wasn’t fighting. He was just lying there, beaten.
‘Fight,’ demanded Christian.
Quintal said nothing, hands cupped over his face.
‘Fight, Quintal! Fight me!’
Quintal was looking at him, Christian saw, eyes alert, recognising the safety in inaction.
Christian snatched the bayonet from his belt and moved towards him. The man didn’t cringe away, Christian saw. He was wedged against the rock and he thought he would survive. He imagined Christian would pull back, as he had so often in the past.
‘… you’re not a brave man, are you … you shout a bit and look good, but you rarely finish anything off, do you …?’
The taunt paraded itself in his mind. Quintal’s words, he remembered: the defiance when he’d been confronted in the garden. Isabella had been there then. Brave. Unafraid. Unsullied.
He swept the blade forward, driving it into Quintal and the breath squeaked from the man, more in surprise than pain. Then Christian stabbed him again and then a third time, the anger pumping from him and Quintal screamed, again the dreadful, primeval sound.
The seaman slumped sideways and Christian stared down at the body. He should feel something, he thought. There should be the release of revenge, a pleasure almost. But there was nothing, not even disgust at what he had done.
What should he do now? he wondered. There was nothing, he thought. Nothing at all. The children, he supposed. But he didn’t want them. Sarah could care for them better than he could. And she would, he knew. The Tahitians loved children. Even before he’d begun pursuing Quintal, the woman had chosen the role as mother to them. The baby was too young to realise what had happened, anyway. And Thursday was only four: he’d forget, soon enough. They’d be better, with Sarah.
His cave was the spot, he decided. It was to the cave he had come, within days of establishing the Pitcairn community. So it seemed right that it should be from the cave that he should kill himself. It would be very easy, he knew. Not even any pain. Unconscious by the time he struck the water, hundreds of feet below.
The ledge narrowed, but it was still quite easy to walk until he was only a hundred yards away. He picked up his normal route and spread across the rockface, finally reaching the little platform from which he could see the hidden village and the open sea beyond.
They were huddled down there, he saw, grouped together as if there were safety in numbers, some staring up at the mountain and others towards the jungle path from which the victor would emerge.
And then he saw something else. Along the path at the foot of the cliff, completely concealed from the waiting mutineers, crept Talaloo, musket in hand and with a cutlass in his belt. All the Tahitian men were with them, realised Christian, staring down … Timoa and Mehow, both with rifles, too, and Menalee and Oho, clutching the stones with which they were so adept at fighting. Tataheite had a pistol, he picked out. And a cutlass, held ready in his right hand.
He looked back to the mutineers. Not one armed, he saw. He’d warned them and they’d laughed at him, like they’d always done.
He could alert them, he realised. If he went beyond the screen of trees, waving with his shirt, he could attract their attention. They wouldn’t understand what he was attempting to indicate, but the natives below wouldn’t realise that and almost certainly would abandon the assault.
Thursday would be safe, in any battle, he reflected. And the baby, too. It was only the white men who were being attacked … the white men who had discarded him. He squatted, unmoving, watching the hunched progress of the natives.
It would be very swift, he decided, with all the mutineers bunched together like that. And Talaloo was planning his revenge very cleverly, fanning the natives out so they attacked from two sides.
Suddenly Talaloo raised his hand, halting the assault, and Christian frowned, unable to see the reason. The natives appeared to be talking, arguing almost, and then Talaloo swept his hand out into the bay and Christian followed the gesture.
And saw the whaler that must have been tacking into anchor for some time, nearly all its sails reefed and the crew lining the decks, staring at the island.
Elizabeth Bligh sat hunched in her shawl, slightly apart from her husband, attempting to conceal her embarrassment.
‘Please, Mr Bligh, don’t,’ she pleaded.
‘The man’s a fool,’ insisted Bligh, speaking not to the woman but to