This Thing Of Darkness (36 page)

‘I attended Shrewsbury School, down in the town, learning nothing but Latin and Greek. It was cold and brutal, and I abhorred it, but at least I had the consolation of returning home to my sisters each night.’

FitzRoy gave a little nod of accord. How he had once longed to return home to his sister’s affection and love of an evening.

‘But the sea is my home now, and the officers and men my family. With the exception of Fanny, I do not believe I have a close friend ashore. I keep rooms in Onslow Square, but they feel to me like an hotel. I am never truly at ease on dry land. I think you will catch the feeling during the voyage, when you journey ashore yourself. You will start to think of the
Beagle
as your home.’

Darwin was too appalled by FitzRoy’s circumstances to consider the notion. ‘My dear friend! There is no one, here in England, awaiting your return? Apart from your sister, I mean - you have no one?’

FitzRoy thought of Mary O’Brien, and the splash of hot wax falling from the chandelier on to her pale skin.

‘No . . . there is no one.’

Concern was etched into Darwin’s face. FitzRoy was touched, but hurried them through the moment with a sympathetic smile. ‘It does not signify. Come, you are to be my guest, in my house, for the next two years or more. Let us make it a voyage to remember.’

‘Here’s to that! And let us make it a voyage that shall be remembered by others. I have a suggestion, FitzRoy. What say we publish a book, you and I, an account of our voyage together?’

‘Well, I must write a journal of the expedition as part of my official duties, and I have Captain King’s journal of the first voyage. We could publish them as two volumes, and you could append a third of your geological and natural observations.’

‘What a capital idea!’

‘We are agreed, then?’

‘Most certainly!’

It was drawing late, so the pot-boy came through to dampen the fire with slack and put up the fire-guard. The two would-be authors retired to bed, aglow with excitement about the voyage to come.

 

Just as the barometer had predicted, Boxing Day dawned calm, the sun glowing red through an early mist. By the time it had lifted the officers had washed and dressed, and had emerged from the hotel to discover a glorious morning in progress. There were mare’s tails in the east, and the smoke from the early-morning chimneys was streaming westward into a crisp blue sky, signalling the way ahead. When they reached the quayside at Devonport, however, there was no sign of the cutter, and they had to endure the embarrassment of borrowing another vessel’s craft to get across to Barnet Pool. As they rowed themselves nearer to the
Beagle
, it was clear that something was amiss. Even at a distance, her decks were deathly quiet. There was only one sentry on duty, a diminutive sailor lost in a large, shapeless coat, whom FitzRoy did not at first recognize; although there was something familiar, he thought, about the man’s bearing. As they made their boat fast to the
Beagle’s
flank, the mystery of the sentry’s identity became clear. Inside the coat, shaking with cold and fear, his fingers, nose and ears an icy purple, was Midshipman King.

‘Mr King? What on earth ... ?’

‘I’m s-sorry, sir. Th-they wouldn’t listen to me, sir.’

‘Who wouldn’t? Where is the sentry?’

King’s eyes pricked with tears. ‘He said he would no longer stand on duty, sir. He told me to ... he told me to go to the devil, sir. There is not a sober man in the ship, sir.’

As FitzRoy hauled himself up the battens and over the rail, the chaos of the maindeck told its own story: the uncoiled and jumbled ropes, the smashed bottles, the wet slick of vomit by the scuttle-butt. ‘How long have you been standing sentry, Mr King?’

‘Since yesterday afternoon sir. Fourteen hours, sir.’

‘I think you had better go below and get some rest, beneath as many warm blankets as you can muster.’

‘Am I to be c-court-martialled, sir?’

‘No, Mr King, you will not be court-martialled. I must take much of the responsibility for what has happened myself. Now, hurry along. And thank you, Mr King, for your devotion to duty.’

‘Aye aye sir.’

‘Mr Wickham, I want this deck shipshape and clean as a shirtfront within the hour. Mr Sorrell, Mr Usborne, Mr Chaffers, I want everyone who is below standing to attention on deck in five minutes. Any who are insolent or who are too drunk to stand will be thrown in irons in the hold. Mr Stokes, Mr Bennet, you will search every tavern and gin-palace in Plymouth, and you will find and bring back every single one of our people. And then there will be hell to pay.’

