Jesse Broad was ill as well. Several of the injured mutineers were left below, in chains, and several died. It did not suit that Broad should die, however – Swift would not have it so. He was placed in the sick-bay under the surgeon’s tender care. No guard was needed, for he could not move. He received the best of nursing, and a complicated operation to remove the ball. His left shoulder and several of his ribs were badly smashed, and for weeks on end his life hung in the balance. He too dreamed in delirium, but not of Bentley. The nightmare of the past few months was mingled with his earlier life. Sometimes he thought he was back in Langstone, a free man once more and happy. At others, bloody shades rose up before him and he would awaken, racked by screams or sobs. He dreamed often of Thomas Fox.
As they neared England, and his lucid periods got longer, Broad harboured no happy thoughts. He pondered longest on whether he should get in contact with his wife before he died, or whether it was better just to leave it. That way she might never know, he thought, for the evidence was minimal. If the wherry he and Hardman had been caught in had ever been found, it would have been assumed they had been overwhelmed, or met some other sea-accident, he supposed. Even if it had ever been guessed that the press had had a hand in it, he could have gone to any of a dozen ships. Nothing strange at all if he were never heard of any more. By now Mary might have grown accustomed to her loss; heartless, stupid, cruel to let her know he lived –for the few short weeks before they hanged him. The day it dawned on him that she was bound to know was one of his worst. A black despair settled on him and he writhed in mental torment on his palliasse. For he was a ringleader; the only ringleader left alive, at that. The Welfare mutiny would be noised throughout the land, he would be pilloried, his name would be a household word. Not only would his poor wife come to know, she would share the final agony of his trial and hanging. It was intolerable. He jerked and fumbled, with some idea of reopening his wounds, unknitting the knitting bone, until the pain was appalling. He succeeded only in passing out.
Later on, Broad tried to kill himself. He had crawled six feet across the sick-bay, towards a box he hoped might contain some sharp instruments, before a surgeon’s boy discovered him. He cried weakly as they carried him back, tears of sheer frustration. The surgeon shrewdly guessed their meaning, and from that moment on he was tied to his berth.
It never entered Broad’s head that William Bentley would plead for him, or tell the truth of the affair. It never entered William Bentley’s head that he would not. At one end of the ship the sick boy lay, making his careful plans, at the other lay the sailor, his mind a cauldron of desperate thoughts. Both of them were sleeping uneasily when the anchor plunged into the bright green depths of Spithead early on a sparkling summer morning.
When the full extent of William’s revolt became apparent, some days later, it caused a storm that bade fair to swamp him. He was at home, in the big house near Petersfield, some twenty miles from Portsmouth. He was in his own room, in his own bed, and the medical man who had tended him since a child visited daily and had declared him on the road to recovery. Much of the day he spent in thought, sunk deep in bunched-up pillows, breathing the clean warm country air that blew in at the window. He had greeted his father and his older brother with a certain coldness that he could not hide. It troubled him, but the coldness would not go away. His mother, too, even his sisters, were somehow like strangers, he had seen their faces with indifference, tolerated tears of joy with vague distaste. Uncle Daniel had stayed in the house for a time, explained presumably that William was in some kind of state; so fortunately the matter had not been dwelt upon at first.
When it was, he stated his position with great care. Firstly he told his father all about the mutiny, starting so far back that he snorted with impatience. But William insisted. It cost him a lot in energy, holding back his desire to launch into a tirade, as well as resisting the temptation to succumb to his father’s tendency to bluster, to try to make him retract, when he said something even mildly critical of Uncle Daniel. However hard he tried to point up his own faults, he was just pooh-poohed. At the end of an afternoon he was exhausted, and the visiting physician was appalled by the worsening of his condition. Next afternoon he tried once more; he had not even reached the incidents in the doldrums.
His father was not a stupid man, and his blustering, hearty approach soon gave way to a much more grave and serious one. He sat in a high, winged chair, his back to the window, his face in shadow. He said so little, contradicting not at all, that William began to believe he understood, condoned. He talked with passion of the acts of Broad and Matthews, painted the scene of Fox’s death in tones that shook with horror. Or was it hatred, he wondered in a pause? Self-hatred or for Daniel Swift? Or both?
Finally, stumbling over his slow-picked words, William made his statement on the subject of the court-martial. His Uncle Daniel Swift should stand arraigned, he said, and if need be, he himself as well. The voyage had been carnage, a slow-unfolding massacre. He could not stand by and see the man who had been its author preside over the murder of any more unfortunates. For all the mutineers who had survived, not only Jesse Broad, deserved a better fate. There must be no more killings.
His father had left the room in silence. William had lain in the dwindling light drained of energy, but not unhappy. It was later, when Swift had been told and said his piece, when the family had closed ranks, that the storm broke, that the nightmare began. William, already weak, became yet weaker. He even suspected that his weakness was being used against him, to break down his resistance. But he fought on, despite all threats and cajoling, despite all pleas to think of family honour, despite all hints of faults within himself. It became a fixed point, an anchor for his being, it kept him going. The truth must be told.
In the end, he was very ill again. Much too ill, it was certificated, to give evidence to a court-martial, although he was the only gentleman-witness to the continued atrocities of the mutineers who had seized the Welfare and cast off captain, officers and loyal men to almost certain death. A pity, but he was too ill. Mr William Bentley’s evidence will not be heard. In fact, it was not until after the trial that they told him it had taken place. And that seven men were to hang. Among them Jesse Broad.
The agony for Broad had not been, as it happened, deciding whether or not to tell his wife and friends, but wondering whether they knew. After the ship had anchored in Spithead, he and the other prisoners had been moved within two days. They had not been blindfolded, and the sight of Portsdown Hill, the yellow beaches, the green waters and the walls of Portsmouth, had been too much. Many wept, all were speechless. Broad was lowered to the waiting boat in an arrangement of planks. He looked at the whitish, dirty faces of his fellows, but no smiles were passed. Less than three hours later they were on board another ship, a dank, foul-smelling hulk at the mouth of Fareham creek; a prison hulk, with a filthy sick-bay with no outer openings. There they stayed, with no visitors, no letters in or out, no contact with the outside world. His thoughts of Mary were jumbled now, a touch of madness hovered always near. He let his health sink downwards, it did not bother him. He realised he would die without seeing her, and probably without knowing if she knew. It was, finally, the best way.
The trial was held on board another ship, to which the prisoners were rowed every day. The evidence was long, but all one-sided. Broad did not listen very hard, just lay on his pallet staring at the deckhead. It did not surprise him much that Bentley was not there, although his name was mentioned very often. Apparently he was deadly ill, having borne the brunt of the last stages of the mutiny. Broad did not blame him for not being there, there was no blame to be attached; easier to keep away, poor lad. He had suffered very much.