direct the man’s thoughts.
Peckover shook his head.
‘There never was such a man as Mr Christian for women,’ he said. ‘In every port it was always the same. In Tahiti it was two women a night, more often than not. It was like a farmyard …’
‘And the captain didn’t like such behaviour from his immediate officer?’
Peckover hesitated at the question.
‘There appeared no dispute at first …’ he recalled.
‘Why not?’
‘Captain Bligh was much occupied in getting the breadfruit. He had mind for little else, so the ship and men were left alone.’
‘So the criticisms came later.’
‘Things had changed by then.’
‘Changed? How?’
‘Mr Christian had met one particular woman,’ said the gunner. ‘Her name was Mauatua, but he called her Isabella, after a relation of his, here in England.’
‘What was his relationship with this woman?’
‘He settled down completely …’ remembered Peckover. ‘Told me he considered himself married. I recall I was surprised in the change in such a man …’
‘What was the captain’s reaction to this?’ pressed Bunyan.
‘It was about this time that the arguments began,’ said Peckover. ‘Rarely a day passed without there being some dispute between them.’
‘When the second-in-command was rutting … to use your own expression, like an animal in a farmyard, Captain Bligh had no complaint. Yet when he reverted to a somewhat unusual but nevertheless settled relationship with one woman, the captain found fault. I don’t understand,’ prompted the lawyer.
‘Captain Bligh was never a predictable man,’ reminded the witness.
‘Did Mr Christian talk to you about this?’
‘No, sir,’ said Peckover, shaking his head. ‘I told you, there was no great friendship between Mr Christian and me.’
‘Did he confide in anybody?’
‘Not that I know,’ said Peckover. ‘He just withdrew more and more with the woman … he did say one thing, though. He told me once that he’d never been so happy and that nothing Captain Bligh could do or say would upset him …’
‘Then how did he appear to you on that morning when he came to relieve you from watch?’ pounced Bunyan.
‘Very wild, sir,’ accepted Peckover. ‘I’ve heard people at this enquiry use the word demented and upon reflection that justly describes the state Mr Christian was in that morning … he was badly out of sorts …’
‘So somehow Captain Bligh had upset him?’
‘That remark was made to me in Tahiti, when he had the woman,’ corrected Peckover. ‘But she had been left behind.’
‘Are you suggesting that Mr Christian seized a ship and cast eighteen men adrift because he could not bear to be parted from a woman to whom he was not legally married?’ demanded Bunyan. ‘Are you saying he did it for love?’
Peckover paused, considering the reply.
‘I don’t know, sir,’ he said.
‘What was it, Mr Peckover? What was it that drove Mr Christian first to think of desertion and then to mutiny?’
‘I don’t know, sir,’ repeated the man. ‘I don’t think anyone does.’
Bligh might have known, reflected the President, at the top table. Arrangements should have been made to examine the man, now that he was back in England. The Admiralty and the government were being stupid.
Still, that was their decision, not his.
Edward Christian was grey with fatigue, Bunyan saw, so tired that he had difficulty in holding a thought longer than a few seconds and his conversation was rambling and forgetful.
It was hardly surprising, decided the younger lawyer. The man could not have had more than two hours’ sleep a night since the commencement of the enquiry and sometimes had even abandoned that in his anxiety to publish an account of the court martial.
But he’d managed it.
Every day he had had printed the evidence produced before the court and as the examination had progressed had prefaced it with a summary of what had gone before, so that a complete narrative had been built up. To the evidence from aboard the Duke he had supplemented the accounts provided by each witness whom he had interviewed after they had appeared, contrasting their stories with those that Bligh had published upon his return from the mutiny and was reissuing now.
As careful as he had been in its preparation, Edward had been brilliant in its circulation, exceeding anything Bligh was achieving. Every High Court judge had received a hand-delivered copy, every morning. So had every Lord of the Admiralty, every M.P. and every member of the court of King George. Coaches had been hired to carry the pamphlets to church leaders throughout the country. Copies had been made available, free, in every London coffee house and according to the stories