As the officers went about their allotted tasks, the last of the civilian members of the party climbed aboard. Jemmy Button gingerly prodded the very edge of the vomit slick with an immaculately buffed toecap.

‘Too much skylark. Far too much skylark,’ he observed.

Fuegia poked a finger into the yellow stew, held it up to her face, and wrinkled her nose in disgust. Augustus Earle grinned.

‘All of you who are not members of the ship’s company have my most sincere apologies,’ announced FitzRoy, his quiet anger condensing into white clouds on the morning air. ‘To say that these events are unacceptable would be the most prodigious understatement. I give you my word that nothing of this like shall happen again for the duration of the voyage.’

Darwin was not listening, but had wandered up the maindeck towards the prow. Indeed, he had paid little heed to anything that had occurred since their departure from the hotel, when a letter had arrived for him in that morning’s post. He had opened it, discreetly, in the boat. It was from his sister, Catherine, announcing Fanny Owen’s betrothal to Robert Biddulph. He unfolded it now and scanned the last page for the third time.

He did not know whether to cry, or break into bitter laughter. His heart felt fit to break in two. He was torn between a desire to abandon the voyage there and then, take the next stage to Shrewsbury and confront the pair in righteous anger; and a mad urge to dash about the deck, slashing ropes and cutting cables, to free the Beagle, to see her dart forward on her way, to see the shores of England recede as quickly as possible. Perhaps he should leave the ship in New Zealand, and take a black savage for a lover, as Earle had done? That would show her - that would show Fanny Owen the disastrous error of her ways. But even as luridly vengeful images of a distraught Fanny flashed into his brain, he knew them for the fantasies they were, and banished them from his imagination. He screwed Catherine’s letter into a tight white ball and tossed it over the side, where it sat upon the indigo surface of Barnet Pool, bobbing and mocking.

 

‘Man the windlass!’

Carpenter May knocked the chocks out from beneath the bars, and the men began the back-breaking work of pulling up the main bower anchor.

‘Heave, lads! Heave ’n’ she must come!’ commanded Boatswain Sorrell.

It was the morning of the twenty-seventh, which, fortunately for all, had dawned bright and gusty, not that the blue skies had taken the edge off FitzRoy’s temper. He had elected to save all punishments until the
Beagle
was out to sea: fear of what was to follow would galvanize the men, he knew, whereas the aftermath of the mass floggings that must result from such an act of near-mutiny would leave many in no state to get the Beagle under way, least of all an exhausted Bos’n Sorrell.

Every man at the windlass was putting in every last drop of effort, desperate to impress, straining to drag the anchor up from its stubborn, slimy resting-place. Slowly, the ship inched towards that part of Barnet Pool where she was hooked, until she lay directly above it; then the chain clanked vertically upwards into the ship, where the anchor was catted and fished, until it was lashed fast to the fo’c’slehead.

‘Up jib.’

The
Beagle’s
masts blossomed white and the stiff easterly breeze filled every sail.

‘Muster all the officers on the poop deck.’

‘Aye aye sir.’

Where the devil was Sulivan? FitzRoy wondered angrily. So hard had his second lieutenant worked, running himself into the ground over the preceding weeks, then combing almost every street in Plymouth the previous day, that he had been given leave to attend a ball with Miss Young on his last night ashore. Sulivan had not been seen since. After the drunken desertions of Boxing Day, it would be just too much if one of his officers had committed the same crime.

Down on the starboard side of the lower deck, in the cramped wooden cot that constituted most of his tiny cabin, a confused Bartholomew Sulivan was woken by the ship’s sudden leap forward as the wind caught her sails. He shouted for the officers’ steward, who put his head round the door.

‘What is the time, if you please, Sutton?’

‘Eight o’clock in the morning, sir.’

‘What? I have missed the ball? I was only to have a short rest! Why did you not call me to gunroom tea yesterday evening as bidden?’

‘I did, sir.’

