IF THE SAVIOUR HAD SEEN FIT to give us a bit of sunshine on our backs the day before, he took a great delight in spinning us the other way round on this day, for the gales and storms blew up like nobody’s business and threatened to send us all downwards to a watery grave for some six or seven hours. Our strongest and best rowers – John Hallett, Peter Linkletter, William Peckover and Lawrence LeBogue – took on the oars themselves and worked as if they were one man with four limbs to keep us afloat. Others bailed water from the deck, while the rest of us dared to utter a few terrified prayers in our heads that we might survive this escapade.
When the hurricanes finally died down and we had nothing left to contend with but wind and rain, the captain sensed our misery and offered us a little salt-pork, which was our finest remnant from our brief time on the Friendly Islands, as well as a morsel of bread and a thimbleful of water. I confess that the three items taken together felt like a great feast, and had my stomach not been screaming that this was not enough for it, not enough by far, I would have lain back a happy and sated Turnstile and thought myself a fine fellow altogether.
‘Captain,’ said Mr Tinkler, who had briefly returned to his senses, although perhaps they were still a little impaired considering the impudence that was to come. ‘Captain, you can’t mean to give us just this?’ he asked.
‘Just what, Mr Tinkler?’ replied the captain, running the back of his hand across his eyes, wiping the rain from them, the dark bags beneath them betraying his exhaustion.
‘These morsels,’ said Mr Tinkler, a note of utter frustration creeping into his tone. ‘Why, they wouldn’t be enough to feed a budgerigar, let alone a crew of grown men and the lad Turnip.’
I took exception to this but said nothing for now, merely adding it in my mind to a list of perceived insults and slights.
‘Mr Tinkler,’ replied the captain with a sigh, ‘that is all there is. Should I give you more and starve you tomorrow? And the next day? Is that what you would have me do?’
The former Bedlamite stood up at this, stretched his arms out before him slowly and curled his hands into fists, not in order to make assault on the captain but to pump them up and down in the air in anger. ‘Tomorrow is tomorrow,’ he said, stating the clear and obvious. ‘May we not worry about that then?’
‘No,’ said the captain, shaking his head.
‘But I am starving,’ came the screaming reply. ‘I shall die of my hunger. Look here,’ he added, lifting his chemise to reveal a set of fine ribs, on which I might have run a spoon and produced a harmonious effect. ‘I am skin and bone!’
‘We are all skin and bone, sir,’ cried the captain. ‘And we will remain skin and bone until we have saved ourselves. It is the price we pay for the crimes of our erstwhile sailors.’
‘The price we pay for our folly in joining you, you mean,’ he shouted, incensed, turning round to look at the rest of us, his face both pale with illness and scarlet with fury, if such a description can be understood. He turned to an unlistening audience, however, for none of us was in a mood to listen to his disputes. ‘What say you, men?’ he cried. ‘We are deprived. We are starved. There is …’ He looked up towards the crate that sat locked beside the captain at all times, its key suspended from his neck. ‘There is food in there,’ he roared. ‘Food that Mr Bligh decides when and if we should dine off. Who gave him this authority? Why do we allow it?’
At this the captain leapt from his seat at the fore of the launch and in a trice was about Mr Tinkler with the back of his hand; there was a madness in his eyes and for a moment I worried about where this might end. ‘Sit you down, sir,’ he roared in a voice so loud that even Mr Christian might have heard him. ‘I’ll not have talk like this, do you hear me? Have we not had enough of mutiny for one lifetime? Who gave me my authority? you ask. The king, sir! The king gave it and only the king might take it away.’
Mr Tinkler locked eyes with the captain for five, six, seven, seconds and it was anyone’s guess whether he might come back at him again and attack him. I saw Mr Fryer and Mr Elphinstone ready to pounce should the situation become untenable, but holding their muster for the moment. I was half off the seat myself, ready to defend the captain should he need assistance, but it was all in vain, for the stare of power was enough for Tinkler and his face collapsed in a mixture of pain, upset, starvation and madness, before he sank to the deck and wept like a molly. The captain’s hand lifted again for a moment, preparing to touch his shoulder, I believed, but he thought better of it and turned back for his seat.
‘You shall eat when I say you shall eat,’ he shouted for us all to hear. ‘And you shall eat what I give you. I swallow no more than any man on board, you know that. We shall survive, do you hear me? We shall survive this! And you will obey me!’
There was a low murmuring of cheers, but, in truth, we were half the men we had been and even a scene like this could do little to break the monotony of our voyage and the terror of our new lives. A few minutes after it had begun we were back at our duties and it was all forgotten, except for that one fact which had so incensed Robert Tinkler to begin with.
We were, every man jack of us, the captain included, starving.