THE FIRST THING TO CHANGE was the nature of authority and it fell face first into an unexpected place. The separation between the officers and the men was not so pronounced as it had once been, which gave each of us a sense of individuality that we had lacked when we were little more than sea-slaves, dragging a hulk of wood and iron through the great waters day after day. And when the uniforms were dispensed with, which they had to be on account of the scorching heat that burned down on us every day, why, we might have held the same status, every man jack of us.
There wasn’t a single one of us who measured our days in the same way on Otaheite that we had when we were serving on board the ship. There, we had measured out our lives through the changing of the shifts, those two, and latterly three, separate periods of time during the day when we were either at work, at leisure or at rest; the changing of the hours dictated how we should employ ourselves, but now we had a sudden freedom and unexpected control over our own fate. On the island, we didn’t notice time passing in the same way. The sun rose and set at regular hours, I’m sure, but we paid it little heed. We were on dry land and, although there was still work to do, it was a different class of labour entirely and we weren’t left in fear of our lives at every shoddy hour of the day, as we had been during that bleak period when we were attempting to round the Horn. Some days I would cast my mind back to those traumatic weeks and it seemed to me to represent a different existence entirely. And if I thought of my days on the streets of Portsmouth? Well, that was just like something I’d dreamed up after eating a bad mango. That most of the men had left wives and sweethearts, parents and children, behind them in England was a fact that no one could deny, but during those months on Otaheite they may have never existed at all, so little did they enter our consciousness.
And as for the notion of fidelity? Well, you could throw a fig at that.
Truth to tell, it wasn’t that we had been unhappy at sea. Our captain was a fair-minded and thoughtful man after all, but it was one thing to be engaged on a contented labour that some days felt passable and other days felt rotten and another to be without one and spending one’s days resting under the shade of an overhanging tree with a ripened piece of fruit preparing to detach itself from its stalk and drop into your welcoming hands. The latter is better, I don’t mind admitting to it.
But here’s a strange fact for you. I have related already how it had taken me several days to grow accustomed to the tossing and turning of the ship when we first left Spithead and began our travels; even now I can recall the misery of the time I spent emptying the contents of my belly overboard back in those dark and miserable days and my stomach churns at the recollection. But it took almost as long for me to grow accustomed to standing on solid land once again after so much time away from it. When I first set foot on the beaches of our new home I expected the sand to rock back and forth at a steady pace, not sit still beneath my feet as was its nature. Indeed, when first I stood on the island I found it difficult to remain in the vertical and had to steady my hams at distances from each other in order to save myself the embarrassment of taking a tumble. Others did too, I saw it. And when I tried to sleep those first few nights, rather than allowing me to rest easier, the stillness and the peace that surrounded me filled my head with curious and unexpected thoughts that kept me awake, and I confess that by the third night I was so tired and in need of a fresh burst of energy that I considered taking a launch back to the Bounty and adopting my old place again in the bunk outside Captain Bligh’s cabin; only, I knew that it would be a foolish and headstrong thing to do and I would be mocked mercilessly for it when the sun came up.
For most of us, the island was called Otaheite. Some of the men used the word ‘Tahiti’ from time to time, as that was the name the maps employed and the one by which the government back home had called it in the christening of our mission, but Otaheite was what the people there named it, the natives, the men and women who had spent their lives on its hills and beaches. It was their language and it was their name that the captain used out of respect for their culture and because it had also been how Captain Cook had referred to it, so naturally it became what I called it too. The men argued about what the word meant in English – there were varying and exotic suggestions, some poetic, others vulgar – but it seemed quite obvious and simple to me: Paradise.
I confess that I entertained a mixed set of feelings on that noisy afternoon when we dropped anchor just off the island and set the first launches off in its direction. It had taken the best part of a day to negotiate our approach and in the meantime many of the natives had gathered on the shore and were engaged in a cheering and riotous dance that both delighted and terrified me. There were hundreds of them and I knew them not for friend or foe, so I stood a little away from my whistling fellows on the deck as the launches were lowered. And as they advanced, I held back, unsure of going forward into this unknown territory, nervous of what might be out there.
‘Last on, last off, is it, lad?’ asked Mr Hall, taking a place beside me and looking towards the shore. I looked at him and frowned, unsure what he meant by this remark. ‘You,’ he explained. ‘You were the final member of the ship’s crew to set foot on the Bounty back when we were setting sail, were you not? Are you to be the last to leave it too?’
