FLETCHER CHRISTIAN, the miserable swine, had allowed Mr Bligh to bring his log with him when he was forcibly evicted from his rightful command, and the captain spent a good part of every evening scratching away on it with a pencil. Some nights he wrote for a long time, on others he wrote briefly, but I swear that a day did not pass on our voyage that some mention of our progress did not get taken down.
‘Because we shall eventually return home,’ he told me with a half-smile when I enquired as to why he bothered with it. ‘And when we do, I believe that we shall have completed a most remarkable piece of navigation. I write the log as a record of all that has taken place since our exit from the Bounty, and also to make notes of the islands and reefs and shorelines we have spotted along the way. It’s my duty, you see, as a seafaring man.’
‘Do you write about me in there, sir?’ I asked.
He let out a short laugh and shook his head. ‘It is not a melodrama, Master Turnstile,’ he said. ‘It is a record of places and sights, the flora and fauna, the longitude and latitude of places that might be of interest to future travelling men. It is not my personal diary.’
‘Do you mean to make a book of it?’ I asked him then.
‘A book?’ he said, frowning a little and considering it. ‘I had never considered such a thing. I imagine it might be a record for the admirals, not for the populace. Do you think it would be of interest to the general reader?’
I gave a small shrug, for what knew I of readers, I who had only read two books in my lifetime and both of them concerned with the land of China? ‘I imagine you might ask Mr Zéla about that,’ I suggested. ‘The French gentleman, I mean. Him what got me into this messy business in the first place.’
‘Ah, Matthieu, yes,’ he said, nodding his head. ‘Although truthfully, Master Turnstile, I think it was rather more your own fault that you ended up in your position on board our ship and not his, don’t you?’
‘Perhaps,’ I admitted.
‘But you might be right,’ he said, writing a little more. ‘The admiralty might see fit to publish my report so that the decent men and ladies of England would know exactly the character of officers such as Fletcher Christian and Peter Heywood. Their names will live in infamy after this, Turnstile, you mark me.’ I didn’t doubt it for a moment and told him so, suggesting that his memories would make worthy reading. The captain smiled at me and gave a gentle half-laugh. ‘Turnstile, have you taken too much o’ the sun?’
‘No, sir. Why?’
‘You’re uncommon lively today.’
‘It’s my character, sir,’ I replied, a little offended by the comment. ‘Haven’t you noticed it?’
Making no reply, he looked around at the dots of islands we were passing on left and right as we made our way into the open ocean. ‘The Endeavour Strait,’ he told me. ‘It is magnificent, isn’t it? Our ordeal was almost worth it just to pass through here in such a vessel.’
‘Aye, sir,’ I said, glancing around, and in truth he was right. It was a pretty sight to behold and might have been prettier had I not been staring at water without cessation for more than a month since.