Christian would undoubtedly be insane.

‘It’s near four,’ cautioned Stewart. ‘Little more than an hour before sun-up. You’ll never leave the ship without being seen, sir. We’re making so little way they’d get the cutter launched and you inboard before you’d been in the water thirty minutes.’

‘Unless a shark gets me,’ qualified Christian.

Stewart frowned, caught by the remark. Was Christian discarding the ridiculous idea of a raft? he wondered.

‘There are people on board who would follow you, if you chose another course,’ prompted Stewart, guardedly.

Only inches separated the faces of the two men, hunched in the fetid berth. Christian stared at the Scotsman, waiting. Stewart gazed back, saying nothing more.

‘It’s time I went on watch,’ said Christian, at last.

‘Desert and you’ll die,’ said Stewart, desperately.

‘I know.’

‘Then talk to your friends.’

‘And I still might die.’

‘It’ll be a better chance.’

‘Out of my way, Mr Stewart.’

The faint easterly made it cooler on deck, but sweat still dripped from Christian, soaking his shirt. He looked towards the shapes of several men lining the rail, watching the eruption of Tofoa, and remembered Stewart’s warning.

The man was right, he knew. Even if the sharks didn’t get him, the raft he had put together the night before and which lay concealed now beneath the cutter would probably break up before he reached any island.

And the natives would kill him, if he landed without the visible protection of the Bounty. Even with the ship and its guns in evidence, the natives often weren’t scared. Only three days earlier, he’d been lucky to get the men away alive when the watering party he had commanded on Anamoka had been attacked.

Of course, Bligh had blamed him for what had happened, undermining his authority by ranting in front of the crew of which he was supposed to be second-in-command, saying it was his fault the natives had stolen the worthless axe and demanding to know why he hadn’t ordered his men to use the guns with which they’d been issued, to prevent it. Christian sighed. Bligh was going mad, he thought, remembering the diatribe in minute detail. It had been one of the most positive indications yet of the man’s closeness to insanity, castigating him for not using the muskets less than three hours after giving specific orders that although they had been issued, the weapons were not to be fired. The self-pity bubbled up again. How could he be expected to work a ship under a man whose mind butterflied from order to order in constant contradiction?

He put aside the question, thinking of the natives again. They fought with stones, he knew, battering their victims until they were pulped to death. It would take a long time to die, guessed Christian. And hurt a great deal.

He stood, quite alone on the deck, his eyes pressed closed. Oh dear Lord, he thought, what am I to do?

He had to get away, he knew.

He heard the rest of the watch approaching and opened his eyes, embarrassed. It was still dark enough to conceal what he had been doing, Christian realised, gratefully. He didn’t want gossip that he had begun his watch standing on deck, praying.

‘Sir?’ asked Thomas Ellison, seeking an order. Christian smiled down at the tiny, baby-faced youngster, still only seventeen. Like the rest of them, the boy had had himself tattooed in Tahiti, Christian knew. His right arm was still flushed and puffy around the inscription of his name and the date upon which it had been done, October 25, 1788. His parents would probably beat him for it, when he got home to England.

‘The helm,’ ordered Christian, briskly. He looked over Ellison’s shoulder, to John Mills. The gunner’s mate was a raw-boned, taciturn man who’d sailed the world. At 5 ft 10 ins he dwarfed the youth.

‘At the conn, to guide him,’ ordered Christian. Mills would keep the boy out of trouble, he knew. Not that anything was likely to arise on this stifling night that could cause any trouble. Stewart had been right; the ship was scarcely making headway.

Matthew Quintal and Isaac Martin came towards him, expectantly. They were tattooed, too, Christian knew. Quintal had his ass covered in pictures, copying the idea when he knew that Christian had had it done. It had taken them both a week before they could sit down again.

‘Coil the loose lines,’ instructed Christian, brusquely. ‘Prepare to swab down.’

Both Quintal and Martin had suffered from Bligh, Christian remembered. He tried to recall the number of floggings that had been inflicted on both men, but gave up. He snorted, halted by a sudden thought. Had he not been an officer and therefore above such punishment, how many lashes would Bligh have chosen for him?

He went slowly along the creaking ship to the quarter-deck, to relieve William Peckover. The gunner didn’t like him, suspected Christian. Once it had worried him.

