This Thing Of Darkness (50 page)

‘Oh, I cannot defend myself - certain people have been very kind in writing to me, and I have been shamefully remiss in failing to reply. But this Service is too important to allow myself to become distracted by correspondence. And I do not like to think of the men in the packet ships, risking their lives to deliver anything but the most vital consignments - your geological samples, for instance.’

Darwin wore a guilty look.

‘My dear Darwin, forgive me. I do not mean to upbraid you. Mine is an idiosyncratic view, not shared by many. Letters from home are essential, of course, for maintaining the morale of those on board. In my case, it is also true that - as I have told you - I regard the Beagle as my home.’

‘A home without women.’

‘That is a sacrifice that all of us in the Service must make. But, pray, tell me where your thoughts lead you in this matter.’

‘Well, I have made a list’ — Darwin produced a crumpled piece of paper from his pocket - ‘detailing the arguments in favour of and against marriage.’

‘I am keen to hear them.’

‘Well, marriage would of course bring with it the demons of fatness, idleness, anxiety, responsibility, perhaps even quarrels. I should lose the freedom to go where I like, and the conversation of clever men at clubs. I should be forced to visit relatives, to bend in every trifle, and to have the expense and anxiety of children. There would be less money for books. There would be a terrible loss of time — how should I manage my business if I were obliged to go walking with my wife every day? I never should know French, or see the Continent, or go to America, or go up in a balloon. I should be a poor slave, FitzRoy, worse than a negro.’

‘It sounds as if your mind is made up. Bachelorhood beckons!’

‘But wait! One cannot live a solitary life, friendless, childless and cold, with groggy old age staring back into one’s wrinkly face from the looking-glass! There is many a happy slave, after all.’ He gave FitzRoy a sidelong look, and both men smiled at the memory of their quarrel. ‘A clever wife would be quite ghastly and tiresome. Romance, of course, palls after a while. No, I have decided upon a nice, soft, quiet wife who can play the piano in the evenings. Certainly, such a wife would be better than a dog.’

FitzRoy succeeded - just - in suppressing the desire to burst out laughing. He composed his features into their most solemn look. ‘My dear Philos. If you indulge in such visions as nice little wives by the fireside of your country parsonage, then you shall certainly make a bolt from the
Beagle.
I fear you must remain contented with Megatheriums and icebergs, and not surrender yourself to these animal desires.’

Darwin looked searchingly at FitzRoy, wondering for a moment if he was being teased, but his friend remained convincingly po-faced. ‘Well, I shall have plenty of opportunity to make my mind up, seeing that I am more than nine thousand miles from home.’

‘Ah, my friend, then you have an advantage over me. For I am barely ninety miles from my home, which means I have precious little time to worry about who shall play the piano to me in the evenings.’

The smile that FitzRoy had been fighting to keep hidden finally crept out, and lit up his face.

 

The sun continued to shine, remarkably, for several days more, so it was with pink and blistered faces that they made their next discovery: that the Beagle Channel split into two arms, each ravine as deep as its fellow. In either direction, countless snowcapped peaks, four thousand feet in height, plunged directly into the water to continue their descent almost the same distance below the surface. Each arm was so straight that, in the far distance, the water disappeared over the horizon between its framing mountain walls. They sailed up the northern arm, where a pod of hourglass dolphins took it upon themselves to entertain them, leaping and gambolling before the whaleboats’ bows.

To the north, the range of mountains soared to a single immense peak, rising sheer out of the water to almost seven thousand feet, which was studded with gigantic glaciers laced with tints of sky-blue and sea-green. At first they thought it must be Mount Sarmiento, but they were too far to the south-east. It was, they realized, an even bigger mountain, almost certainly the highest in Tierra del Fuego. FitzRoy named it Mount Darwin, foremost peak of the Darwin range, in honour of his friend. At the end of the northern arm they came to a large sound, bleak, desolate and deserted, which connected with the southern arm. They were, FitzRoy calculated, in the further reaches of Cook Bay, which opened out into the Pacific not far from York Minster. He gave the flat sheen of water the title of Darwin Sound, ‘after my dear messmate, who so willingly encountered the discomfort and risk of a long cruise in a small loaded boat’.

