This Thing Of Darkness (61 page)

The Beagle had gone on to complete the survey of Tierra del Fuego, while the
Adventure
had committed the last bays and headlands of the Falklands to paper. Finally, in late June, the two ships had battled through the western end of the Magellan Strait and stood out into the long swell of the Pacific, every inch of canvas straining. Here was a rugged granite coast pounded by angry seas and howling gales, splintered by the elements into a constellation of islands, the larger peaks stabbing out from the surf like the spires of inundated churches, the smaller shoals a clutter of headstones at their base. A Herculean surveying job lay before the two crews, far greater in scope than anything ever dreamed of in Whitehall. Safe anchorages were hard to come by: if there was space for only one vessel, then FitzRoy made sure, like a hen fussing over its chick, that the
Adventure
won the berth. One inky night the
Beagle
had nearly come to grief: peering into the blackness through driving rain, the lookout man had discerned a wall of rock looming off the starboard beam. Sulivan - who had charge of the middle watch - yelled an order, whereupon the watch scrambled to run the main-tack on board and haul off the main-sheet. The ship sprang forward like an arrow from a bow, the lee-clew of the mainsail scraping hideously along the black cliff face as it did so. A moment’s indecision from any quarter would have been fatal, and once again all on board had reason to bless the rigour of FitzRoy’s training.

Eight hundred miles of broken coastline were mapped and named: Mellersh, Forsyth, Stokes, FitzRoy and Rowlett lent their names to islands, as did the sadly departed
Paz
and
Liebre
. King and Chaffers gave title to a lonely channel each, while Bynoe was awarded a whole cape. Time and again the elements threatened to batter them to destruction. Even though the
Beagle
and the
Adventure
were working no further south than France lies to the north, giant icebergs barged each other aside in their efforts to get at the little ships and crush them to match-wood. Ceaseless rain and relentless waves saw to it that, month in, month out, nothing on the ships was allowed to dry out. The men’s clothes literally rotted on their bodies. Endless applications of salt rubbed their skin red raw. Their lips split and bled. The lack of fresh food in the southern winter took its toll: the purser, Mr Rowlett, lay in the sickbay of the
Beagle
doubled in agony with some unknown stomach complaint; even Stokes, the indefatigable Stokes, lay prostrate in the grip of a chronic chest infection, coughing up blood.

Finally, FitzRoy decided that his crew could stand it no longer, and ran north for Valparayso, praying all the way that the pair would pull through. At Cape Tres Montes, where a jutting peninsula forces the jostling battalion of islands to an abrupt halt, they beat out through relentless gales into the Golfo de Peñas - the aptly named Gulf of Pains - pursued by a derisive, shrieking pack of fulmars, shearwaters and diving petrels. Here they buried Rowlett at sea, sewn with due formality into his hammock, the final stitch through his nostrils, two roundshot at his feet to weigh him down. For Darwin, who had persuaded the amiable purser to advance him so much money during the voyage, the awful and solemn moment when the unforgiving waters covered his friend’s body brought a vague, inexplicable thrill of guilt. FitzRoy’s black despair was more focused, more ferocious in its intensity. He retreated into silent, furious thought. Rowlett, at thirty-eight, had been the oldest man aboard: he had, quite simply, not been strong enough to cope with the demands of the south. Stokes was younger, tougher, fitter, a teeth-gritted fighter. He would make it to Valparayso.

At last, after several hundred miles of impenetrable rain-soaked forest, the heavens cleared - as they always did at these latitudes - and Valparayso Bay opened out before them in the sunshine. The sky was clean and blue, the air was electric-dry, the sun was warm and forgiving: all nature here sparkled with life. The little town lay pillowed against rounded hills of warm red earth. Low, whitewashed houses with terracotta-tiled roofs curved around a crowded harbour embroidered with dainty sails. Higgledy-piggledy cottages, piled one on top of another, tumbled flower-strewn down the gentle slopes. Heady, aromatic vapours raced each other from the shore to be the first to greet the ships. And there, standing in an attitude of stern, avuncular protection behind the harbour’s fringing hills, its sides a shifting palette of soft lilacs and violets in the delicate afternoon haze, was the snow-capped peak of Volcan Aconcagua, the highest point in the Americas.