‘Hot night, Mr Christian,’ greeted Peckover. He was a large, shambling man, always ready at grog time. But a good seaman.

Christian nodded.

‘How’s it below?’

‘Bad,’ said Christian.

‘Then maybe I’ll stay on deck.’

Christian didn’t reply.

Peckover nodded towards the stern.

‘Norman has found a new friend,’ he said, amused.

‘What?’

‘A shark,’ said Peckover. ‘Very big. Norman is talking to it, idiot that he is.’

The gunner moved away, humming softly to himself.

A following shark would be on him the moment he hit the water, Christian knew. No matter how quickly he followed the raft, it would take at least five minutes to swim to it and sprawl aboard. So he’d have no chance. Which meant that the carefully made raft was useless. And that he remained trapped.

Still the professional seaman, Christian looked around for the rest of his watch, then shrugged. John Hallett and Thomas Hayward would both be still asleep, he guessed, careless as always of their duties. He would let them stay. There was little they could do and he liked neither of them. The last thing he wanted was forced conversation with two youngsters whose prattling irritated him. If Bligh discovered he’d done nothing to rouse them, there’d be trouble, Christian knew. It didn’t matter. Very little seemed to matter, any more.

Christian was surprised to see Edward Young coming towards him. Young was his friend, almost as close as Stewart. Too hot to sleep, Christian guessed. It would get worse, after sunrise.

Young was a direct, rough seaman who drank too much. He was quite ugly, thought Christian, his nose broken from some forgotten brawl and nearly all his teeth rotting blackly in his mouth. The Tahitian girls hadn’t liked him, Christian remembered. Before they’d agree to his making love to them, they’d made him eat pineapple and drink coconut milk, to sweeten his breath.

‘What’s it to be then, sir?’ opened Young, with his customary directness.

Christian moved his shoulders, uncertainly. It wasn’t just Bligh any more, he thought, feeling the emotion rise in his throat. Everyone kept on to him, prodding and demanding. He tried to control the irritation. Edward Young was his friend, the man to whom the previous night he’d given some of the belongings he most treasured. The man’s concern was genuine, he knew, not the prying of someone trying to confirm a half-heard rumour.

‘Mr Stewart thinks we should seize you, to prevent your killing yourself. He thinks you’re mad,’ added Young.

‘And what account would you give the captain?’

‘That’s the only thing preventing us.’

‘I’ll get away, somehow,’ said Christian, lamely. The knowledge that there was no escape was settling insidiously in his mind.

‘You’ve got friends aboard,’ said Young.

He was speaking very quietly, Christian realised, his head only inches away. The Tahitian women had been justified: his breath smelt very badly.

‘… friends who would follow any lead you might make …’ added the other midshipman, pointedly.

The same prompting as George Stewart, reflected Christian. Why did they need him to lead?

‘There’ll never be another opportunity like this,’ said Young, urgently. ‘Look at your watch …’

Christian stared around him at the men under his command, then answered his own question. The officers wanted him to lead because they knew he commanded the respect and leadership of the men on the lower deck. He wished Young would stand away a little.

‘What do you mean, Mr Young?’

The midshipman shifted, annoyed at Christian’s refusal to acknowledge the facts.

‘Every man of them with reason to hate Bligh, almost as much as yourself,’ insisted Young, hurriedly. ‘Sound them out … they’ll be behind you, just like we will …’

‘You can be hanged for inciting a mutiny, sir, just the same as mounting one,’ warned Christian.

‘Nothing will go wrong, once it starts,’ argued Young. ‘Every man who might oppose you is below now, asleep.’

Christian shook his head, unwilling to make the commitment.

‘What’s the alternative?’ demanded Young. ‘It’ll take months to get home, months when you’ll be the whipping boy for that madman Bligh. He’ll turn you mad, Mr Christian. Mad, like he is.’

‘He’s already come close to it,’ mused Christian, softly.

‘We could put them in the cutter,’ enlarged Young. ‘And give them provisions. That way they’d get to an island …’

And be killed there, thought Christian. A mutineer. And a murderer. The Christian family was a proud and honoured one; only he had chosen a career at sea. The others were barristers and would, he knew, become judges. Was he to besmirch a family whose very vocation was the upholding of English law by committing the most serious crime in the statute book?

