James Norman Hall - The Mutiny on the Bounty - Complete Trilogy

The landsman turns up his nose at the shark, but, to a sailor craving fresh meat, the flesh of a shark under ten feet in length is a veritable luxury. The larger sharks have a strong rank smell, but the flesh of the small ones, cut into slices like so many beefsteaks, parboiled first and then broiled with plenty of pepper and salt, eats very well indeed, resembling codfish in flavour.

I tasted shark for the first time one evening off the Brazilian coast. It was dead calm; the sails hung slack from the yards, only moving a little when the ship rolled to a gently northerly swell. John Mills, the gunner’s mate, stood forward abreast of the windlass, with a heavy line coiled in his hand. He was an old seaman, one of Christian’s watch—a man of forty or thereabouts who had served in the West Indies on the Mediator, Captain Cuthbert Collingwood. I disliked the man,—a tall, rawboned, dour old salt,—but I watched with interest as he prepared his bait. Two of his messmates stood by, ready to bear a hand—Brown, the assistant botanist, and Norman, the carpenter’s mate. The mess had contributed the large piece of salt pork now going over the side; they shared the risk of losing the bait without results, as they would share whatever Mills was fortunate enough to catch. A shark about ten feet long had just passed under the bows. I craned my neck to watch.

Next moment a small striped fish like a mackerel flashed this way and that about the bait. “Pilot fish!” cried Norman. “Take care—here comes the shark!”

“Damn you!” growled Mills. “Don’t dance about like a monkey—you’ll frighten him off!”

The shark, an ugly yellowish blotch in the blue water, was rising beneath the bait, and all eyes were on him as he turned on his side, opened his jaws, and gulped down the piece of pork. “Hooked, by God!” roared Mills as he hove the line short. “Now, my hearties, on deck with him!” The line was strong and the messmates hove with a will; in an instant the shark came struggling over the bulwarks and thumped down on deck. Mills seized a hatchet and struck the fish a heavy blow on the snout; next moment six or seven men were astride of the quivering carcass, knives out and cutting away for dear life. The spectacle was laughable. Mills, to whom the head belonged by right of capture, was seated at the forward end; each of the others, pushing himself as far aft as possible, to enlarge his cut of shark, was slicing away within an inch of the next man’s rump. There were cries of “Mind what you are about, there!” “Take care, else I’ll have a slice off your backside!” And in about three minutes’ time the poor fish had been severed into as many great slices as there had been men bestriding him.

The deck was washed, and Mills was picking up the several slices into which he had cut his share of the fish, when Mr. Samuel, the captain’s clerk, came strolling forward.

“A fine catch, my good man,” he remarked in his patronizing way. “I must have a slice, eh?”

In common with all of the Bounty’s people, Mills disliked Samuel heartily. The clerk drank neither rum nor wine, and it was suspected that he hoarded his ration of spirits for sale ashore.

“So you must have a slice,” growled the gunner’s mate. “Well, I must have a glass of grog, and a stiff one, too, if you are to eat shark to-day.”

“Come! Come! My good man,” said Samuel pettishly. “You’ve enough fish there for a dozen.”

“And you’ve enough grog stowed away for a thousand, by God!”

“It’s for the captain’s table I want it,” said Samuel.

“Then catch him a shark yourself. This is mine. He gets the best of the bread and the pick of the junk cask as it is.”

“You forget yourself, Mills! Come, give me a slice—that large one there—and I’ll say nothing.”

“Say nothing be damned! Here—take your slice!” As he spoke, Mills flung the ten or twelve pounds of raw fish straight at Samuel’s face, with the full strength of a brawny, tattooed arm. He turned on his heel to go below, growling under his breath.

Mr. Samuel picked himself up from the deck, not forgetting his slice of shark, and walked slowly aft. The look in his eye boded no good fortune to the gunner’s mate.

The news spread over the ship rapidly, and for the first time aboard the Bounty Mills found himself a popular man, though there was little hope that he would escape punishment. As Old Bacchus put it that night, “The least he can hope for is a red-checked shirt at the gangway. Samuel’s a worm and a dirty worm, but discipline’s discipline, begad!”

I believe that a day will come when flogging will be abolished on His Majesty’s ships. It is an over-brutal punishment, which destroys a good man’s self-respect and makes a bad man worse. Landsmen have little idea of the savagery of a flogging at the gangway. The lashes are laid on with the full strength of a powerful man’s arm, with such force that each blow knocks the breath clean out of the delinquent’s body. One blow takes off the skin and draws blood where each knot falls. Six blows make the whole back raw. Twelve cut deeply into the flesh and leave it a red mass, horrible to see. Yet six dozen are a common punishment.

As had been predicted, Mills spent the night in irons. The kind hearts of our British seamen were evident next morning when I was told that his messmates had saved their entire allowance of grog for Mills, to fortify him against the flogging they considered inevitable. At six bells Mr. Bligh came on deck, and bade Christian turn the hands aft to witness punishment. The weather had grown cooler, and the Bounty was slipping southward with all sail set, before a light northwest breeze. The order was piped and shouted forward; I joined the assembly of officers aft, while the people fell in on the booms and along the ship’s side. All were silent.

“Rig the gratings,” ordered Mr. Bligh, in his harsh voice.

The carpenter and his mates dragged aft two of the wooden gratings used to cover the hatches. They placed one flat on the deck, and the other upright, secured to the bulwarks by the lee gangway.

“The gratings are rigged, sir,” reported Purcell, the carpenter.

“John Mills!” said Bligh. “Step forward!”

Flushed with the rum he had taken, and dressed in his best, Mills stepped out from among his messmates. His unusual smartness was designed to mollify the punishment, yet there was in his bearing a trace of defiance. He was a hard man, and he felt that he had been hardly used.

“Have you anything to say?” asked Bligh of the bare-headed seaman before him.

“No, sir,” growled Mills sullenly.

“Strip!” ordered the captain.

Mills tore off his shirt, flung it to one of his messmates, and advanced bare-shouldered to the gratings.

“Seize him up,” said Bligh.

Norton and Lenkletter, our quartermasters—old pigtailed seamen who had performed this office scores of times in the past—now advanced with lengths of spun yarn, and lashed Mills’s outstretched wrists to the upright grating.

“Seized up, sir!” reported Norton.

Bligh took off his hat, as did every man on the ship, opened a copy of the Articles of War, and read in a solemn voice the article which prescribes the punishments for mutinous conduct. Morrison, the boatswain’s mate, was undoing the red baize bag in which he kept the cat.

“Three dozen, Mr. Morrison,” said Bligh as he finished reading. “Do your duty!”

Morrison was a kindly, reflective man. I felt for him at that moment, for I knew that he hated flogging on principle, and must feel the injustice of this punishment. Yet he would not dare, under the keen eye of the captain, to lighten the force of his blows. However unwilling, he was Bligh’s instrument.