Rumblings

Years at sea had not dulled my instinct for danger. I sensed the rumblings before I heard them.

In the days before, the men fell into a stubborn silence whenever I appeared. Even then, I walked straight and stood as tall as my height allowed. In my everyday uniform of blue coat, breeches, waist jacket, white lapels worn open, and gold-washed brass buttons, I felt no small pride. I had begun as a ship’s boy or captain’s servant. It had taken years of service and discipline to reach my present station. I had always considered it the highest honour to serve my king and country.

Beyond all that, and perhaps my greatest achievement, was the love of my wife and family. The thought of what my promotion would mean for Betsy and my girls back home gave every stride across well-scrubbed decks a sense of purpose.

And I was not without vanity.

Of course, hindsight is a wonderful thing. There was no getting away from it. Though I had been careful to contain them to my quarters, the presence of hundreds of pots of breadfruit, with all that was needed to keep them in light and moisture, had permeated every crevice of a ship too small for its cargo. I had asked the carpenter to line the floor with lead to hold in the damp. Yet it was hardly my fault, if in fulfilling my duty to bring them safely back to England, their sheer presence felt to the men like encroachment; a silent, leafy invasion that had turned a vessel of the King’s Navy into a floating greenhouse. I had even surrendered my own cabin to them, sacrificing privacy and sanctuary. The Great Cabin which had once been a refuge of charts and quiet reflection, was now a humid, lead-lined nursery, though I refused to think of it as such.

I sat at my desk, the air thick with the scent of damp peat and the cloying, tropical sweetness of Artocarpus altilis. The smell of the earth was heavy and demanding. To my left, a row of saplings in their clay pots stood like silent sentries, their broad leaves casting long, jagged shadows across the map of the Pacific I had nearly finished drawing.

Every healthy leaf, every root that had taken hold in the Tahitian soil and survived the voyage, was a promise kept to Betsy as much as to myself. In difficult hours and always before sleep, I turned the image of her over in my mind. I could see her in the doorway of our house in Lambeth, smoothing the linen shirt I wore beneath my coat. "Return to me, William," she had whispered. “Keep yourself safe.”

And I would. I would bring the fruits of the world back to England, and everything my dear girls deserved.

But as I looked at the plants, I felt strangely adrift. Not in the navigational sense—I knew my position to the second—but adrift from the men above me.

I could hear them through the bulkheads. Their laughter was different now, seasoned by months spent in the paradise of Tahiti. For them, revelry and ease. For me, despite all beauty, a languishing of the soul. In front of me, they were careful enough; as soon as my back was turned, a silent insubordination. All boundaries and decorum seemed peeled away, leaving only appetite and indolence. They had been spoiled by easy sun and lack of discipline. I saw it in their walk, even in the way they handled the rigging.

I heard them speaking of the island women with increasing coarseness, as though kindness and beauty were things to be consumed before departure. I thought of my daughters then, and found such talk harder and harder to endure.

I had my work cut out. Most especially with Fletcher Christian. Somehow I needed to wring the lethargy from him and set him firmly on a course.

Fletcher. My protégé. My friend. In the early years, he had worked with me gladly enough. Perhaps I saw in him the shadow of the sons God chose to cut down. William and Henry were taken shortly after they were born.

I had mentored him, shared my table with him, and taught him to read the stars with the same precision I used for my own logs. We had sat in this very cabin, before the plants claimed it, drinking wine and talking of the future. I convinced myself he was a man cut from my own cloth. But now, glimpsed through the foliage of a broad-leafed breadfruit, he looked altered. He was as dark and rich as the Tahitian soil and just as volatile. Discipline was the only remedy for such decline. I alone could give him what he needed.

"Mr. Christian," I called, my voice tight.

He stepped into the cabin, and for a moment, the green leaves seemed to frame him like a wild native king. Heavily tattooed in the island’s symbols, to my way of thinking, there was nothing regal about his demeanour. He looked almost unkempt, as if his roots had been loosened by the island.

"The watering schedule for the third tier has been neglected," I said, looking back at my chart. "The plants are thirsty. If the root begins to sour in the pot, there is no prayer in the Admiralty that can save this mission."

"The men are thirsty, too, sir.” There was something unfamiliar in his tone.

"Men recover from hunger and thirst," I snapped, finally looking at him. "A plant cannot. We are here to undertake the king’s mission, Mr. Christian. Do not forget it."

He stiffened, and for a moment, I almost spoke more gently, almost bridged the distance between us. But the gap had already widened into something harder, filled with rustling leaves and the scent of rot. I was counting the growth of the saplings; I was not measuring the resentment growing in him.

Just before sunrise, I was torn from sleep by shouting.