‘It’s ridiculous,’ he rejected. ‘I’ll hear no more of this, Mr Young.’

‘He’s turned against you,’ insisted Young. ‘Think on what he was threatening during the row yesterday – that he’d have you and others of us jumping overboard in the Endeavour Straits, rather than remain aboard with him. That wasn’t just an idle expression. He meant it, Mr Christian. He means to pick and nag until he breaks you.’

It was true, thought Christian. Bligh wouldn’t stop. He’d keep on, through every hour of every day. And it could be so long before they reached Portsmouth again. So very long.

A gush of red spurted through the distant volcano cone, brightening the already lightening sky and the sound of the eruption, like far-away thunder, rumbled over the ship. At the stern, Charles Norman leaned over the rail, muttering to the shark. In his cabin below, the ship’s master twisted, trying to find a more comfortable position on top of his chest, and in the cabin opposite, Bligh muttered a jumble of words, one of which sounded like ‘honour’, before settling back to sleep.

‘There won’t be another chance,’ repeated Young, turning back along the deck. ‘Think on it, Mr Christian. By morning, it will be too late. And if the raft is discovered and traced to you, as it must surely be, then you’re lost anyway.’

Young walked away with short, thrusting strides and Christian remained at the rail, looking down into the ship. He closed his eyes again, scurrying thoughts filling his mind like dry leaves in autumn.

A spontaneous uprising could succeed, he knew. Everyone to whom he had confided his determination to abandon the ship had conceded some personal reason for hating Bligh. At the moment they were like driftwood swirling unconnected in a whirlpool. Only a catalyst was needed to bind them together. And he could provide that element of cohesion, Christian knew. To become an outcast, a man denied the possibility of ever returning to his own country. They were thousands of miles from England, certainly. But one day, somehow, the news would arrive there. And his family would be humiliated. He balanced the argument in his mind. A family probably humiliated in several years’ time, compared to the daily, unremitting humiliation for month upon month. And perhaps not even ending with their arrival at Portsmouth. When he came to get another ship, Bligh would damn him in every report and character assessment, Christian knew, haunting him with his vindictiveness for the rest of his life. Thousands of miles away, he thought again. Years before anyone really knew: if ever. Lost at sea would be the official belief. Sadness in the family, certainly. But not disgrace. Pride even: lost at sea, with his ship.

They’d hang him if they did find out. At Spithead, before the jeering fleet. As an example to others. Wouldn’t hurt, though, not like being ripped apart by a shark. Or pounded to death by savages. Just a quick, sharp jerk. And that would be it.

Christian began walking from the quarter-deck, a lightness numbing his body: he felt as if his limbs were moving without his control and that he couldn’t have stopped if he had wanted to. And a part of him wanted to stop. Immediately.

At the mizzen he paused, halted by a thought. If it went wrong, he couldn’t let Bligh arrest him. The torture, until they got home for trial, would be unbearable. Mr Young would be right. He would end up certifiably insane. With his seaman’s knife, Christian cut away a length of line attached to one of the heavy sounding leads with which they established the depth of the water in harbour or in shallows, hefting it in his hands to test its weight. It would do, he thought, pleased with the idea. He looped it around his neck, tightly securing the cord. If too many men opposed him to follow Bligh and it became clear the uprising was to fail, he’d throw himself overboard and the weight of the lead would pull him down. He’d drag the water into his lungs. He had the will-power to do it. It wouldn’t take long to drown: or become unconscious, even. He’d be able to achieve it before the sharks struck.

He pulled his sweat-damp shirt over the weight, feeling it heavy against his chest.

He’d have to hurry, thought Christian, the decision made. Soon it would be daylight. He would have to guarantee support before then.

‘Dear Lord,’ he said, softly, moving on again. ‘Please help me.’

Quintal looked up as Christian approached, straightening from the rope he was looping. Since their matching tattoos in Tahiti, Quintal had regarded Christian differently from most superior officers, even though he accorded the man the respect due to his rank.

‘It’ll be a hot day, Mr Christian,’ he said, looking hard at the officer. Christian was drenched in perspiration already, he saw.

‘Are you all right, sir?’ he asked, looking at Christian intently. The man’s face was set and he seemed to be looking at something far away.

‘Well enough,’ replied Christian. It would have to be a careful approach, in the beginning. If Young and Stewart were wrong, Christian wanted ground upon which to retreat.