‘I thought the captain might need me,’ I said, dismissing the idea quickly, for I didn’t want him to see the apprehension painted upon my features and call me a milksop. ‘I’ll leave when he leaves.’
‘Well, you’re too late for that, lad,’ he said, clapping me on the back. ‘The captain was in the second launch that set out, did you not see him go? Mr Christian went ahead in the first, to settle matters with their leaders, and when the signal came the captain was away. You can see him yonder, heading towards the shore.’
This came as a surprise to me, for, although I had not crossed paths that morning with Mr Bligh anywhere about the ship or near his cabin, I had expected that he would bring me with him when he left and his departure must have come when I was below-decks, packing some of his uniforms in crates. In truth I was sorry and even a little hurt that he had deserted me, for my confidence was at its lowest point and his protection would have meant something to me. I had heard many stories about how wonderful this island would be from my fellow sailors over the course of our voyage, but back in Portsmouth I had also heard many tales of how quickly these idylls could turn to the bad. Wasn’t it true, after all, that Captain Cook had died in the most brutal and cruel fashion on an island just like this one? Hadn’t his skin and bones been separated, parts of his body lost for ever, while the rest decomposed at the bottom of the ocean? What if such a fate lay in store for all of us? For me? I cared little for the notion of being boiled or flayed or dissected; the idea didn’t sit with me at all.
‘My oh my,’ continued Mr Hall, whistling a little through his lips as he looked off into the distance at the natives dancing on the shore. ‘I tell you now, Turnip, I have the greatest affection and regard for Mrs Hall – she’s borne me six bonny lasses and another four lads, although one’s a half-wit, I should say – but she would think me less of a man if I didn’t look forward to enjoying some of the delights this island has to offer. Can you see them? Can you take your eyes off them, I should say!’
He was referring, of course, to the native women in particular who were parading themselves on the beaches and sailing towards the Bounty in launches of their own, throwing garlands into the water, unashamed of their half-naked state. I found myself wanting to stare but not wanting the men to catch me ogling the ladies and mock me for a nance; I look back now and wonder how foolish I must have been to think that, after a twelve-month at sea, there was a single one of my fellow sailors who cared a fig for what I was doing or where I was looking. They had other sights to observe.
‘Look!’ I cried suddenly, my eyes taken by a flurry of activity on the beach. ‘What’s this now?’
A large throne had appeared, carried on the shoulders of eight enormous men from the thickets behind, and was being placed carefully on the beach; a few moments later another eight men arrived by the shore, carrying what looked like a second throne, and this one was occupied by a robed creature whose features I could not make out from this distance. The natives bowed low to him and he stepped from one throne to the other and only when he was safely seated did more natives set forth in canoes, hollering and slapping their cheeks in a most distressing fashion, and approach the captain’s own launch, which I observed now floating near the shore line, and accompany it in to the island.
The sounds ring in my ears still. Perhaps you have attended celebrations in Trafalgar Square to mark a great victory in this war or that. Perhaps you have gathered outside Westminster Abbey and seen a newly crowned king emerge to greet his subjects. But unless you have experienced the roar of shouting and cheering that ricocheted back and forth between the islanders coming out to meet us and the sailors desperate to make their acquaintance in return, you cannot understand how delirious we suddenly became. Some of the sailors jumped overboard in response and swam towards our new hosts. Others leaned over and pulled the native women up on to the Bounty itself and made kiss with them without so much as a by-your-leave. Either way, before I knew it I was surrounded by islanders, who placed flowers around my neck and stroked my cheeks in delight, as if my pale skin was enough by itself to excite them. One placed her hand within my shirt and stroked my belly, uttering sighs of delight as if I was a fine fellow entirely, and I was ashamed of it but I could neither stop her nor run away.
Every girl and woman who came our way was naked from the waist up and had a beauty that you couldn’t see if you travelled round the world a dozen times but never came to visit Otaheite. And every boy and man could only stare and cheer and think of the happy times ahead, because we’d all heard the stories from the salts of long standing and we knew that these were treats worthy of men who’d been at sea for a year and who had enjoyed no female companionship during that time.
I confess, the whole thing gave me the motions.