The fort we had built in Otaheite was a peculiar thing—designed to withstand a concerted and aggressive native attack, with raised earth and palisades, when we had already established that the islanders were friendly. But what did you expect when you had the marines constructing it?
And it was a failure in its key purpose of protecting the scientific equipment. The marines charged with guarding the fort cursed the natives for their thieving ways, but in a truth unlikely to ever be told, it was not an islander who stole the quadrant—it was one of the marines set to guard it, knowing it would buy him his choice of islander women.
That is the thing about forts, though. They are built to stop people getting in, not to deter those who are already inside.
But as it turned out, the naturalists got their equipment back and the marine who stole it got his time with his pick of the islander girls. Everyone should have been happy. But they weren’t. That marine’s encounter with Venus was more successful than that of the naturalists.
The thing about the Transit of Venus was that although it had last happened just eight years previously, in 1761, it would not happen again for over one hundred years. And as Charles Green, our astronomer, who had a habit of boring even a sleeping man, told us quite often, the observations taken in 1761 had not proved to be entirely successful. So, getting the best observations now in 1769 was very important.
Parties had been sent to Norway and Canada and all over the blessed globe to find the best observation places. And I suppose each of those parties presumed that the others might be hampered by bad weather or ill fortune—or by attack or theft by natives—and all necessity was on them to be the party that made the most accurate observation.
The day of the transit in Otaheiti was the hottest we had experienced so far, and there were no clouds to obscure the heavens. The Captain had sent two other parties to different parts of the island, to increase their chances of getting an effective observation.
Mr Green had told us many times of how the observation looked and how it was recorded: as a dark black dot moving across the face of the sun. But, he said, the observations were confounded by that very same black dot, being the planet Venus, as it clung to the darkness at the edge of the sun’s outline and seemed to drag that darkness with it as it crossed onto the face of the sun, making it difficult to accurately gauge the exact times of the start and completion of the transit.
He and the Captain were both disappointed in this. He had speculated as to what was its cause, stating that both he and the Captain had observed it therefore it was not an illusion, but something inherent to the mystery of the planets. He said that if they were ever to know the answer, it would be found in the figures he had recorded.
He had a single sheet of sketches and numbers that were the culmination of our entire expedition across the oceans of the world. Quite invaluable. But of course Charles Green had lost it aboard the wreck. Like so much else we had already lost.
And like so much we were still to lose.
‘We need a plan,’ proclaimed Banks, trying to capture the mood in our camp in a way that would stop the bickering, for there was no shortage of that. We had to do something, but nobody knew quite what it was we should do. To most people’s thinking the marines had declared themselves as hostile. They were willing to sacrifice us for their own needs. We had to be more protective of our scant resources in case they attacked us again. Should we build our own fort? Should we move further away from them? Should we move to the top of the grassy hill?
Nobody could agree on what we needed, though to me it was quite clear. We needed food. We needed water. We needed guns. We needed to guard our boats. We needed to guard our Captain, and guard the hope that he might recover any day now.
We needed to protect ourselves from our own countrymen.
‘We need a plan,’ said Banks again. Banks the gentleman. Banks the orator. Banks the champion of rational thought.
But unfortunately Banks was not able to suggest exactly what such a plan would entail.
Thomas Matthews, former assistant to the ship’s cook, and one of the more superstitious and ignorant of the ship’s crew, was the first to suggest that Tupaia and his boy Tarheto should go into the interior and find the natives of this land to engage their help. ‘They could talk to them,’ he said. ‘Even if they don’t know their words, they can talk in hand signs. We saw it in New Zealand.’
‘And what should he tell them?’ asked Banks, fixing Matthews with a glare.
‘He could tell them that we are in need of food and things, or we could maybe move into their village for protection.’
Tupaia then asked Matthews, in that haughty way he had of speaking down to the crew, exactly what village he was thinking of, as he was unaware there were any villages in this land. As far as he had observed, these natives lived in small isolated huts at the very best.
Now, here was an interesting thing about Tupaia: in his own land he had been a nobleman, or a high priest, or what the islander equivalent of those was, and he considered he was the better of everyone except Banks and the Captain—and since the wreck maybe only the Captain. He looked down his nose at the crew, and particularly at the natives of this land. After attempting to communicate with them in Botanists Bay and finding they did not speak his language, he spent scarce time examining the weapons and huts they had found deserted by the natives, and decided they were too far beneath him to attempt to speak to again.