‘It’s going to be a long voyage home,’ opened Christian. ‘Maybe longer than a year.’

‘Aye, sir,’ said Quintal.

He was a short, stocky man, not afraid to fight, Christian knew. And he made no secret of his dislike of Bligh. But was it sufficient for him to become a mutineer?

‘I’m worried about the captain,’ embarked Christian, cautiously. His stomach dipped, as if did sometimes when the ship slipped too quickly into a storm trough. The moment of commitment, he thought.

Quintal let the rope-end fall, studying the second-in-command intently. This wasn’t a casual conversation.

‘Worried?’

‘His rages are almost constant now,’ said Christian. ‘It’ll be a hell trip.’

And you to be the chief sufferer, thought Quintal.

‘It will be that,’ agreed the seaman, guardedly. His back was still marked by the flogging that Bligh had ordered. And there would be more, he knew. Bligh had him singled out, for no reason at all. The man would find cause for further punishment.

‘There’s none who are happy with him,’ asserted Christian, growing bolder.

That was true enough, accepted Quintal. But Christian shouldn’t have said it. He should have been frightened by this conversation, Quintal thought. Instead, he found himself excited. Mr Christian had picked him out, he decided.

‘Ours has been a fair relationship,’ prompted Christian.

‘Aye, sir,’ agreed Quintal.

‘Do you trust me?’

‘Of course.’

‘Completely?’

Quintal nodded.

‘Aye, sir, completely.’

‘Do the men trust me?’

Quintal nodded again, feeling the first twitch of apprehension.

‘What about the other officers?’ demanded Quintal. People were hanged for mutiny, he thought. And that’s what they were discussing, he was sure.

‘With me,’ assured Christian. ‘Those that count.’

It was like dancing to the music of the blind fiddler, Byrn, thought Quintal, going around in circles with little point and arriving back where you started.

‘What are you proposing, Mr Christian?’ he demanded, directly.

Christian hesitated, suddenly scared.

‘I’m going to seize the ship,’ he blurted. ‘Seize the ship and cast Bligh adrift.’

Quintal stared at the wild-eyed man in the half darkness, silenced by the confirmation.

‘But there’ll be no murder,’ qualified Christian, imagining Quintal’s reaction to be that of reluctance. ‘No violence at all. And they’ll have provisions. Are you with me?’

Still Quintal did not reply and Christian shifted, nervously. If Quintal rejected him, he was lost. The conversation would be around the ship within hours. Bligh would hear of it, without doubt. And demand an explanation. He’d have the ship searched, too, and find the raft. Christian felt the weight around his neck. Was it sufficiently heavy to bear him down? he wondered. Please God, make it so.

‘I’ll follow you, Mr Christian,’ undertook Quintal, breaking the silence. He smiled at the relief on Christian’s face. ‘And I know the others will, too.’

Christian reached out, clasping the seaman’s shoulder. It was too friendly a gesture between an officer and a lower deck man, he recognised. But he discarded the hesitation.

‘We’ll not fail,’ he promised.

Quintal nodded, his growing excitement erasing any doubt.

‘Muskets,’ he said, immediately. ‘We’ll need muskets.’

For a moment, Christian paused. Then he said: ‘Thank God Mr Fryer is such a lazy bugger.’

For several months Joseph Coleman, the armourer, had been entrusted with the keys to the arms chests, given the chore without Bligh’s knowledge because the master was irritated at being awakened by seamen wanting muskets to shoot fish or birds first at sea and then in Tahiti.

‘I’m doubtful that Coleman will join us,’ cautioned Quintal.

‘I’ll not invite him,’ said Christian. He gestured and moved off towards the armourer’s berth. Quintal followed, so closely their bodies touched going down the companion-way.

Christian stopped by the sleeping man. Another point of commitment, he thought. Abruptly he reached out, grabbing the armourer’s shoulder.

‘A shark, Mr Coleman,’ he said, softly. ‘The keys, if you please. I’ll have some meat for you.’

Coleman reacted automatically, burrowing the keys from beneath his hammock pillow and handing them over without even looking at Christian.

Behind Quintal sniggered his nervousness and Christian turned quickly, pushing him away before the noise could arouse the now sleeping man.

‘Sorry,’ apologised Quintal. ‘It just appeared so easy.’

