all.
For that was what he wanted – our leader, our young lion, our Mister Fletcher Christian – he wanted to explain our mutiny to those in England.
The rest of us were willing to settle for watching fifty years of sunsets with some Tahitian maid under a palm tree. And keeping the hangman’s rope from our mutinous necks.
But he was good, you see.
Mister Fletcher Christian. A good man. An honest man. They all loved that goodness in Fletcher Christian, even as he burned to a crisp under the tropical moon.
The men. The women. The world. But what they loved about Mister Fletcher Christian was what made me, in some secret chamber of my heart, turn away from the man.
For it was the very
goodness
of Mister Fletcher Christian that stuck in my throat. He carried his goodness around like a bloody halo, expecting the rest of the world to give it a polish every now and then. He carried his goodness like Christ with his cross on the road to Calvary.
And our captain was crucified upon that cross.
Mr Christian – was ever a legend more fittingly named? – thought he was better than other men.
More moral. More noble. More good.
Perhaps he was right. Perhaps.
He certainly always thought it. He had the rock-solid confidence of the upper-class Englishman.
A bit of a snob, our Mister Christian.
He may have believed that our first cruel captain, Bligh, was wicked and evil and a monster. It is true that Bligh would smile at the sight of the whip being brought out as if it was the sun breaking through grey clouds, or an orange in a stocking on Christmas Day.
But I reckon that Fletcher Christian also believed that William Bligh was from the gutter.
I reckon that Mr Christian thought that rough William Bligh was little better than the scum and rascals who made up the crew of the
Bounty
on our mad mission to bring back breadfruit from the South Seas of the Pacific Ocean.
Fletcher Christian looked down on William Bligh. And he would have looked down on Bligh even if he had spoon-fed us rum from dawn to dusk.
Still, Fletcher Christian was impressive. I will give him that.
They are building their bloody Empire on the likes of Fletcher Christian. They think that men like him (the brightest, the best) are leading the likes of me (the rankest, the worst).
Fletcher sipped his port. The men got roaring drunk on rot-gut rum. Fletcher fluttered his eyelashes at the ladies. We whored. Fletcher was a cultivated man. We could just about make our mark if you were to guide our hand. You get the picture.
Fletcher Christian was a gentleman.
More than us. And more than Bligh. But
better
than the rest of us? Mister Fletcher Christian clearly thought so.
But in my experience of this wicked world, all men are much the same.
The
Bounty
burned all night.
As the sun came up over the South Seas, the ship that had carried us so far was meeting its end in flames fifty feet high.
It was a day as close to Paradise as I ever saw in this world. The sky above the island was so blue that it made your heart ache to behold such beauty.
A soft breeze was moving through the palm trees like a mother’s sigh. And the heat – it was that soothing heat that we found on the island, that calming heat we found at the end of the world.
Even as I held my dying captain in his final minutes, I was not sorry that we had burned the
Bounty
. Because we wanted this Eden to last.
We did not want to go back to England. There, we would have to tell our story and to make our case. To throw ourselves at the dubious mercy of some bewigged bastard of a judge.
After much careful reflection, we had no wish to sail back to England and face justice that would have had us all dangling on the end of a rope. We would hang – twitching and shitting and eyes bulging, our tongues turning black as our dear old mothers wept and the crowd roared with delighted laughter.
Go back to that?
No thank you, Mister Christian, sir.
But his goodness was calling him back to England. And then
For that was what he wanted – our leader, our young lion, our Mister Fletcher Christian – he wanted to explain our mutiny to those in England.
The rest of us were willing to settle for watching fifty years of sunsets with some Tahitian maid under a palm tree. And keeping the hangman’s rope from our mutinous necks.
But he was good, you see.
Mister Fletcher Christian. A good man. An honest man. They all loved that goodness in Fletcher Christian, even as he burned to a crisp under the tropical moon.
The men. The women. The world. But what they loved about Mister Fletcher Christian was what made me, in some secret chamber of my heart, turn away from the man.
For it was the very
goodness
of Mister Fletcher Christian that stuck in my throat. He carried his goodness around like a bloody halo, expecting the rest of the world to give it a polish every now and then. He carried his goodness like Christ with his cross on the road to Calvary.
And our captain was crucified upon that cross.
Mr Christian – was ever a legend more fittingly named? – thought he was better than other men.
More moral. More noble. More good.
Perhaps he was right. Perhaps.
He certainly always thought it. He had the rock-solid confidence of the upper-class Englishman.
A bit of a snob, our Mister Christian.
He may have believed that our first cruel captain, Bligh, was wicked and evil and a monster. It is true that Bligh would smile at the sight of the whip being brought out as if it was the sun breaking through grey clouds, or an orange in a stocking on Christmas Day.
But I reckon that Fletcher Christian also believed that William Bligh was from the gutter.
I reckon that Mr Christian thought that rough William Bligh was little better than the scum and rascals who made up the crew of the
Bounty
on our mad mission to bring back breadfruit from the South Seas of the Pacific Ocean.
Fletcher Christian looked down on William Bligh. And he would have looked down on Bligh even if he had spoon-fed us rum from dawn to dusk.
Still, Fletcher Christian was impressive. I will give him that.
They are building their bloody Empire on the likes of Fletcher Christian. They think that men like him (the brightest, the best) are leading the likes of me (the rankest, the worst).
Fletcher sipped his port. The men got roaring drunk on rot-gut rum. Fletcher fluttered his eyelashes at the ladies. We whored. Fletcher was a cultivated man. We could just about make our mark if you were to guide our hand. You get the picture.
Fletcher Christian was a gentleman.
More than us. And more than Bligh. But
better
than the rest of us? Mister Fletcher Christian clearly thought so.
But in my experience of this wicked world, all men are much the same.
The
Bounty
burned all night.
As the sun came up over the South Seas, the ship that had carried us so far was meeting its end in flames fifty feet high.
It was a day as close to Paradise as I ever saw in this world. The sky above the island was so blue that it made your heart ache to behold such beauty.
A soft breeze was moving through the palm trees like a mother’s sigh. And the heat – it was that soothing heat that we found on the island, that calming heat we found at the end of the world.
Even as I held my dying captain in his final minutes, I was not sorry that we had burned the
Bounty
. Because we wanted this Eden to last.
We did not want to go back to England. There, we would have to tell our story and to make our case. To throw ourselves at the dubious mercy of some bewigged bastard of a judge.
After much careful reflection, we had no wish to sail back to England and face justice that would have had us all dangling on the end of a rope. We would hang – twitching and shitting and eyes bulging, our tongues turning black as our dear old mothers wept and the crowd roared with delighted laughter.
Go back to that?
No thank you, Mister Christian, sir.
But his goodness was calling him back to England. And then
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