‘Then, when I did not appear at tea, why in heaven’s name did you not call me again? I was to go ashore and dress thereafter!’

‘You did appear at tea, sir.’

‘What?’

Frantically, Sulivan clambered into his uniform. In the passageway outside, still fumbling with his buttons, he ran into Wickham, heading for the captain’s muster on the poop deck.

‘Wickham, old man. Am I going mad? Did I appear at gunroom tea last evening?’

Wickham laughed heartily. ‘You could say that, dear fellow. In fact, “appeared” is quite the word for it. You appeared at half past seven, in your nightshirt and nightcap, with a large duck gun at your shoulder. You placed the gun in the corner, went to your place at table, drank the tea put before you, then rose, shouldered the gun again and marched off to bed. My dear chap, we thought you plainly overwrought, and we did not wish to awaken the somnambulist.’

‘But - but - Miss Young!’

FitzRoy, gathering his officers about him on the poop deck, was relieved to see the face of Lieutenant Sulivan appear at the top of the companionway; but less impressed when he realized that his second lieutenant was not only unshaven but that the buttons of his uniform were misaligned; and even less so when the officer in question hared past him to the rail, and began screaming at two distant female figures on the Devonport dock, two tiny specks in distinctive turquoise skirts. Was one of them waving? It was near-impossible to tell.

‘Miss Young!’ yelled Sulivan, but his words were blown back past him, for’ard of the ship, in the direction in which the Beagle was headed. Even had their recipient been standing fifty yards astern, it was doubtful that she would have been able to make them out.

‘Mr Sulivan.’ FitzRoy’s icy tones sliced through the sea breeze like a sabre thrust. ‘I suggest that it would be most strongly in your interest to join us forthwith.’

Reluctantly, Sulivan relinquished his place at the rail and said a mental farewell to the tiny turquoise speck.

‘Let me make matters clear in the outset of our departure,’ emphasized FitzRoy. There was steel in his voice. ‘The events of the last twenty-four hours are beyond the pale. We are all of us, officers and men, culpable. There will be no repetition of these events. Furthermore, I put all of you on notice that it is my intention not to lose one crewman, one boat, one mast or even one spar during this voyage. If any man falls overboard - if we even ship a single sea - I shall punish the officer of the watch. Is that clear?’

There were nods all round.

‘No one is to go out of sight of the ship except in company with at least two others. Thereby if one man is hurt, one comrade may stay with him while the third goes for assistance. There are to be no exceptions to this rule. Is that clear?’

Once more the officers gave their assent.

‘Now. All hands will be mustered aft.’

Within five minutes, Boatswain Sorrell had assembled the men to await the reading of the punishment log.

FitzRoy addressed them in a firm, clear voice. ‘Able Seaman William Bruce: disrated to landsman for breaking his leave and drunkenness. Bos’n’s mate Thos Henderson: disrated to able seaman for breaking his leave and drunkenness. Captain of the foretop John Wasterham: disrated to able seaman for breaking his leave and drunkenness. Carpenter’s mate David Russell: a dozen lashes for breaking his leave, drunkenness and disobedience of orders. Elias Davis: a dozen lashes for breaking his leave, drunkenness and insolence . . .’

And so the list went on, seemingly interminably. A forlorn Darwin made his way to the prow, sickened by the roll of the ship and the catalogue of impending violence. As the Beagle nudged past the breakwater and stood out of the harbour, she pitched into short, steep seas, where her roll was quick, deep, and awkward; at least the spray freshened his face and countered his giddiness. After an interval a similarly forlorn Sulivan joined him at the rail, fresh from a severe dressing-down.

‘Good day, Philosopher,’ said Sulivan, in an attempt to be of good cheer. ‘How does it feel to be heading south in one of His Majesty’s bathing machines?’

‘Does he have to flog so many men?’

‘Philosopher, the skipper hates corporal punishment. He abhors it. But the lives of every one of us aboard ship depend upon immediate decisions and instant obedience. If he is decisive now, then with good fortune he will obtain that obedience, and will have no occasion to flog anyone else for the rest of the voyage.’