Remember Me - Lesley Pearse [128]
Mary couldn’t answer, she was too overwhelmed by the impossibility of caring for both her children under these conditions. But Charlotte’s questions were halted when the door was slammed shut and bolted, leaving them in pitch darkness. She let out a piercing scream, and falling over the pole in the darkness, she landed in Mary’s lap on top of Emmanuel.
‘The captain had a cabin for you and the children aft of the ship,’ Jamie Cox said from across the darkness of the cell. ‘That bastard Edwards said you had to stay in here with us. He wants his pound of flesh because he’s disappointed he didn’t catch all the mutineers from the Bounty.’
‘I’ll cheerfully swing for him,’ James Martin growled, then after a moment’s pause spoke to Will. ‘Well, you’ve got your ship at last, big man,’ he said jeeringly in the darkness. ‘How d’you like your cabin? How does it feel to have yer missus and babbies with you?’
Day by day the agony of that dark cell grew worse. When the sun shone outside, it was so hot they felt they were being cooked alive; when a storm broke out, they were soaked through. They were given only the bare minimum of food and water to keep them alive, and the way they were shackled meant they couldn’t even move to relieve themselves. Mary screamed for mercy, if only for Charlotte and Emmanuel, but if anyone on the ship heard her, they ignored her. On the rare occasions the door was opened, she saw for herself that the improvement in her children’s health in Kupang had been undone. They sat crying in bewilderment, caked in the filth all around them, and after only a few days Emmanuel went down with fever.
The men hardly spoke. When Mary could see their faces, their eyes were haunted. Nat and Jamie whimpered in their sleep, Bill swore, and James seemed to be constantly awake, his eyes glowing in the dark. Only Sam Broome tried to pretend everything would turn out all right, but Mary knew he was acting that way for the children’s benefit.
They ran into a cyclone, and water poured in, threatening to drown them. As the ship pitched and rolled, thunder crashed and lightning momentarily lit up each of their terrified faces. Mary prayed then that the ship would go down and put an end to their suffering.
They heard the crew of the Bounty shouting and swearing as they pitched in to help the Rembang men. Much later she was to hear that many of the Dutch crew went below decks to play cards while the English struggled to keep the ship off the rocks.
Will caught the fever too, crying out in his delirium for his mother. Mary could do nothing to help him, for she couldn’t move and had both the children in her arms. Jamie came out of his anger at his old friend sufficiently to give him sips of water, but the mood of the other men was ugly towards Will.
‘Die thinking of what you brought us to,’ William Moreton shouted out on several occasions. ‘I hope you burn in Hell, you bastard.’
The Rembang sailed into Batavia on 7 November. A whole month at sea had seemed more like a year to them. Apart from the foul conditions they were chained up in, which became worse daily, and the hunger and thirst, it was almost like being blindfolded too, for they had been unable to see out. They didn’t know whether they had passed other islands, big land masses, or whether they were just sailing on the open sea. They had lost all sense of time and distance too.
Hamilton, the ship’s surgeon, came into the hold briefly, holding a handkerchief over his nose against the smell but retching anyway. He barely looked at the men, but ordered that Emmanuel was to be taken to the hospital, and Mary would go with him. The remaining convicts and mutineers were to be moved to a guard ship until such time as a ship bound for England could be found.
‘Charlotte must come with me too,’ Mary pleaded, fearful for her little girl being imprisoned in another ship without her protection. ‘She’ll get sick too without me.’
Hamilton was a hard-faced man with a bushy beard. ‘She’ll get sick in