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Jamaica.’
    ‘He was very wrong!’ cried William Brown, the gardener. ‘The breadfruit could feed the slaves of our glorious Empire!’
    Matthew Quintal chuckled and leered and rolled his crazed eyes. He was not really joining in the conversation. He was in his own unhinged universe, the great gawky lunatic.
    ‘Fletcher Christian was right!’ cried young Isaac Martin, getting all weepy because he missed his old mother’s cooking and knew that he would never taste it again. ‘Oh, why did we throw away our lives on such a fool’s errand? We are lost and damned forever because rich men wanted a cheap way to feed their slaves!’
    ‘But don’t you see?’ said John Adams, all aglow with the certainty of being right. ‘The true glory of our voyage could be here on Pitcairn Island! If we can build a place where men are equal and happy and treated fair and square, then it will be a better place than the England we left behind!’
    This went down well.
    The drunken fools all started congratulating themselves on their nobility. John Adams’ pious goodness was clearly catching. He went on.
    ‘But if we are to make this a happy land, then we cannot treat the Tahitians exactly as Bligh treated us.’
    The men were silent for a moment. This clearly did not sound so appealing.
    ‘We must treat all men decently,’ said John Adams. ‘Brown or white. English sailor or Tahitian native. No man should be master or servant on our fair island.’
    ‘Or we could do it another way,’ I said. ‘Take one of the natives – any one of them will do, for they are all equally feckless – chop his head off and display it on a sharpened stick as a permanent warning to the rest of the lazy dogs. That should keep them in line without too much wear on the ship’s whip.’
    Matthew Quintal chuckled with approval. But I was deadly serious. Only a mad man could not see it.
    ‘Hold your tongue now,’ John Adams told me. ‘No more talk of punishment, Ned Young.’
    This riled me. As far as I could see, my captains were all dead men.
    ‘Who elected you master and commander?’ I demanded. ‘Mr John bloody Adams! The last time I looked, you were an able seaman on the
Bounty
! While I was a midshipman! I believe I have rank over you, sir! Mr John bloody Adams!’
    ‘But we are not on the
Bounty
any more,’ said John Adams, his eyes now mean slits.
    For all his Bible-bashing, I knew he had a temper on him, and I was glad that the fire was between us. I had once seen him shatter a man’s jawbone with one punch in a Portsmouth alehouse. So John Adams was not all sweetness, light and gospels, no matter how he played it out now.
    ‘Do me a great service, Ned,’ he said. ‘Put your stick back in your mouth and keep it there.’
    Some of them had a chuckle at that.
    But I would not stop.
    ‘And if chopping the head off the first doesn’t do the job and put a spring in their step, then take another one of the savages, and then another,’ I suggested.
    ‘That’s not you talking,’ John Adams said, smiling gently now, all forgiving and Christ-like. ‘That’s just the terrible pain in your tooth.’ He nodded with sympathy. ‘It hurts you very bad, doesn’t it, Ned, my old shipmate?’
    ‘Perhaps just a little bit,’ I conceded.
    ‘And it clouds your judgement,’ John Adams declared, standing up. He nodded once. ‘Hold him down,’ he said.
    Four of them were suddenly on me.
    They held my arms, my legs. There was a knee on my chest and another on my stomach, knocking the wind out of me. I fought and wiggled and raved and cursed and spat, but they held me down.
    ‘I want that bad tooth out of your head before we talk further,’ John Adams told me. ‘Let’s see if you talk about beheadings when that tooth is out of your head.’
    ‘Master and commander!’ I screamed up at him, my eyes wide at the rusty pair of pliers in his hand. ‘Damn your blood! Damn your eyes!’
    ‘Give him rum,’ commanded John Adams. ‘Quickly, now!