The Settlers Read online

  ‘Do as you are ordered, master-at-arms. I shall hold you responsible if—’

  Lieutenant Larkin put in urgently, ‘Sir, the for’ard pump has broken down—the piston’s seized, sir. And I’ve no spare hands to relieve the others. Sir, the prisoners’ help would be of great assistance.’

  The captain considered the suggestion, but before he could reply, he felt the deck cant steeply beneath his feet. The ship shuddered from stem to stern, and the crash of mangled timbers rang in his ears ... Wind and the incoming tide had beaten her over the reef. She steadied and then began to settle sluggishly in deeper water.

  ‘Let go the small bower, Mr. Larkin!’ Edwards ordered thickly. ‘Mr. Corner—I want soundings taken. Hail Mr. Hayward in the launch and tell him to row round to the larboard bow.’ He gave his instructions with a semblance of calm but with a sinking heart. It was of no surprise when Hayward reported the bow stove in below the waterline and fifteen fathoms underfoot. With two anchors out the ship held, but when Saville came running breathlessly to tell him that there were now eight feet of water in the hold, he knew that there was little more that he could do to save her. More guns were hove over the side and a thrummed topsail prepared to haul under the ship’s bottom, but the water was gaining at an alarming rate, the men at the pumps dropping with exhaustion. Reluctantly, Captain Edwards sent for the master-at-arms again.

  ‘You may release Colman, McIntosh, and Norman and set them to work at the pumps,’ he rasped. ‘Are they all secured in irons?’

  White-faced and tense, the master-at-arms inclined his head. ‘They are, sir.’

  ‘Then they are to remain so. The officers are not to be released, d’you understand?’

  ‘They’re pleading with you for mercy, sir,’ the petty officer said. ‘When Hodges and I were locking the irons on them, like you ordered, sir, before she went over the reef, they was begging us to intercede with you. Midshipman Heywood’s only a boy, sir—Ellison too. And Byrne, the fiddler—he’s almost blind and simple with it. Why—’

  Edwards cut him short. In the dim light his expression struck chill into Master-at-arms Jamieson’s heart, and involuntarily he stepped back a pace.

  ‘Carry on, Jamieson,’ the captain’s voice cut like a whiplash, brooking no argument, ‘unless you want me to take your rate from you. We’ve not lost the ship yet.’

  ‘Aye, aye, sir,’ the master-at-arms responded woodenly. He summoned Armourer’s Mate Hodges, and together they climbed onto the roof of the round-house, known to the lower deck as ‘Pandora’s Box’. The marine sentry posted at the scuttle greeted them with undisguised relief.

  ‘Come to let them poor devils out, ’ave yer, Master-at-arms? About time too, I reckon.’

  Jamieson shook his head. ‘Only three of ’em. The rest are to stay here—captain’s orders.’

  The sentry stared at him aghast. ‘But she’s goin’ down any minute, ain’t she? I ’eard the first lieutenant order the other two boats lowered ten minutes since.’ He shivered. ‘Wish I was in one of ’em.’

  ‘The captain doesn’t reckon she’s lost, lad,’ Jamieson told him glumly.

  Hodges had the scuttle open, and the two of them lowered themselves onto the round-house in turn. Within its confines, the stench was appalling. The fourteen wretched prisoners had been kept there, chained hand and foot and deprived of exercise, since the ship had left Matavai Bay. There they had remained during the four month search for the Bounty.

  Unwashed and verminous, they crouched semi-naked on the bare deck planking, wrists and ankles firmly chained. The tubs they used for their necessary bodily functions were removed and emptied once weekly, but that was all. A few buckets of seawater, occasionally flung into the round-house, was the only concession to their hygiene Captain Edwards had permitted.

  The poor sods were as weak as kittens, the master-at-arms thought pityingly. If the ship did go down they would stand little chance of swimming to safety, even if the captain relented and ordered their release. The nearest cay was about four miles distant. He jerked his head at Hodges, and the armourer’s mate started to strike off Joseph Colman’s leg irons.

  ‘Are you letting us out, Mr. Jamieson?’ Midshipman Stewart asked in a low, controlled voice. He was twenty-three, dark-haired and slender, with a large, gaudily coloured star tattooed on his chest.

  Jamieson, unable to meet his gaze, shook his head and answered gruffly, ‘Just Colman, McIntosh, and Norman—they’re to help on the pumps. I’ve no orders for the rest of you.’

