A DISPUTE OF A SORT broke out today between Mr Hall, who had been cook of the Bounty, and Surgeon Ledward. It began over a trifle, the surgeon suggesting that a cook with half a wit about him would be able to take our meagre provision and turn it into something more delicious for us all.
‘And what would you have me do, Surgeon?’ asked Mr Hall, who had a sweet nature about him for most of the time but could turn cantankerous if his culinary skills were called into question. ‘What have we after all only a few coconuts and plantains, a little rum and some bread that grows harder to the touch by the hour? Am I to be like the Saviour?’ he continued, ignorant of the blasphemy. ‘Turning water into wine for every man on board?’
‘I know not what you might do with it,’ replied the surgeon, leaning against the side of the tub and scratching his beard irritably. ‘I have not been trained in the art of the kitchen. But I know that a skilled man might find a way to—’
‘And a skilled surgeon might have leapt into the surf and taken the dead body of John Norton from the arms of the savages and brought him back to life,’ rejoined Mr Hall, sitting forward and wagging his finger like an old washerwoman. ‘Speak not to me of skilled men, Surgeon Ledward, when you yourself have shown no such abilities.’
The surgeon breathed heavily through his nose for a moment before shaking his head and narrowing his eyes. I could sense that such an argument might lead to fisticuffs had we been on either Otaheite or the deck of the Bounty, but here in the tub there was no such freedom to move around; men could cause friction and then find no way to resolve matters. I began to consider that this might ultimately be our undoing.
‘John Norton was dead, Mr Hall,’ he said finally. ‘It does not take a talented surgeon to revive those who have gone to their reward, it takes the will of God.’
‘Aye, and it would take the will of God to turn the few scraps the captain keeps under lock and key into anything fit to eat. We’re in this together, Surgeon Ledward. I suggest you maintain your dignity and allow your unhappy state not to cast aspersions on your fellow drifters.’
The surgeon nodded and was happy to let it go at that. Tempers had been stirred, voices raised, an argument distributed, but had they continued it would only have forced one of the officers to attend to them and such a thing was already being seen as unfair. We were a small society, the nineteen of us. The eighteen of us, as we were now. We could not fight among ourselves.
A fierce wind came upon us that evening, but it blew east by nor’east, pushing us along in the direction that the captain insisted would bring us home. I found myself drifting in and out of sleep and on one occasion awoke with a start, convinced that I was back in Mr Lewis’s establishment in Portsmouth. The lapping of the water around me did not stir my senses yet to inform me that I was nowhere near England and had precious little hope of seeing it again, and when I finally returned to full consciousness and an awareness of who and where I was, I found that to my surprise I missed my sometime home. Not Mr Lewis, of course. I could not have given a fig for him. But I missed England. And Portsmouth. And some of my brothers. The good ones. The ones I cared for.
I sat up, rubbing my eyes, and looked around at our desperate crew with a sensation of hope in my heart. We were a raggle-taggle lot and no mistake. Dirty, smelly, bearded – even my own chin was beginning to be tickled by soft whiskers – but we were a crew. And we had been cast out to sea without a care for our survival. And we would survive. The captain would see to that. Aye, and every last one of us.
I narrowed my eyes and peered into the distance. Somewhere out there, perhaps half a world away, lay England. Lay Portsmouth. Lay Mr Lewis. It was a place I had been running away from for sixteen months, a place I had sworn never to revisit. But that night, sitting in the tub with the farting, stinking evicted crew of the Bounty around me, I swore that I would do the opposite of all of that. I would return there. I would go back and seek my own vengeance. And then I would begin again. Life might hold a lot of treasures for John Jacob Turnstile yet and I would allow no man to play liberties with me again.
‘You have a look of fire in your eyes, Turnstile,’ said the captain, opening his own eyes to look at me; he was seated only a few feet from me, his body twisted in its sleep as he tried to find a comfortable position. I smiled at him and nodded but offered no reply. And when he closed his eyes again and his snoring began, I watched him and thought to myself that here was a great man. Here was a heroic sort. Here was a fellow that another fellow might follow into battle. And at that moment I found my own life’s ambition.
I would be a great man like Captain Bligh too, one day. I would survive, I would thrive and I would succeed.
And we would all, every man jack of us, return to England safely.