They headed back by the southern arm, to the indignant fury of various kelp geese, steamer ducks and magellanic oyster-catchers. FitzRoy and Darwin even hauled one of the giant kelp strands out of the water on to a shingle strand, to see how far the plant’s tendrils delved beneath the surface. The kelp was nearly four hundred feet long, and teemed with life: thickly encrusted corallines, molluscs, fish, cuttlefish, sea-eggs, starfish and, hiding in the monstrous entangled roots, a battalion of crabs of every size and variety. An excellent supper of kelp and baked crab followed.

As they approached the divide in the channel once more, they saw flashes of colour in the distance: a daub of pink here, a dash of scarlet there. FitzRoy reached for the spyglass. It was a small flotilla of native canoes. Even distorted by the spyglass lens, what he saw turned his stomach to ice. One man wore a beaver hat. Another had an earthenware chamber pot on his head. A laughing child brandished a soup ladle and a piece of tartan rug. The flashes of colour were strips of cloth, tied about wrists and foreheads, cloth which FitzRoy immediately recognized as having belonged to Jemmy’s suits.

‘Dear God,’ he said, and passed across the spyglass.

‘Savages,’ growled Darwin. ‘Damned
savages.’

‘Shall we apprehend them, sir?’ asked Bynoe.

‘There is no point. Let us make all speed to Woollya. We have no other recourse. Oars and sails. Row as if your lives depended on it!’

As they shot past the little flotilla, a Fuegian pulled a face at them, and mockingly waved an elephant’s foot umbrella stand above his head.

 

As the two whaleboats determinedly rounded the headland into Woollya Cove, every gun bristling, upwards of a hundred Fuegian natives scattered simultaneously, like a shoal of fish surprised by approaching sharks. Two removed their feet from a round pink object as they fled, which revealed itself to be the foetal, naked person of Mr Matthews. Thus released, the missionary leaped to his feet and ran screaming towards the boats, all pretence at passivity gone, yelling the Lord’s Prayer at the top of his voice. ‘Our Father! Our Father who art in heaven! Hallowed be thy name, O Jesus Christ, oh hallowed be thy
name
!’

Matthews splashed frantically into the shallows, oblivious to the icy cold, and leaped into the burly red-coated arms of Marine Burgess, bringing him down in a tangled, soaking heap. So hysterical was the missionary that he refused to release his protector; Bynoe and Hamond had to disconnect his desperate bear-hug limb by paralysed limb before they could haul him into their boat. The other marines moved to secure the now empty beach.

‘Matthews! Are you all right! What were they doing to you?’

‘Yes! Yes! I think so! Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed, hallowed,
hallowed
be thy name!’

‘Matthews!’ FitzRoy grabbed a freezing ear in each hand. ‘What were they doing to you?’

‘They were shaving me.’

‘Shaving
you?’

‘They put their feet on my head, and plucked the hairs from my upper lip one by one with mussel shells! The savages! By God, FitzRoy, it hurt like the devil!’

‘Where are your clothes, man?’

‘They took them! They took everything! They took them and tore them into strips and distributed them among the other savages!’

‘Where is Jemmy? Is Jemmy all right?’

‘I think so. They took everything of his, all his clothes too.’

‘And York and Fuegia?’

‘Oh, York is
fine
. York is just
fine
.’

There was no time to find out what this last remark meant. The sailors fanned out to search the property. They found Jemmy, crouched, naked and mud-stained, in the trampled remains of the vegetable garden, his hands covering his genitals in shame. His bare feet were sore and bleeding, unprotected by the hard calluses that soled the other Fuegians’ feet. Anger, misery and embarrassment curdled as one on his features.

‘Jemmy, are you all right?’

‘My people,’ he spat bitterly, ‘are fools. Damned
fools.’

‘They took everything?’

‘Everything.
They are all bad men, they no
sabe
nothing, nothing at all. They are all very great damned fools.’

‘Did your family not try to help you? Your friends? Your brothers?’

‘My brothers steal most things of all! What fashion do you call that? My
brotbers
!’

‘What about York? Did he not try to protect you?’

‘You ask York,’ said Jemmy savagely. ‘You ask York why he no help me.’

