Beyond the Bounty Read Online Free Page B

Christian had set another sixteen men ashore in Tahiti. Some of these were loyalists (there had been too many to fit them all in Bligh’s boat). Some were mutineers who were anxious to get back to lovemaking under the palm trees – the fools! Dear old Tahiti was the very first place the King’s navy would look for us.
    By the time we finally reached Pitcairn there were just nine of the
Bounty
crew left. And now we had lost our captain to an unfortunate fire.
    There were the Tahitians, of course. Eleven women, the one with the baby, and a few more already swelling with child, as well as six native men. But I did not count the Tahitians. They did not sit with us around the fire but lurked in the shadows of our new home, jabbering in their own language.
    As far as I was concerned, it was just the eight of us left.
    Myself.
    The godly John Adams.
    That drunken scum John Mills.
    William McCoy, another hardened drunkard.
    Jack Williams – the silent type. Typical armourer’s mate. I gave him a wide berth because there was an air of violence about him.
    Then there was the four-eyed gardener, William Brown, who liked to call himself a Botanist’s Assistant, as though digging up a few breadfruit made him Lord Muck of Cow Shit Farm.
    Then there was young Isaac Martin, a good lad who I liked. He was perhaps the only one of us whom life had yet to tarnish.
    And finally there was Matthew Quintal, a tall, thin man who sat gibbering to himself as he stared at the dancing flames of the fire. He was mad as a March hare, and marked by God or the Devil for a very sticky end.
    But then weren’t we all?
    ‘This island is where we live and this island is where we will die,’ said John Adams.
    I looked at his face through the fire on the beach. I removed the stick from my mouth.
    ‘Unless we are found,’ I said. ‘Then we will die on the island we left behind, and where our mothers pine for us still.’
    Matthew Quintal burbled as though something hilarious had been said.
    I glared at him, chewing furiously on my stick.
    ‘Does something trouble you, Ned?’ said John Adams. ‘I notice you are chewing on a stick.’
    ‘A mere trifle,’ I said. ‘A slight pain of the jawbone. It is of no matter. Thank you kindly for asking.’
    Then John Adams spoke frankly to me.
    ‘Ned, there are some words that need to be spoken,’ he said. ‘Ned Young, you are rough with your fellow Englishmen and you treat our Tahitian allies even worse, often striking them for no good reason.’
    ‘Thank you, John,’ I said.
    ‘It was not a compliment, Ned.’
    I looked surprised.
    ‘Truly?’ I said. ‘Because it sounded like compliment. It sounded like high praise indeed for making an attempt to run a tight ship when others would be happy to whore and booze the day away.’ I unfurled my lips at that drunken scum John Mills. ‘For someone has to keep order and discipline on this lonely patch of sand we now call home,’ I said.
    John Adams nodded. ‘I agree, we must do better than we are doing if we are to make a success of our new land.’ He looked at me. ‘But that does not mean a place where men are beaten at will. Ned, it has been brought to my attention that you struck John Mills. And that you have struck other men.’
    I was furious at this unjust slander.
    ‘Only Tahitians!’ I cried. ‘It is true I gave John Mills here my hand for his drunken lip, but I swear the only other men I have struck have been the natives!’
    ‘Perhaps you shouldn’t strike anyone,’ slurred John Mills, already in his cups.
    I was speechless.
    ‘Do you remember what Fletcher Christian said to William Bligh before we left Portsmouth?’ asked John Adams.
    Jack Williams spoke up. A rare thing for the gunner’s mate. ‘Mr Christian said, “
There is no glory in it
,”’ he growled. ‘Meaning our mission. Meaning that there was no glory in men sailing for two years just to bring a cargo of breadfruit to slaves on the sugar plantations of