I longed to read the Captain’s journal, also guarded by Charlton and Howson, and see what he wrote of me in it. But I also wondered what other things he had written there. It would show me much about the type of man he really was.
The important facts of temperature and wind direction and depth were kept in the ship’s logbook—but his journal contained his own thoughts as well.
Did he write only of routine aboard ship, or did he write of his accomplishments and his regrets too? Did he think often of his distant family, as other men do? Did his wife come into his sleeping thoughts—unbidden—to remind him of the tear between duty and family?
And what might she think of the incessant drive and ambition that sent him across the oceans? Did he write defences to her as to why he did what he did? Or perhaps he recorded stories and engaging tales he had been saving up to tell his children one day. To describe to them the lands he had explored and places he had named.
And did he, like all men, dream of lying abed with his wife, face pressed into her soft breasts and arms wrapped around her? Thinking of how, with only the slightest fumbling of clothes, he could inch closer and enter deeply inside her. Her gentle encouraging words and then lying there afterwards, unmoving. Still inside her. That was a feeling of being in the safest of harbours.
Surely Cook must think of that. How any man would. But might he also think of how she might next time make him vow to never go to sea again? Nor allow their sons to go to sea and share his fate.
How might he choose, if given the choice of her comforting embrace or that of the oceans?
It’s peculiar how obsessed we became by people we couldn’t see. Though in truth, that had largely been our experience all along the coast of this land. Except for an occasional close encounter at Botanists Bay, whenever we saw people from the ship they were long gone when we approached and tried to communicate with them. Or they somehow knew we were coming and all we saw were their fires and huts and canoes.
There were a few isolated incidents, I was told, of some of our men coming upon the natives and a tentative pact being observed, such as when one of the crew stumbled upon an elderly man and woman, with two children, at Botanists Bay. As a peace gesture, the sailor offered them some of the parrots he had caught, but they would not touch them. They stayed there just staring at each other until he went on his way.
The naturalists quizzed him about the natives’ words and gestures and so on, as if he might have spent six months living with them and knew all about their ways. They were determined to learn something of the type of people here in this land, based on things such as spears they had left behind, or the layout of their fires, or the vessels of bark they used for water buckets. They examined discarded shells and fish bones to try to deduce what the people ate, and found pieces of soft bark that they presumed were their beds. They even examined how deeply trodden the ground was to try to understand how long the natives had been in that place.
How disappointed they were to not find houses and gardens and native people who were willing to trade with them. Instead all we found were these invisible people—perhaps as fearful and apprehensive of us then as we were of them now. We made a habit of leaving them gifts, such as beads, nails, ribbons and so on, but when we returned they were always untouched.
The only thing they gave us in return was an occasional spear hurled in our direction, though never close enough to hit anyone, as if they just wanted to reinforce their displeasure with us.
The two men who had initially opposed our first landing at Botanists Bay had thrown several spears at us, and did not retire until small shot was fired at them. One native even responded by fetching a small shield to defend himself. So, given that they were more often timorous than violent it was strange that we feared violence from them now.
Perhaps it was because our guard had become raised in New Zealand, where an attack had so often to be watched for. Or perhaps it was just the stories we told ourselves that led us to fear them so. Everything not seen becomes something potentially hiding in wait to ambush. Everything not understood is something dangerous.
Yet despite not encountering any of the natives after we left Botanists Bay, they were closely watching us, and the stories of our coming were travelling up the land faster than we were, being passed by special signals of smoke that we saw from the ship. They did not know what type of people we were, just that we were coming.
And we were very openly and noisily showing them that we were people who were struggling not only to survive here but simply to maintain our unity as a group. We were showing them we had no knowledge of the dangers of the place, nor which foods could be easily eaten. As we showed that in times of desperation we would turn on ourselves.
We were showing them exactly what type of people we were.
And I wondered what they might have thought of our great and mighty Captain, prone under the cover of the low sail, tended closely by Charlton and Howson, who delicately poured water between his lips and coaxed him to swallow half-chewed plants and kept the sun and the rain off him, and cleaned him when he pissed or shat himself. From a distance he might have resembled an idol carved from pale rock and dressed in white undergarments. His long body had a certain majestic bearing, even motionless on the ground.