‘It won’t be easy,’ warned Christian.

Back on deck, they stood together, gazing down at the keys.

‘We can do it,’ said Quintal, almost in disbelief. ‘We’ve got the means to do it.’

‘But not sufficient men,’ rejected Christian.

‘Isaac’s been flogged,’ reminded Quintal, nodding to the other seaman on the opposite side of the deck.

Isaac Martin was an American, a crop-haired, sallow man, almost 6 ft tall. Like almost everyone else, he had been tattooed in Tahiti. He was very proud of the star on his chest and often worked stripped to the waist. When he did, it was still possible to see the marks of Bligh’s beating.

Christian and Quintal approached the man together and this time Christian was more positive, seeking instant support.

Martin frowned at the second-in-command, moving uncomfortably from foot to foot.

‘Who’s following you, Mr Christian,’ he demanded, carefully.

‘Most of the people below,’ guaranteed Quintal, gesturing expansively to the orlop deck.

Martin shook his head in disbelief.

‘Where are they?’ he insisted.

‘They’ll follow,’ assured Quintal.

‘I’ve no more reason to love Bligh than anyone else,’ said the American. ‘But I’ll not involve myself in a scheme that won’t work.’

‘So you’re not with us?’ asked Christian, immediately apprehensive.

‘Let’s see your following,’ said Martin.

It was Quintal who moved, turning without any command and running barefoot down the hatchway to the lowest deck in the ship. He knew the hammocks of every man and went unerringly to those of his friends of whose support he was convinced.

Charley Churchill, the master-at-arms, twice flogged and put into irons for desertion in Tahiti, listened without question to Quintal’s whispers and nodded, just once, swinging out of his berth.

Burly William Mickoy, scarred in two places from knife fights, was perhaps Quintal’s closest friend on board.

‘Too long overdue,’ he accepted. ‘Have we guns?’

‘Aye,’ said Quintal, holding up the keys like a talisman.

‘Then we can’t fail.’

Alexander Smith immediately committed himself. So did Matthew Thompson, at forty one of the oldest seamen aboard and the first man to label Bligh a tyrant. Jack Williams, the slow-talking, slow-moving Guernseyman, thought about Quintal’s approach for several minutes.

‘You’ve my support,’ he agreed, at last.

Separately, to avoid arousing the suspicions of the other crewmen who stirred and twisted in their hammocks, the mutineers slowly mounted the ladders, fighting against the excitement that made them want to hurry, trying to appear men bothered by the heat going aloft for some relief.

Only Quintal and Thompson remained below, moving towards the arms locker. The keys in Quintal’s hand jingled with the man’s nervousness.

‘Damn,’ said Quintal, softly. He stopped in the alley and Thompson stumbled into him. Sprawled over the arms store, asleep but completely securing it, lay fifteen-year-old John Hallett, the midshipman missing from Christian’s watch.

‘We must have weapons,’ muttered Thompson, his conviction immediately faltering.

Quintal nodded. Mickoy had demanded the same, he recalled. Support for the overthrow would blow away like sea mist in a rising wind if they couldn’t get to the muskets.

‘The other store,’ suggested Quintal.

Both men, worried now, hurried on deck, making for the knot of men grouped nervously around Fletcher Christian. It could be only minutes before the activity aroused suspicion, Christian knew.

‘We can’t get to the arms chest,’ reported Quintal, speaking softly to avoid alarming the uncertain men. ‘Hallett is asleep on it.’

Christian groaned.

‘And Thomas Hayward is sleeping on the second one,’ he responded. He had checked the arms cache while Quintal was rousing the others below, hoping desperately there’d be no bar to the first chest.

‘Without guns, we’re lost,’ said Quintal, unnecessarily.

And for having gone this far, I will swing at a rope’s end, thought Christian. It would be day soon, he realised, staring over the rail towards the lightening horizon: in daylight, they’d be seized in minutes.

He turned incisively to the men around him, pushing away his fear.

‘Thompson, Quintal, come with me,’ he ordered. ‘The rest of you spread around the deck: don’t hold together.’

Hallett was on his back when they got to the wind-drafted arsenal, his chest lifting in breathy snores.

Christian motioned Quintal and Thompson further into the companion-way, where they were half hidden, then kicked out at the foot of the young midshipman.