As if on cue, York Minster opened the door of his cottage and strolled nonchalantly out. Unlike the homes of Matthews and Jemmy, which had been gutted of their contents, their doors left hanging limply from their hinges, a glimpse over York’s shoulder revealed a picture of domestic contentment. A smiling Fuegia Basket - or was it Fuegia Minster now? — sat in a rocking chair by the hearth, swaying gently back and forth, her stockinged feet stretched out on a woollen rug, a rag doll cradled in her arms. Improving religious prints decorated the walls. A half-eaten pot of marmalade sat on an occasional table. Clearly, York and his belongings had survived the return of the natives utterly unscathed.

‘York?’ said FitzRoy, in disbelief. ‘They took none of your property?’

The big Fuegian said nothing, but merely glanced back inside the hut, as if to say
‘Is that not self-evident?’

‘Why did you not help Jemmy and Mr Matthews?’

York smiled one of his cruel, wolfish smiles. ‘They are many men. York is only one man.’ And he strolled back inside and took his place at the hearth alongside Fuegia.

‘Jemmy is
rude,’
confided Fuegia to FitzRoy through the doorway. ‘Jemmy has
no clothes
!’ she giggled.

When Matthews had calmed down sufficiently, he was able to tell his story.

‘For the first few days after you left, there was quiet. Then, on the third day, the savages came back. They sat there, like a pack of hounds waiting to be unleashed. The next morning at sunrise they all began to howl - a sort of lamentation. Then that old scoundrel made a great parade of threatening me with a rock. I had to give them presents - clothing, crockery and food. Then they made the most hideous faces at me, and held me down and tore off my clothes and pulled out some of my hair. They did the same to Jemmy — Tommy Button burst out crying to see it, then they shouted at him and he joined in! They destroyed the garden - Jemmy tried to tell them what it was for, but they destroyed it anyway. Of course that filthy swine York did nothing to help. Didn’t lift a finger. They didn’t dare touch
him
, oh no. And everything they stole, they distributed equally between all the savages. Everyone got a share.’

‘How primitive,’ said Darwin.

‘Ah, but they did not find the really valuable things they wanted! They did not find the secret cellar with the tools, or the compartment in the roof. The stupid, filthy, godless
savages
.’

‘I presume,’ said FitzRoy gently, ‘that you would prefer to leave off this place, and take up your berth on the
Beagle
once more.’

‘Captain FitzRoy,’ gasped Matthews, ‘wild horses could not persuade me to remain for one second further in these detestable latitudes. I cannot return home - the disgrace would be too great. My brother is a missionary in New Zealand. I shall make my way there.’

This was a very different Matthews, naked in his candour, from the young man who had been so ready to clothe himself with truisms and platitudes.

Once the excitement of the rescue had subsided, it was a subdued FitzRoy who took stock of the situation. The prospects for the little settlement, he realized, were bleak indeed. The seeds of civilization had been sown, but it was too late in the season for them to come to maturity. Jemmy, at least, was determined to continue, determined to make something of the Woollya mission. Like Matthews, the attack by the locals seemed to have wrought a change in him, but change of a more positive kind: a kernel of resistance had been exposed, once the soft outer layers had been peeled away. FitzRoy did all that he could to help: Jemmy was clothed once more, the whereabouts of the mission tools were revealed to all three Fuegians - each of whom was sworn to secrecy - and it was impressed upon York, in no uncertain terms, that the three must stick together through all their tribulations. That, said FitzRoy, was the civilized, Christian way. He would visit them again, he promised, in a year’s time, when the surveying expedition left Tierra del Fuego for the last time, on its way home to England.

‘I do hope,’ said FitzRoy to Darwin, ‘that our motives in taking them to England will become understood and appreciated among their fellow natives over the coming year so that our next visit might find them more favourably disposed towards us.’ It was, he knew, a near-forlorn hope. ‘After all, our three Fuegians possess the sense to see the vast superiority of civilized over uncivilized habits.’

‘Indeed so,’ said Darwin with a tinge of regret. ‘Yet I am afraid that it is to the latter they must return.’
Their visit to our country has been of no use to them
, he thought.
No use whatsoever.