  ‘But she’s foundering, for God’s sake! Are we to be left to drown like rats in a trap?’

  ‘And what about poor Byrne?’ Midshipman Heywood put in bitterly. The fiddler crouched beside him, his blank, blind eyes moving this way and that, as if seeking in his own greater darkness for some clue as to what was going on beyond his ken. Heywood’s hand clasped his, offering comfort. ‘You know he can barely see, Mr. Jamieson—give him some chance, can’t you? Whatever the captain says, Byrne’s no mutineer.’

  Hodges had released Norman, the carpenter’s mate, and was ushering the three who had been ordered to the pumps up through the narrow opening of the scuttle. Jamieson sighed. He knew his duty and also knew only too well what any dereliction might cost him. Captain Edwards was a cold-blooded martinet, and in a British ship of war the captain’s word was law. His orders—however inhumane—must be obeyed, on pain of flogging or worse. But in the faint light of the lantern he carried, the master-at-arms studied the two faces upturned to his and pity triumphed over discretion. Heywood was not yet eighteen, his cheeks innocent of stubble, a handsome, blue-eyed boy with all his life before him. And as for Byrne ... why, the poor fellow did not even know what time of day it was. Jamieson bent and inserted his key into the lock of Byrne’s wrist fetters, aware that the man was so emaciated that he would have no difficulty in freeing his bony ankles from the leg-irons.

  ‘I can’t let you out, Mr. Heywood,’ he said. ‘The captain was most particular—the officers aren’t to be released. Those was his orders.’

  ‘What about us?’ Thomas Burkitt demanded hoarsely. He swore loudly and angrily, his pock-marked face contorted. ‘We ain’t bleedin’ officers, Mr. Jamieson, an’ this stinkin’ ship’s goin’ down, as well you know!’

  ‘Mamoo, Tom!’ Midshipman Stewart warned, using the native tongue of Otaheite. He turned to the master-at-arms and asked gravely, ‘Mr. Jamieson, for the love of God, will you come back and release us if she is going down? We have a right to a trial. Captain Edwards cannot condemn us out of hand. He—’

  The tall petty officer bowed his head. ‘I’ll come back, Mr. Stewart,’ he promised. ‘I’ll not leave you to drown.’ Cutting short Burkitt’s protests, he levered himself out of the scuttle and slammed the grating shut behind him.

  Left alone in their malodorous darkness, William Muspratt, who had been involved in the mutiny on board the Bounty from its outset, started to weep.

  ‘We should have gone with Mr. Christian an’ the others. We should’ve stayed with the old Bounty. Cap’n Bligh was bad enough, God knows, an’ we thought he was goin’ out of his mind, starvin’ an’ floggin’ us. But this Cap’n Edwards, rot him—he’s a bleedin’ monster! Ain’t he got no pity, no feelin’s at all?’

  ‘It would seem he has not,’ Stewart said dryly. He was cool and wonderfully calm, and young Peter Heywood took courage from his stoicism.

  ‘Do you suppose Jamieson will keep his word, George?’ Heywood asked, lowering his voice to a whisper.

  George Stewart answered with conviction, ‘Jamieson is a good man. If the ship is in serious danger, he’ll let us out if he can. And they may save her yet—you heard what he said to the sentry.’

  ‘Yes, but they’ve lowered the boats, lowered all of them, the sentry said so. If they’ve done that, then—’

  ‘Edwards was just taking precautions. He hasn’t ordered any provisions to be loaded into them yet, has he? We’d have heard if he had.’ Stewart was struggling with his leg-irons. ‘Lord, Hodges made a job of these when he put them back on! How are yours, Peter?’

  ‘Tight,’ Heywood admitted ruefully. He tapped Byrne’s knee with one of his manacled hands. ‘Try and work your legs free, Michael, and then see if you can pull the bar out for the rest of us. Go on, lad.’

  ‘We ought to be praying, Mr. Heywood,’ the blind man objected.

  ‘We’ll pray a whole lot better if we’re free of these blasted irons!’ Burkitt told him. ‘Go to it, yer little swab—you’re the ony one that can.’

  ‘I got to pray for forgiveness, Tom,’ Byrne answered apologetically. His misted eyes sought Muspratt. ‘I’ll pray for you, Will, along with myself.’