My door was flung open.

For a moment, I wondered if the ship had foundered.

Even through the fog of sleep, something cold rushed upon me. Not the cold of the sea, but the realisation of steel against my skin.

I was hauled from my cot, the thin linen of my nightshirt offering no protection. As my hands were tied roughly behind my back, I stood in the centre of my cabin and nursery, and for a brief, absurd second, I believed I must still be dreaming. The air was thick with breadfruit; it was overwhelming, humid and suffocating, as real as the cord biting my wrists.

The smell brought me to my senses.

"What is the meaning of this?" I demanded. My voice sounded strange in the green-choked cabin.

Fletcher stood before me.

His eyes were bloodshot.

Bloodshot from rum. Filled with a fever that had not come from the sun. He held a cutlass in his hand, its blade glinting in the dim light.

"It is over, sir," he said. Even then, he was unable to cover the tremor in a voice. A tremor that betrayed fear.

“What are you talking about, you damned idiot?”

“You should not have said that, sir. You never knew when to stop.”

Roughly gripped and bound hard by one of the ruffians, I refused to surrender the one thing I had left. My dignity. Even in my nightshirt. I stood as straight as the cord would allow.

"You are a shallow, ungrateful coward," I spat. "No true gentleman. You have the soul and spine of a rotted vine."

I went too far. I felt it the moment the words left me.

His bayonet pressed at my throat; I caught the sourness of his breath.

The men around him, men I had commanded, men whose families I had ensured were cared for while acting as purser, watched in uneasy silence. They would have known my rising from the ranks was not down to privilege. Even if I already stood among them like a ghost.

I was dragged through the foliage of my own cabin, the broad leaves of the breadfruit slapping against my face like wet hands.

"Take him on deck!" Christian’s order seemed barely human.

One of the breadfruit pots was knocked over in the scuffle. The clay shattered, and the dark, damp earth spilled across the lead-lined floor.

On the deck, the chaos was absolute. The ship, once a model of naval order, was a riot of bare chests and blackened hearts. I stood by the rail, the wind whipping through my nightshirt, shivering but unyielding. I searched for a logical reason to explain what had happened. And failed.

One or two of the blackguards were calling, “Kill him, kill him.”

Many of them stood confounded, not knowing what to do. Some looked on fearfully, their eyes pleading for clemency. I set their names in my mind for when I would be called to account later.

But then he replied, “You shut your disgusting mouths or I’ll kill all of you.”

There was something unspeakable in that face. As though he feared stopping more than continuing.

The sea lay flat as poured silver. For a few agonising beats, everyone waited.

Christian gulped, “Get his clothes and a few things to help him navigate. We will cast him adrift in the boat with any men who want to go with him.”

"Fletcher!" I called out as they lowered the launch. "You can be better than this! This is the island speaking, not the officer I made!"

But he refused to acknowledge my words. He had the ship, he had the sword, but he was rudderless. I doubted he would be able to control that rabble for long.

Finally, I was lowered into the 23-foot boat with eighteen others; men who had remained loyal, or perhaps who had more sense than to stay. They included the weary botanist with whom I had grown close.

Around us stretched the vast loneliness of the Pacific, indifferent as eternity. As we hit the water, the mutineers began to clear the decks. They picked up the breadfruit pots and hurled them overboard. I watched them bob away, the green leaves bright against the deep blue of the Pacific. The salt would kill them. A tear rolled down the botanist’s cheek before he turned away.

I sat at the tiller, the salt already encrusting on my skin. Eighteen men huddled before me, pale with fear. And in that moment, it all fell away.

I was no longer a gardener.

I was a captain.

Their only hope.

"We have thirty-six hundred miles to Timor.” My voice rose above the waves. “I have no charts, but I have my memory. "I will get you home. Now row.”

As the oars cut through the water, I thought of Betsy. I thought of our home in Lambeth. In the distance, the Bounty slipped into the mist, a ghost of wood and failed dreams. Fletcher was welcome to it. He was merely a man in charge of a floating ruin, wringing his hands in a cabin that smelled of betrayal.

I held the sextant, the one tool he had allowed me, and searched the stars. I had knowledge, experience, and the promise I had made to the woman who was my true North.

As the ship disappeared from sight, I knew I would always hold the memory of Fletcher Christian standing at the rail, a doomed figure. Physically free, but lost where it mattered.

I was adrift in what yet might prove to be a grave, but for the first time in months, the air felt clean. The cloying smell of the ship was gone, replaced by the sharp sting of salt.

I began to calculate the rations. A teaspoon of rum. A quarter of a bread-fruit.

I fixed my eyes upon the stars.

I would measure the distance in heartbeats.