Beyond the Bounty by Tony Parsons Page B

his goodness called him to that burning ship. And finally his goodness was calling him to Heaven.
    ‘Ned, I am done for,’ he croaked. ‘Tonight I shall walk the streets of glory, and sit with angels in the realm of the Lord.’
    You could see he was quite looking forward to it. The angels. The clouds. The business of comparing halos. The way he told it, dying was like shore leave that lasted for all eternity. Without the pox and the sore heads. You could see the attraction.
    Then he writhed and twisted with that terrible pain. Fire is a terrible way to go. Give me water. Give me my lungs full of salt water in Davey Jones’ locker for a year rather one minute of the pain that Mister Fletcher Christian endured at the end of his short and famous life.
    The men were crying. The women too. The men were crying like women and the women were crying like banshees. What a racket! I had to bark at them to shut their traps. For I could hardly hear the words of the dying man in my arms.
    ‘Ned,’ he said. ‘Oh, Ned Young. Why did you do it? Oh, how could you burn our proud
Bounty
?’
    ‘Because we can’t go home, sir,’ I blubbered. Now the rest of them had started me off and I was sobbing like a milkmaid who has had her best bucket hidden by a stable lad. ‘Because we can’t go home where nothing is waiting but the rope.’
    ‘No, Ned – it is still our old and beloved England,’ he gasped. ‘Justice, Ned. The truth.’ He fought for breath here, for he was overcome by the pain. ‘What is right and what is wrong,’ he continued. ‘Standing for liberty against tyranny. Standing for Christian values in the face of all that is cruel and wicked. That was our choice – the way of Captain Bligh or my way, Ned.’
    As though all goodness and right belonged to him alone. He coughed a bit at this point. Mostly blood, although also some yellow substance which did not look too promising.
    ‘They would have listened,’ says he.
    ‘They would have listened, all right,’ says I. ‘They would have had a good old listen and then they would have made us dangle.’
    But even a cold, hard-hearted scoundrel such as myself could not fail to be moved by the death of Mister Fletcher Christian.
    My eyes ran with tears and I knew that, despite everything, I loved him.
    Not that I ever liked him much.
    But I can’t deny that I loved him.
    I could feel the fire in my blood. The
Bounty
crackled and shrieked like a living thing. It died hissing and spitting as it dropped its masts into the boiling water. And then, just as the sky was turning pale pink in the east, the
Bounty
collapsed beneath the sea.
    For a few minutes there were wispy trails of grey smoke curling from the surface, and then they were gone too.
    It was as if our ship had never existed.
    ‘Ned,’ Fletcher Christian whispered. And it was no more than a faint whisper now, this close to the end. ‘Don’t leave me. Don’t let me go alone, Ned.’
    ‘I’m here,’ I sobbed, holding him as tight as I could without causing him even more pain. ‘I’m here, and here I will stay. I shall not go until you are gone. I promise you that. You have my word, Mister Fletcher Christian, sir.’
    ‘Oh, Ned,’ he said. ‘The pain.’
    I placed my hand over his nose and mouth. ‘There, there,’ I said. ‘There, there – rest your eyes, Mister Christian, sir. Rest those blue eyes of yours for just a moment, sir.’
    His eyes widened as I leaned into him, pushing down harder over his nose and mouth, making quite sure that he would not be breathing much more of that sweet tropical air.
    The eyes of Mister Fletcher Christian slowly began to close.
    I have big hands, you see.
    Big hands made hard by twenty-five years before the mast.
    Stopping a dying man from breathing is about as hard for me as it is for your grandmother to fill her pipe.
    ‘You’re right, sir,’ I said. ‘The angels are waiting for you. They have been waiting all along. You have been right all along, Mister