  Will Muspratt swore at him. ‘Tell ’im ter do what Tom says, Mr. Heywood—he’ll listen to you.’

  Hillbrant, the Hanoverian, said in his strongly accented voice, ‘It is of no use to ask him, Will—not until he is done with his praying. And he is right ... All of us should pray, for it seems to me only Almighty God can help us now. You are the senior officer, Mr. Stewart ... will you be so good as to lead us in prayer?’

  Thus appealed to, George Stewart did his best, reciting first the Lord’s Prayer and then all he could remember of the prayer for those in peril of the sea. They all joined in, even Burkitt and Muspratt; then Byrne, still anxious to intercede for forgiveness, offered a prayer of his own, which went on so interminably that John Sumner—one of the hardcore of the Bounty mutineers—who had hitherto maintained a sullen silence, struck the blind man viciously across the face with his manacled fist.

  ‘Pipe down, yer pulin’ little bastard!’ he exclaimed impatiently. ‘
And start workin’ these bars so’s we can get our leg-irons unhitched before this plaguey ship takes us down with her. You—’

  ‘Leave him be, John,’ Heywood interrupted.

  The note of authority in his voice annoyed Sumner; he sneered openly at the one-time midshipman, his scarred, heavily bearded face ugly in its resentment.

  ‘And you c’n pipe down, Mr. Heywood! ’Cause you ain’t an officer no more—you’re a bloody mutineer like the rest of us.’

  ‘You know that’s not true,’ Heywood protested.

  ‘Accordin’ ter Captain Bleedin’ Edwards it is. He don’t treat you no different from me or Burkitt or Muspratt, does he? He treats you worse than he does us.’

  George Stewart wearily intervened. He had been indulging himself in his usual daydream during Byrne’s lengthy prayer—recalling happy, unforgettable memories of his life on Otaheite: the love of the native girl he had taken to wife and called Peggy, the birth of their infant daughter, the warm friendship and loyalty her family had given him, and, above all, the pleasant, undemanding existence he had led in a place that now seemed nearer to paradise than anything he had previously experienced. And it was gone, lost to him forever, as were Peggy and the child ... He smothered a sigh.

  What the devil did it matter if the Pandora did go down and take them with her? It would be over; they would at least be spared the rest of the long voyage in this foul cage. They would not have to endure the humiliating ordeal of the court martial that must, inevitably, await them on their return to England, and the shame it would bring upon their families if they were unable to prove their innocence.

  ‘Have done, Sumner,’ he said sharply. ‘The lad’s doing the best he knows how.’ His voice softened as he turned to speak to Byrne. ‘There now, Michael lad, you’ve made your peace with God, and I’m sure in His infinite wisdom He will know that you are truly repentant and will look upon you mercifully.’

  ‘Will He, Mr. Stewart?’ the blind boy echoed eagerly. ‘Oh, thank you, sir. I was worried, see? But I’ll get me legs out, like Sumner wants, and—’

  With a harsh grinding sound, the stricken ship freed her stern from the coral of the reef and began to sink, with a heavy list to larboard as the water rushed in through her lower-deck ports. Shouts and the pad of bare feet on the deck planking brought the prisoners’ heads up, all of them listening intently in an effort to interpret the sounds reaching them from outside their cage.

  The senior rating, a boatswain’s mate named James Morrison, whose eyes had been closed in silent prayer long after Byrne had been called upon to desist, moved awkwardly to a split in the planks, through which a restricted view of the quarterdeck could be obtained.

  ‘One o’ the pumps ain’t working,’ he said disgustedly. ‘And they’re preparin’ to hoist out them two native canoes the cap’n bought in Samoa ... lashin’ ’em together. It don’t look good, boys. I reckon they’re gettin’ ready to abandon ship.’

  ‘What about us?’ Burkitt growled. ‘Damn their eyes!’ He started to call out to the sentry who bent, musket at the ready, to enjoin silence.

  ‘Ain’t you got orders ter let us out?’ Burkitt demanded furiously.