There were rich English merchants aplenty in Valparayso - one of them, Richard Corfield, an old classmate of Darwin’s from Shrewsbury. There would be parties here, and dinners, and good food, and female company too. The officers could shave their beards. They could dress decently. After the wintry beating they had taken, it felt as if they had suddenly fetched up in Paris or London on a perpetual summer’s day. All, of course, were hungry for news from home. Was Lord Grey still the prime minister? No, he had resigned, but there was no word of a successor. Were the Whigs still in government? Yes, but they were calling themselves the Liberals now. Was the country now covered from end to end by railways? No, not yet, but it was only a matter of time. Darwin, who could not wait to get off the ship and sleep in a real bed once more, gathered his belongings and moved into Corfield’s house. Most of the officers secured little cottages with flower-bedecked gardens where they could rest and recuperate, at least when they were not required to be on duty. FitzRoy, though, refused to leave the Beagle. He would neither abandon Stokes, who was best treated in the sanitized confines of the ship’s sickbay, nor call a halt to the drafting of the Tierra del Fuego charts. Every evening he sat alone in his cabin, working late into the night, completing Stokes’s task of converting their raw, soaking, hard-won observations into crisp, clean, dry maps. Wickham was deputized to attend the customary official functions and to carry out the normal shore duties of a visiting British naval captain. FitzRoy dared not be diverted, dared not slacken at his task, not even for a second. His determination was intense, his concentration furious. The voyage of the
Beagle
must be flawless in every respect.

 

Twelve bloodshot eyes stared in disdainful response, as Darwin waved the packet provocatively back and forth before the weary scarlet eyelids. One of the condors hunched its shoulders with boredom. Another tested a manacled talon against its fetters for the hundredth time that day.

‘Another glass of wine, old man?’ asked Corfield.

‘If you please,’ said Darwin eagerly, feeling light-headed with pleasure after so long without tasting a drop. ‘It is extraordinary. Look! They have absolutely no sense of smell.’

Again he waved the little packet in the air, to the supreme indifference of the assembled condors. Then he unwrapped it, and tossed the meat at the feet of the nearest of the gruesome creatures. Instantly, the whole garden went crazy, as the cackling recipient ripped and tore at his feast with beak and claws, while the other five thrashed violently at their manacles in an effort to steal it from him.

‘You are a marvel, Darwin,’ said Corfield over the din. ‘I shall never forget you standing by the gas-light in our sixth-form bedroom, trying to divert the flame on to some magnesium with that little brass pipe of yours. It is a wonder you didn’t blow up the whole school.’

‘Why do you have condors in your garden, anyway?’

‘Do you have any idea how difficult it is to buy peacocks in these parts?’ joshed Corfield. ‘I bought them for sixpence each from an Indian. Quite a number of landowners hereabouts have them. It is the fashion, I suppose. I wouldn’t go too close - they are deucedly filthy creatures. That’s why they are tethered.’

‘I presumed it was to stop them flying away.’

‘Oh, no, they cannot fly away very easily. They need a cliff and a prevailing wind to take off, especially after a feed. Rather like myself, old man. But they are absolutely riddled with lice. The one on the end is dying - look. All the lice crawl to the outside feathers when the bird is about to die.’

‘Remarkable,’ said Darwin, with genuine fascination.

‘Remarkable, but disgusting. Actually, I think I shall get rid of them. The squawking gets on one’s nerves after a while.’

Corfield’s spacious garden, bisected by a clear rivulet of Andean water, stretched out languorously behind his attractive single-storey mansion in the wealthy suburb of Almendral. All the rooms opened directly on to a central quadrangle, and it was to this courtyard that he and Darwin repaired to escape the screeching and flapping of the merchant’s pets. Corfield was short, balding, florid, dapper and confident.

‘So - for what purpose may you have come to these parts?’

‘My principal aim is to make an expedition into the high Andes. It is my dream to stand on an Andean pinnacle and look down on the plains of Patagonia below. I am a ship’s naturalist now, you know.’