‘Up, Mr Hallett. Up,’ he said, head close to the boy. He wanted no one but Hallett roused. ‘You’re an hour late on the watch; you could be on report for this, sir.’

The boy jerked awake, bewildered. He pulled up, mouthing for words.

‘Up, sir! About your duties.’

Hallett, mind still fogged with sleep, stumbled into a half crouch, moving instinctively towards the hatchway, oblivious to both Thompson and Quintal.

Quintal moved swiftly, the key already in his hand.

Now the positive commitment to crime, realised Christian, as Quintal swung the lid up off the chest. Fletcher Christian, proud son of an even prouder family, second-in-command of a ship engaged upon an expedition that had the interest of King George III himself, assured before he was fifty of an admiral’s flag, had become a mutineer. For the briefest moment, his resolve wavered. A mutineer, he thought again. And made so because of a man who slept not fifty feet away and had driven him to the point of despair.

The other two men were standing back, waiting for his lead, Christian saw. He gazed down at the weapons neatly arranged before him. If it still went wrong, he would need to fight people off, until he could get to the rail to cast himself over. Abruptly he moved, reaching into the chest. He clipped a bayonet on to a musket, then looped his arm through the canvas webbing. Into his belt he thrust a pistol and then took up a box of shot. He paused, then snatched at a cutlass. He’d prick Bligh with it, he decided. He’d make the bugger cringe.

‘Stand guard on the chest,’ Christian ordered Thompson. ‘Only those supporting us are to have guns; if any try to rush you, put a ball over their heads. But over their heads, remember. I’ll have no one dead.’

‘There’s the other chest,’ warned Quintal. ‘If they seize that, they could stand us off.’

‘Aye,’ said Christian. ‘But we’re armed now. We can shift Hayward.’

Christian emerged cautiously from the hatchway. Until this moment the tiny gathering of men could only have aroused passing curiosity. But now he was festooned with weapons, like a make-believe pirate at those country fairs he’d once enjoyed in Cumberland. No one who saw him would have any doubt what he was about.

Keeping in the shadow of the booms, he moved with Quintal towards the second chest, nodding to those mutineers he passed to go to where Thompson stood and arm themselves.

‘He’s gone,’ he said, needlessly, when he got to the chest. He gazed around, suddenly alert. If Hayward had discovered what was happening and gone to awaken Bligh, the uprising would collapse now.

‘There,’ pointed Quintal.

Christian looked towards the poop. The second midshipman was engrossed with the soft-minded Norman, gazing down at the great fish swimming sentinel behind them.

There was movement from the left and Christian turned to sec Mickoy approaching. The seaman gestured over his shoulder.

‘Tom has thrown in his lot with us,’ he reported.

Thomas Birkitt, fair and solid-bodied, his face holed with pockmarks, nodded and smiled nervously. There was still the rest of his watch, remembered Christian. Ellison would be with him. And Mills, when he saw the growing size of the mutineers. And the doubtful Isaac Martin had seized a musket, he saw.

For’ard came the sound of chopping as Muspratt started again on the breakfast kindling.

‘See if he’ll commit himself,’ ordered Christian, to Quintal.

From the direction of the poop Hayward, bored with Norman’s shark, moved forward, then stopped at the sight of the mutineers.

‘What in the name of God …?’ he demanded, his voice trailing away in disbelief.

‘Quiet, sir!’ silenced Christian. He’d shouted, he realised; an over-reaction to the first challenge. He’d have to control it. Nervousness was contagious.

‘Have you given mind to what you’re doing, Mr Christian?’ pressed Hayward, immediately aware of what was happening.

‘I ordered you quiet.’

‘It’s a hanging crime, sir.’

‘Too much has passed to be vexed about that,’ said Christian, emptily.

He detected movement in the shadows near Hayward and swung the musket towards it. Hallett, blinking rapidly from the combination of fear and the effect of sleep, moved into the light. He looked first to Christian, then to Hayward for guidance. When none came, he moved closer to Hayward, seeking protection from the older unarmed midshipman.

Christian jerked his head at Martin, then indicated the two young officers.

‘Guard them,’ he instructed. ‘They’re to stay where they are.’

‘What now?’ asked the attentive Quintal, at Christian’s side.

‘Bligh,’ responded Christian, shortly. ‘We go to get Captain Bligh.’