voyage was over, Christian would undoubtedly be insane.
‘It’s near four,’ cautioned Stewart. ‘Little more than an hour before sun-up. You’ll never leave the ship without being seen, sir. We’re making so little way they’d get the cutter launched and you inboard before you’d been in the water thirty minutes.’
‘Unless a shark gets me,’ qualified Christian.
Stewart frowned, caught by the remark. Was Christian discarding the ridiculous idea of a raft? he wondered.
‘There are people on board who would follow you, if you chose another course,’ prompted Stewart, guardedly.
Only inches separated the faces of the two men, hunched in the fetid berth. Christian stared at the Scotsman, waiting. Stewart gazed back, saying nothing more.
‘It’s time I went on watch,’ said Christian, at last.
‘Desert and you’ll die,’ said Stewart, desperately.
‘I know.’
‘Then talk to your friends.’
‘And I still might die.’
‘It’ll be a better chance.’
‘Out of my way, Mr Stewart.’
The faint easterly made it cooler on deck, but sweat still dripped from Christian, soaking his shirt. He looked towards the shapes of several men lining the rail, watching the eruption of Tofoa, and remembered Stewart’s warning.
The man was right, he knew. Even if the sharks didn’t get him, the raft he had put together the night before and which lay concealed now beneath the cutter would probably break up before he reached any island.
And the natives would kill him, if he landed without the visible protection of the Bounty. Even with the ship and its guns in evidence, the natives often weren’t scared. Only three days earlier, he’d been lucky to get the men away alive when the watering party he had commanded on Anamoka had been attacked.
Of course, Bligh had blamed him for what had happened, undermining his authority by ranting in front of the crew of which he was supposed to be second-in-command, saying it was his fault the natives had stolen the worthless axe and demanding to know why he hadn’t ordered his men to use the guns with which they’d been issued, to prevent it. Christian sighed. Bligh was going mad, he thought, remembering the diatribe in minute detail. It had been one of the most positive indications yet of the man’s closeness to insanity, castigating him for not using the muskets less than three hours after giving specific orders that although they had been issued, the weapons were not to be fired. The self-pity bubbled up again. How could he be expected to work a ship under a man whose mind butterflied from order to order in constant contradiction?
He put aside the question, thinking of the natives again. They fought with stones, he knew, battering their victims until they were pulped to death. It would take a long time to die, guessed Christian. And hurt a great deal.
He stood, quite alone on the deck, his eyes pressed closed. Oh dear Lord, he thought, what am I to do?
He had to get away, he knew.
He heard the rest of the watch approaching and opened his eyes, embarrassed. It was still dark enough to conceal what he had been doing, Christian realised, gratefully. He didn’t want gossip that he had begun his watch standing on deck, praying.
‘Sir?’ asked Thomas Ellison, seeking an order. Christian smiled down at the tiny, baby-faced youngster, still only seventeen. Like the rest of them, the boy had had himself tattooed in Tahiti, Christian knew. His right arm was still flushed and puffy around the inscription of his name and the date upon which it had been done, October 25, 1788. His parents would probably beat him for it, when he got home to England.
‘The helm,’ ordered Christian, briskly. He looked over Ellison’s shoulder, to John Mills. The gunner’s mate was a raw-boned, taciturn man who’d sailed the world. At 5 ft 10 ins he dwarfed the youth.
‘At the conn, to guide him,’ ordered Christian. Mills would keep the boy out of trouble, he knew. Not that anything was likely to arise on this stifling night that could cause any trouble. Stewart had been right; the ship was scarcely making headway.
Matthew Quintal and Isaac Martin came towards him, expectantly. They were tattooed, too, Christian knew. Quintal had his ass covered in pictures, copying the idea when he knew that Christian had had it done. It had taken them both a week before they could sit down again.
‘Coil the loose lines,’ instructed Christian, brusquely. ‘Prepare to swab down.’
Both Quintal and Martin had suffered from Bligh, Christian remembered. He tried to recall the number of floggings that had been inflicted