  ‘No, I ain’t—only ter shoot you if you try ter rush me.’ The marine sounded frightened, though whether of them or of the situation of the ship it was impossible to tell. But he added, taking pity on them, ‘She’s down by the head, but she’s still afloat. Mr. Corner has a party tryin’ ter haul a sail under her bottom ter stop the leak, an’—’

  ‘A hell of a lot of good that’ll do, wiv’ ’arf her bottom torn out an’ the pumps failin’!’ Burkitt retorted bitterly. ‘Bloody Jolly—you’ll be all right if she founders, but we shan’t! Why—’

  George Stewart again, almost with reluctance, intervened. ‘Stow your gab, Burkitt,’ he said curtly. And to the sentry, ‘Do this for us at least, lad—unless you want our deaths on your conscience—if the order comes to abandon ship, open the scuttle before you quit your post.’

  ‘I’ll do what I can, Mr. Stewart,’ the marine conceded. He withdrew his head, straightened up, and, shouldering his musket, resumed his measured pacing on the roof of the cage.

  The hours dragged past, with every sound from the deck adding to the prisoners’ torment. Stores were being loaded into the boats; Lieutenant Corner’s party had abandoned their efforts to haul the thrummed topsail under the hull, but a loud crash from forward suggested that the foremast had been cut away in an attempt to lighten her. Two pumps were still working, but it was evident, from snatches of overheard conversation between the men on the deck and the swish of water across the forecastle, that they were barely keeping pace with the inrush of water from below.

  Byrne had at last contrived to free his legs from their shackles. Urged on by Burkitt and Muspratt, he was vainly endeavouring to lever out one of the two wooden bars to which the leg-irons of the others were secured.

  Moving closer to Stewart, Peter Heywood whispered, ‘George, Captain Edwards will relent, won’t he? Before she goes down, I mean?’

  His fellow midshipman shrugged. ‘Who knows?’ He sounded curiously resigned, almost indifferent, as if he had ceased to care what fate had in store for them, and Peter Heywood stared at him in open-mouthed dismay.

  ‘Doesn’t it matter to you?’ he challenged. ‘Are you—are you not afraid to die?’

  Stewart shook his head. At that moment, he seemed much older than his twenty-three years, and there was a note of disillusion in his voice as he answered quietly, ‘I think I prefer death to what would otherwise be in store for us, Peter. If Edwards’s treatment is an example of what we may expect, then I want no part in it. Least of all do I want to face a court martial in England.’

  ‘But we’re not mutineers—you and I—nor are most of us, come to that. Bligh’s boat would have been overloaded if he’d taken us with him, and he gave his word—his solemn word, George—that he would see that justice was done to those of us who remained with Christian against our will.

  They had talked of those last moments—when Captain Bligh’s launch had put off from the Bounty—a hundred times without reaching any useful conclusion, and Stewart repeated his shrug. ‘Bligh must have changed his tune, once he reached England—tarred us all with the same brush, I fear.’

  ‘I was afraid to go with him,’ Heywood admitted shamefacedly. ‘Even if I’d been given the chance to go, I cannot be sure that I would have taken it. But that doesn’t make me guilty of mutiny, does it? I never raised my hand against him.’ He waited, but when Stewart was silent, he burst out, ‘Now, when I am facing the imminent prospect of death, I can tell you the truth, George ... I hated Bligh! He—’

  ‘No need to speak of such matters in the hearing of others,’ Stewart put in gently, ‘even if we are facing death.’ He gestured in the direction of the boy, Ellison, who was craning his head in an attempt to hear what they were saying, and sharply bade him go to Byrne’s aid. ‘Tom Ellison would have shot Bligh if Christian hadn’t prevented it. He had good reason, too, you know ... and Christian had the best reason of all to want Bligh dead.’

  Remembering the last words Fletcher Christian had spoken to him, when they had parted on the shore of Matavai Bay almost two years before, Heywood caught his breath.

  When a British ship comes—as one surely will, Peter—give yourselves up at once, you and George. You are both innocent—no harm can come to you, for you took no part in the mutiny. It is different for me—I must run for the rest of my life, for William Bligh will never rest until he finds me. I must cover my tracks well ...

  There had been other confidences, other admissions, together with messages for his family entrusted to him by Christian, before the Bounty weighed anchor and bore away, to leave Otaheite behind her forever. Heywood glanced uneasily at his friend. ‘George, I—’

  George Stewart said in a low voice, deeply charged with emotion, ‘Captain Bligh is a madman. One day, if he is permitted to go on living, his madness will manifest itself for all to see. He’ll no longer be able to conceal or control it, and then God help those who stand in his way! The pity of it is that for us—’