The Mutineers of the Bounty
CHAPTER I. TURNED ADRIFT
Not a breath of wind, not a ripple on the surface of the ocean, not a cloud in the sky. The splendid constellations of the Southern Hemisphere shone with exquisite brilliancy. The Bounty lay motionless, with drooping sails, as the night wore on; and the moon, turning pale at the approach of dawn, filled the air with dim and uncertain light.
The Bounty, a vessel of two hundred and fifteen tons burden, manned by a crew of forty-six, had left Spithead on the 23rd of December, 1787, under the command of Captain Bligh, a rough, but experienced seaman, who had accompanied Captain Cook on his last voyage of discovery.
The special object of this voyage of the Bounty was to obtain plants of the bread-fruit tree, which grows in profusion in the Tahitian Archipelago, and to carry them to the Antilles.
After remaining for six months in the Bay of Matavai, Captain Bligh, with a cargo of a thousand bread-fruit trees, set sail for the West Indies, stopping at the Friendly Islands for a short time.
The suspicious and passionate character of the captain had repeatedly occasioned disagreeable scenes between him and his officers; but, when the sun rose on the morning of the 28th of April, 1789, the perfect tranquility which prevailed on board the Bounty was disturbed by no token of the serious events about to take place.
By-and-by the apparent tranquility was broken by unwonted animation among the crew: the seamen met, exchanged two or three words in whispers, and then separated quietly. What could be going on?
“Above all things, make no noise, friends,” said Fletcher Christian, the second officer of the Bounty. “Load your pistol, Bob; but do not fire till I give the word. Churchill, take a hatchet to burst open the lock of the captain’s cabin door, and, mark me, I must have him alive.”
Followed by a dozen seamen, armed with sabres, cutlasses, and pistols, Christian glided between decks, where he placed two sentinels before the cabins of Stewart and Peter Heywood, the one the boatswain, the other a midshipman of the Bounty, and then, passing on, he stopped at the captain’s door.
“Come, lads!” he cried, “one good shove all together!” The door yielded to their vigorous blows, and the seamen rushed into the cabin.
Confused by the darkness, and, perhaps, reflecting on the serious nature of the step they had taken, they hesitated for a moment.
“Hullo! What’s the matter? Who dares –?” exclaimed the captain, jumping out of his cot.
“Silence, Captain Bligh!” answered Churchill. “Silence, and do not attempt to resist, or I will gag you!”
“You needn’t trouble yourself to dress,” added Bob; “you will cut quite a good enough figure as you are when you are dangling at the yard-arm!”
“Lash his hands behind his back, Churchill,” said Christian, “and hoist him up on deck!”
“The most tyrannical captains need be feared no longer, when one knows how to set about dealing with them,” remarked John Smith, the philosopher of the crew.
Then, without caring whether or not they awoke the rest of the crew, they returned on deck.
It was a regular mutiny. Of the officers on board besides Christian, Young alone, one of the midshipmen, had made common cause with the mutineers.
As to the crew, those who hesitated at first had been obliged to give in, whilst the other officers, without arms, and without a leader, remained spectators of the drama which was being acted before their eyes.
All were drawn up in silence on the deck, and gazed at their captain, who, half-naked, held his head high in the midst of these men, who usually trembled before him.
“Captain Bligh,” said Christian, roughly, “you are deprived of your command.”
“I do not recognise your right,” replied the captain.
“Do not waste time in useless protestations,” interrupted Christian. “I now speak the sentiments of the Bounty’s crew. We had scarcely left England when we had already reason to complain of your insulting suspicions, your brutal proceedings. When I say we, I mean the officers as well as the seamen. We not only could not obtain the satisfaction which was our due, but you set aside our complaints with contempt! Are we dogs, that we should be abused on every occasion? Scoundrels, ruffians, liars, thieves, you had no expression strong enough, no abuse coarse enough for us! Indeed, had we patiently borne such a life, we should have been unworthy to be called men! And I, I your countryman, who know your family, and have already made two voyages under you, have you spared me? Did you not accuse me, only yesterday, of stealing some wretched fruit? And the men, they are put in irons when guiltless of a fault. For a trifle they are condemned to receive two dozen lashes. Well, everything is paid for in this world! You have been too liberal with us, Bligh! It is our turn now! You are about to expiate the insults, the injustice, the mad accusations, the moral and physical tortures with which you have overwhelmed your crew during a year and a half, and you shall pay dearly for them! Captain, you have been judged by those whom you have offended, and you are condemned. Is that right, shipmates?”
“Yes, yes, death, death to the tyrant!” shouted the greater number of the seamen, threatening their captain.
“Captain Bligh,” resumed Christian, “some have spoken of hoisting you dangling to the yard-arm, between sky and sea; others propose to make your back taste the cat you have so freely bestowed on theirs, until you die under the infliction. They lack imagination. I have a better plan than that. Besides, you are not alone guilty in this matter. Those who have always faithfully executed your orders, however cruel they were, would be in despair at having to submit to my command. They deserve to bear you company wherever the wind may drive you. Lower the long boat!”
Christian’s last words were received with a murmur of disapprobation, which, however, did not seem to trouble him. Captain Bligh, who was not intimidated by these menaces, profited by the moment’s silence to speak.