‘You have come to admire the beauties of nature, eh? Well, I should be fain to have accompanied you, were you heading to St Jago. I myself enjoy admiring the beauties of nature, in the form of the rather fine
señoritas
there!’

‘My intention is to prove Lyell correct,’ Darwin pressed on, undaunted. ‘Lyell is a geologist. He believes that geological change is an immensely slow process — ’

Corfield cut him off: ‘The cove who wrote
Principles of Geology
? I have all three volumes on my library shelves.’

‘There is a third volume of Lyell?’ Darwin could barely contain his excitement.

‘Help yourself, old boy.’

‘My God, Corfield. I cannot tell you how pleasant it is to meet with such a straightforward, thorough Englishman in these vile countries.’

Corfield laughed uproariously. ‘Well, my dear man, I am a sufficiently thorough Englishman that I shall desist from accompanying you up the Andes! You are welcome to all those lice-ridden hovels in the mining districts. But if there is any material assistance I can offer in effecting your purpose, then I promise you of my service.’

‘I say, Corfield, there is. Would you mind awfully cashing a bill for a hundred pounds for me? It is on my father’s account. His money is as good as the bank.’

‘I know. My father gets all his financial advice from yours. That would be no problem, old fellow.’

‘This is most awfully generous of you.’

‘Don’t mention it. But I must say, Darwin, the last I heard you were bound for the parsonage! You’re the last person I expected to see pitching up in Valparayso.’

‘Oh, but I am a priest-in-waiting. The little wife and the little parsonage will follow in due course, have no doubt of that.’

But would they? Suddenly, Darwin was suffused with the certain knowledge that he had been putting off the parsonage because he no longer wanted it. He wanted to bestride the Andes. He wanted to uncover the mysteries of the scientific world.
He wanted to make a dfference.
His father would be apoplectic with rage, of course. But then, his father was ten thousand miles away.

 

The supper party in Darwin’s honour convened from nine o’clock in the long hall that spread itself along the southern side of the inner quadrangle. The
estrado
, a low, raised platform that ran the length of the inside wall, was scattered with carpets and velvet cushions for the women to sit upon, cross-legged like Moors. Leather armchairs were brought for the men. The first to arrive was Señora Campos, a tall, elderly, aristocratic Chilean lady with something of the condor in her demeanour. Her eye lit upon Corfield’s atlas, which lay open on the piano, displaying a gaudy map of central Chili over which Darwin had pored enthusiastically that afternoon.

‘
¡
Ah!
Esta es contradança!’
she announced. It is a country dance.
‘¡Qué bonita!’

Corfield whispered low in Darwin’s ear: ‘The standards of education in Chilean society may not be what you are used to, old man.’

Corfield’s mulatto servants - or were they slaves? Darwin could not be sure - brought a huge gourd of
maté
on a silver salver, with sugar and orange juice mixed in, and a silver tube for sucking up the brew.

‘It is considered rank bad manners to wipe the drinking tube after a lady has sucked it,’ whispered Corfield, as Señora Campos lifted the tube to her parched lips.

Gradually, the other guests assembled: Major Sutcliffe, Mr Kennedy and Robert Alison, all merchants; Renous, a German trader; Señor Remedios, an elderly Chilean lawyer; and three young local
señoritas
who, it appeared to Darwin, had designs to become the
señora
of Corfield’s household. Like the women of Buenos Ayres or Monte Video, they wore slender, figure-hugging garments, arranged nonchalantly to reveal their white silk stockings and pretty little feet. To his embarrassment, he could clearly see the embroidered garter visible beneath one girl’s diaphanous petticoat. And, of course, the inevitable silk veils swirled up from their waists and over the backs of their extravagant hair-combs, before tumbling down over their faces, leaving one black, brilliant, inviting eye uncovered in each case. They took an unnecessarily long and lascivious time sucking at the drinking-tube. This was, he reflected, only an approximation to civilization.

‘How wonderfully strange,’ said Señora Campos over dinner, ‘that I should have lived to dine in the same room with Englishmen. As a girl, I remember that at the mere cry of
“Los Ingleses”,
every soul, carrying what valuables they could, took to the mountains.’