The sailors thought this damn peculiar—a native who considered himself better than other natives! Though I dare say if they had an inkling that he considered himself better than them as well, they’d have had something sharp to say about it.
Anyway, Matthews was not one to give up on an idea easily, even when it was proven to be of little gain. So, he implored the rest of the company, ‘I’m sure he could make contact with them if he was willing to try it.’
But again Tupaia shook his head. There is nothing that we could possibly say to each other, he told us.
Matthews looked to Banks, as if Tupaia were his servant or pet, and he could convince him to go and find the natives, and Banks, perhaps thinking it was the only plan that anyone had suggested, put out a hand and touched Tupaia’s arm. ‘It could save us all,’ he said. ‘If the natives prove friendly, or can be convinced that we mean them no harm, we might implore them to help us in our plight.’
And Tupaia glared at us all and asked if we knew what the people of Otaheite would have done had we not arrived in a ship armed with cannons and muskets? If we had not so many trade goods? If all we had to offer was diseases and want?
There was an awkward silence, and then he said they would have attacked us and killed us.
‘The chiefs wouldn’t have allowed it,’ said one sailor. ‘The chiefs knew the benefits of us being there. We paid them well.’
But Tupaia said the chiefs would have encouraged it. They knew that their own status was diminished by the arrival of the English. Our metal and tools disrupted traditional trade patterns. The diseases the English sailors gave their women were passed onto their men. They had little to gain from allowing us onto their land.
That was something that stunned everyone to hear. Even Banks. Well, particularly Banks, I think. He had formed the opinion that the islanders loved and respected him and accorded him all kinds of liberties. Like the time he put his hands into a sacred shrine and was told that anybody else would have been killed for doing it. He failed to understand that it was Tupaia that had cautioned the islanders against attacking him for his desecration.
In the same way Cook and Banks failed to understand that as we sailed around the coast of New Zealand it was Tupaia that the natives most wanted to meet. As if he were our Captain and everyone else but his crew and servants.
I looked at Tupaia and wondered if that would be the way things turned out here if we stayed long enough, with Tupaia and Tarheto slowly assuming command of us, teaching us how to fish and how to find plants to make into clothes and how to live like an islander.
That was a plan I didn’t think worth mentioning just then.
And then Tupaia asked us, ‘What makes you think the people of this land would behave any differently?’
Of course we had no way of knowing how they would behave when we finally made contact with them, but desperate times make for desperate measures, we believed.
One more fool belief among so many.
The day ended with no plan or even any resolve as to how we should act, apart from young Isaac Smith reminding us that the Captain would have known. Which got me to thinking about our great Captain’s supposed wisdom and the things he had recorded in his journal. Which in turn had me wondering what he had written of me and how inaccurate it might be. I knew there were so many more pressing issues to ponder, but the thought that the Captain had written ill of me became something of an infection within me.
I had to know.
I remembered a story of when Cook had invited some islander chiefs aboard the ship and into the great cabin. They asked what the books there were for, and through Tupaia they were told that they were for writing in. Cook tried to explain about writing, but the natives did not seem to have any notion of it. So, to demonstrate, Cook had one of his men leave the cabin and then asked one chief to say some words in his own language. He did this and Cook had him repeat them slowly and he took them down as he heard them.
Then the man who had left the cabin was invited back in and asked to read the words on the paper. This he did, passably enough to have the native chiefs stare around in amazement. Cook had hoped to impress them and win their favour through this, but instead they grumbled and told Tupaia that they did not like this, having their words captured, and it was something they did not trust.
Over time I had come to feel like those native chiefs, full of suspicion and distrust at what the Captain had written of me.
I looked at Charlton and Howson nursing the Captain and his precious journal, and I tried to think of some way to convince them to show me what was inside it. I could have as well wondered what he had written about other men he had punished much worse than me, and been curious to know what he had written about Judge and Wolfe and Cox. He would have called them rogues or a disturbing influence, or not to be trusted. I didn’t really care. It was only the words he had used to pass judgement on me for suspicion of having attacked his clerk I wanted to read.
I had to know.
I tried to enquire of Banks, the closest the Captain had to a companion, if he knew what the Captain had thought of me, but he was quite distracted still and replied that he would be amazed if the Captain had thought of me at all.
Dickwit! I should have known better than to ask him.
So, I decided to try a more forthright approach. I walked up to Howson, the less certain of the two, when he was on his own, and summoning a voice of authority said, ‘Show me the Captain’s journal.’