“Officers and men,” he said, in a firm voice, “in my character of officer in the royal navy, commander of the Bounty, I protest against the treatment with which I am threatened. If you have had reason to complain of the way I have exercised my power, you might have had me tried by a court-martial. But, doubtless, you have not reflected on the serious consequences of the act you are about to commit. To lay hand on your captain is to put yourself in revolt against existing laws; it will render a return to your native country impossible, and will cause you to be treated like pirates! Sooner or later you will come to an ignominious death, the death of traitors and rebels! In the name of honour and the obedience you swore to me, I summon you to return to your duty!”
“We know perfectly well to what we expose ourselves,” replied Churchill.
“Enough! Enough!” cried the crew, ready for any deed of violence.
“Well,” said Bligh, “if you must have a victim, let it be me, but me alone! Those of my companions whom you condemn with me have only obeyed my orders!”
The voice of the captain was now drowned by a chorus of vociferations, and he was obliged to renounce the hope of moving those pitiless hearts.
While this was going on, arrangements for the execution of Christian’s orders had been made.
However, a lively dispute had arisen among the mutineers, some of whom wished to abandon Captain Bligh and his friends without giving them a weapon, or leaving them an ounce of bread.
Some – and it was also Churchill’s advice – thought that the number of those who ought to leave the ship was not large enough. They must get rid, he said, of all the men who, not being directly implicated in the plot, were not safe. They could not depend on those who contented themselves with merely accepting accomplished facts. As to himself, his back was still sore from the lashes he had received for deserting at Tahiti. The best, and the most rapid way of healing it would be to deliver the captain over to him! He would know well how to revenge himself, with his own hand!
“Hayward! Hallett!” exclaimed Christian, addressing two of the officers, without taking any notice of Churchill’s observations, “get into the boat.”
“What have I done to you, Christian, that you should treat me thus?” said Hayward. “You are sending me to my death!”
“Recriminations are useless! Obey, or else -! Fryer, in with you too!”
But these officers, instead of going towards the boat, approached Captain Bligh, and Fryer, who seemed the most determined, bent forward, saying –
“Captain, will you try to retake the ship? We have no arms, it is true, but the mutineers, if surprised, could not resist. If a few of us are killed, what matter! We can but try! What do you think?”
The officers were already preparing to throw themselves on the mutineers, who were now busily engaged in making ready the long boat, when Churchill, whose notice these words, brief as they were, had not escaped, summoning several well-armed men, forced them into the boat.
“Millward, Muspratt, Birket, and you others,” said Christian, addressing some of the seamen who had not taken part in the mutiny, “go below and choose whatever you value most! You are to accompany Captain Bligh. You, Morrison, look after those fellows! Purcell, take your carpenter’s ‘chest, I will allow you to have that.”
Two masts with their sails, nails, a saw, a piece of sail cloth, four small kegs, each containing twenty-four quarts of water, a hundred and fifty pounds of biscuit, thirty-two pounds of salt pork, six bottles of wine, six bottles of rum, the captain’s wine case, were all the stores and provisions they were to be allowed to take.
They were given, besides, two or three old swords, but fire-arms of any description were refused them.
“Where are Peter Hey wood and Stewart?” asked Bligh, when he was in the boat. “Have they also betrayed me?”
They had not betrayed him, but Christian had resolved to keep them on board.
The captain now had a moment of discouragement and very pardonable weakness, which, however, did not last.
“Christian,” he said,” I give you my word of honour to forget all that has just occurred, if you will give up your abominable plan! I beseech you, think of my wife and family! Should I perish, what will become of them?”
“If you possessed any honour,” answered Christian, “things would not have reached this pitch. If you yourself had thought a little more often of your wife, of your family, and of the wives and families of others, you would not have been so harsh, so unjust, towards all of us!”
The boatswain’s mate, as he was embarking, endeavoured in his turn to soften Christian. All in vain.
“I have been suffering too long,” he replied, bitterly. “You do not know what my tortures have been! No, it cannot last a day longer; and, besides, you are not ignorant that, all this voyage, I, the second officer of the ship, have been treated like a dog! However, in separating myself from Captain Bligh, whom, in all probability, I shall never see again, I wish from pity, not to take from him all hope of safety. Smith, go to the captain’s cabin, and bring him his clothes, his commission, his journal, and his portfolio. Also, give him my nautical charts, and my own sextant. He will thus have some chance of being able to save his companions, and get out of the scrape himself!”
Christian’s orders were performed, though not without many objections from the crew.
“And now, Morrison, cast off,” exclaimed the master’s mate, now the commander of the Bounty, “and leave them to the mercy of God!”
Whilst the mutineers saluted Captain Bligh and his unfortunate companions with ironical cheers, the unhappy Christian, leaning against the hammock nettings, could not take his eyes from the departing boat. This brave officer, whose conduct, loyal and open, had always, till then, merited the praises of all the commanders under whom he had served, was to-day no better than the chief of a band of pirates. He could never see again either his old mother, or his betrothed, or the Isle of Man, his native place. He had sunk in his own self-esteem, and was dishonoured in the eyes of everyone.
Chastisement was already following his crime!