Certainly he was treated by several of us as we had seen the natives of the South Pacific treat their own idols, approaching him with reverence, kneeling beside him and laying hands upon him. Offering food and water.
Praying over him.
To some of the crew perhaps he was god-like, and they believed that if he only regained consciousness, then everything would suddenly be all right. Those men who had left us would all return and offer their humble repentance, and we would find abundant supplies of food and a ship would appear to rescue us. Even the dead might be found sitting on an atoll out at sea, all having survived the wreck.
If only he would open his eyes and sit up. Look around and take control of the situation. That is what they believed him capable of.
That is what they needed to believe.
Many of his ideas were bound to be foolish, and no better than our own, but maybe, just maybe, he had some ideas that we didn’t. To give him his due, he had the right turn of mind in New Zealand—eventually—when he had Tupaia brought ashore to act as interpreter and tried to appease the natives with a mix of gifts and a show of force.
A lesser man, like Banks, might have relied solely on presents—and got a club over the head for his efforts. And a violent man, like Lieutenant Gore, might have relied overly on force, killing too many of the natives and triggering a war.
When we arrived in New Zealand in October of the previous year, with our recent memories of Otaheite, many of us had anticipated meeting islanders with similar attitudes. Certainly the randier sailors among us hoped so.
We had reached the north-east coast of New Zealand, a land not in Tupaia’s stories of the settlement of his people, and therefore unknown to him. Our Captain wasted no time in going ashore with a party consisting of himself, Mr Banks and several marines, in two boats. And it did not end well.
They landed on one side of a river, and observing the natives on the other side, they left one boat and crossed over to try to establish contact with them. But the men fled at their approach and hid in the woods. The Captain had four young men—boys, really—mind the boat while he led a small group into the woods, where they found some deserted huts to explore.
Meanwhile, the natives who had hidden in the woods came down to the river to try to steal the boat. Warned by the men across the river where they had first landed, the boys launched their boat into the stream, but the natives followed them along the bank. In an attempt to drive them away, the coxswain fired two shots into the air. The first had the natives looking about in incredulity as if they had heard a sudden thunderstorm but saw no sign of clouds, and the second shot they ignored entirely.
The third musket shot they could not ignore—it was fired at one of the men, who fell immediately to the ground, dead. The natives were mystified as to what had killed him and dragged his body a little way up the beach, perhaps trying to revive him, and then left it there and fled as the Captain and the other men returned.
It was not a good start to our dealings with the natives there and only got worse the next day. At least the Captain had the wisdom to take Tupaia ashore, and it was discovered he and the natives could speak with each other perfectly well, so the Captain could turn to his translation skills—if not his counsel. The Captain presumed now that relations would go well—but he was greatly mistaken. After coaxing some of the natives to swim across the river to join them, they started to finger our crew’s articles and weapons, insisting on being given them. Of course our men refused, and one bold native stole Mr Green’s sword and started to prance around, waving it about, as if to prove what a mighty warrior it made him. Of course it was Mr Green’s sword that was stolen; I had never seen a man so self-assured in his own lack of awareness of what was happening around him.
The Captain tolerated a lot of petty thievery but would not tolerate our arms being stolen and ordered the thief be shot dead. The man fell to the ground as if he had been struck heavily over the head by an invisible force and all the other natives fled. But that was not the end of things The next morning our Captain took a boat around the headland hoping to find more natives with whom to trade or establish contact—some who had not heard of his reputation for killing them, perhaps. They came upon a canoe with seven men in it and tried to overtake it, but as they got closer the men resisted them by attacking the ship’s men with their paddles and weapons and throwing stones at them.
The Captain had our men fire upon the natives; four of the seven were killed and the other three jumped into the water but were taken captive. It was said that even Banks had shot at the natives, killing a man. I was curious to know how our Captain had recorded the event, and if he wrote it in such a way that made it seem more like self-defence than slaughter. For I know that the Captain controlled how the stories of our journey would be told—and whatever he recorded would forever be considered the truth of it.
I would look into his journal and find out one day, I determined, and also learn what type of person he thought I was.