Bligh straightened, looking at the younger officer sadly.
‘You’ll not succeed in this enterprise.’
‘I will,’ insisted Christian, desperately.
‘The people will rise up to free me. Be sure of it.’
‘Where are they then?’ demanded Christian. ‘There’s no one on this ship now who doesn’t know what’s happening. You’ve no support, sir. No support at all. You never have had.’
‘There’s no more serious crime,’ tried Bligh.
He wouldn’t get his wish, Christian realised, unhappily. Bligh wouldn’t beg. Damn him.
‘I know that well enough, sir,’ said the mutineer.
‘I’ve been a fair captain, Mr Christian.’
The second-in-command spat, unable to put into words his amazement and disgust at the assertion.
‘Fair!’ he echoed. ‘You’re a tyrant, sir, a bullying, insecure swine who takes a strange delight in driving men until they can stand no more.’
‘Is that what they think?’
‘It’s what they know. There’s hardly a man who hasn’t been driven to the point of going overboard because of your treatment.’
‘And is that what you think?’ demanded Bligh.
‘You know well enough what I think,’ said Christian.
Bligh was twisting his hands behind him and Christian brought the sword up, threateningly.
‘Only the shirt,’ said Bligh, coolly. ‘I’m only trying to dislodge the shirt.’
‘Leave it,’ ordered Christian, unsure. ‘I’ll not suffer you to move about.’
‘You’re very frightened, aren’t you, Mr Christian?’ jabbed Bligh.
‘Oh no,’ refuted Christian, shaking his head to enforce the hollow denial. ‘Not fear, Captain Bligh. I’ll own to only one feeling towards you, I despise you, sir. Despise you.’
‘It wasn’t always so,’ said Bligh.
No, thought Christian, sadly. How anxious he’d been to work under Bligh, he remembered, after the stories that had spread of the man’s expertise as a navigator, cajoling and begging anyone he thought might help him to become a member of the man’s crew. Christian had used every influence he could muster among his powerful, well-connected cousins and uncles to pressure Bligh, particularly when he’d discovered the Christians were acquainted with the family of Bligh’s wife. Even Bligh’s rejection that his officer list for the Britannia was full hadn’t deterred him, he recalled.
‘Wages are no object,’ he had written back. ‘I only wish to learn my profession and if you would permit me to mess with the gentlemen, I will readily enter your ship as a foremaster, until there is a vacancy among the officers. We midshipmen are gentlemen, we never pull at a rope: but I should even be glad to go on one voyage in that situation, for there may be occasions when officers may be called upon to do the duties of a common man …’
Bligh still had the letter, Christian knew, carefully preserved in the document case somewhere in the cabin. How many times, wondered Christian, as they had sat at that cramped dinner table had he heard how that letter had appealed to the man.
‘… officers may be called upon to do the duties of a common man …’ The phrase recurred in Christian’s mind. Or the duties of a common mutineer …
‘No, sir, not always so,’ he conceded.
‘Let’s turn back,’ urged Bligh, anxiously. ‘It’s not too late, not yet.’
Christian shook his head.
‘I’ll muster the entire crew,’ promised Bligh. ‘Assure them the whole matter was a mistake, an error between us that we’ve resolved …’
‘Stop, sir!’ rejected Christian. ‘The whole ship’s in arms … they’ll be at the rum, before long. Do you imagine any one of them would willingly put themselves back under your command, after what’s passed in the last few hours? They’d rather kill you outright. Or themselves.’
‘You have my word I’ll victimise no one.’
‘Your word!’ accused Christian, contemptuously. ‘Your word, sir, is the most valueless thing about this vessel.’
‘How so?’ demanded Bligh, nostrils flaring in the familiar prelude to an irrational tirade.
Rarely, thought Christian again, suddenly alert, had he known a man less able to control his temper. Yet apart from that momentary slip, now subdued, the two of them could have been discussing an everyday problem of the voyage, rather than an event that was going to alter both their lives from that day on.
Bligh’s behaviour, with his promises, was a ploy, accepted Christian warily, a super-human exercise of will by a man on the lip of insanity to secure his release. Once Bligh were set free, he would go berserk. Maniacs were often very cunning, thought Christian.
He brought the cutlass up again, jabbing it towards the other man. Was it to frighten Bligh? Christian wondered. Or to reassure himself?