He glared at me and asked why I wanted to see it. I saw my bluff carried no authority over him, so I told him that I was curious to know what the Captain had written of this land and the people who lived here.
‘Perhaps he had some insight that we have failed to see, due to our circumstances. It goes without saying that men under stress and living in fear of their lives are unlikely to make the most sensible decisions, yes? And our Captain had a tendency to make clear and rational decisions.’
Except when he didn’t.
‘Not unless the Captain allows it,’ Howson said, staring solemnly like he was an altar boy and I had asked to sample the altar wine.
‘You have been reading it,’ I said. More a guess than knowledge.
But he refused me once more, with the face of an altar boy who knows that you know he has been sampling the wine.
‘The Captain would allow it if he was awake,’ I said. ‘I am sure of it.’
Then Charlton came wandering back over, from taking a shit or whatever vital activity interrupted his perpetual guard duty, and I was forced to confront the two of them together. Damnation! Charlton was a surly thing at the best of times, over-serious and with the dour demeanour of one who would do well within the Admiralty, if he ever got back to England.
‘The Captain did not have an opinion of you that would like allow it,’ Howson said.
I stared at him. ‘How would you know what the Captain’s opinion of me was?’ I asked.
‘It was fairly well known,’ Charlton answered for him.
I regarded the two and shook my head slowly. ‘If we were in a lifeboat, I’d support the popular vote that you two were eaten first,’ I told them.
I left them with their precious journal and went and sat under a tree. I would bide my time.
No one on the ship knew it, but I had been keeping a journal of my own. My thinking was that when we got back to England I would have mine published quickly while the Lords of the Admiralty were still picking over our Captain’s account of our journey. It would be a bestseller, of course, like that pirate William Dampier’s book, A New Voyage Around the World, was, and make me a small fortune, and become the first telling of the voyage. For whoever tells the story first gets to tell the story that lodges deepest in people’s minds.
And in my telling of the story—which now lay at the bottom of the sea—a few things were made very clear. Firstly, I was not shy in pointing out all our Captain’s flaws, addressing his poor decisions about both navigation—such as nearly running us onto rocks in New Zealand several times, and of course his choice not to sail directly home from there—and disciplining the crew.
I had told the stories of which the officers had little awareness. The discontent below decks. How insufferable Banks and Parkinson could be, each in his own way. That blood-thirsty wretch Lieutenant Gore never missing an opportunity to shoot at something be it bird, animal or human being.
I had even told of our Captain’s many efforts to capture natives. As I have mentioned, he only managed it by slaying half the men in a canoe, and dragging the other unfortunates out of the water, like fish from the sea. Three young men were brought back to our ship wailing and moaning as if we planned to skin them and roast them over coals, and it took some time to convince them that we did not intend to harm them. Then they became quite amenable and told us stories about their people, helping us to understand that there were many tribes who were often at war with each other.
In New Holland our Captain had less success in his attempts to kidnap a native. He set out into the forests of Botanists Bay on several occasions, armed with trinkets and clothing that he hoped to use to induce them to come with him. He failed on all accounts, and the closest anyone on the ship came to capturing a native nearly ended in fatality. A group of men came up with a plan to advance upon the natives, and when close they would turn and run away, believing that the natives would chase them, and they would run into a trap and be taken.
But what actually happened was that when the crew men turned and ran, the natives took this as a sign to throw their spears at them. One man evaded being impaled by hiding behind a tree, and another had a spear land directly between his legs. The natives then disappeared back into the woods, not to be seen again.
That was a story the gentlemen and women of England would have read with scarcely an intake of breath, amazed at how close to disaster the encounter had turned.
My journal had also included my initial thoughts on the natives of this land, which I must admit I am glad are now lost. I had concluded from scant observations as we had sailed northwards along the coast that the natives were wretched beings with huts that were little better than those belonging to the inhabitants of Tierra del Fuego, consisting of nothing more than a few pieces of bark loosely spread over a few cross spars of wood, about four feet from the ground.
I had described the people as low of stature, with flat noses, thick lips and bandy legs, not unlike the negroes of Guinea I had seen pictures of. I also thought them ignorant, poor and destitute of the conveniences and necessities of life, being strangers even to the most basic of foodstuffs such as bread.
The good readers of England, and even the Americas, would have followed my observations with wonder—never knowing it was more ignorance than insight.