This Thing Of Darkness (73 page)

‘I am very much interested about this. Do tell us more.’

‘You have seen the marine iguanas? The
Amb/yrhynchus cristatus?
They are not strictly iguanas, I should say, but of the genus
Amblyrbyncbus.
Well, they are larger on Albemarle Island. And there is also a land
Amblyrhynchus,
a burrowing animal, terracotta in colour, to be found only on Albemarle, James, Barrington and Indefatigable.’

‘I apprehend that you are something of a naturalist, Mr Lawson.’

Lawson straightened his starched but threadbare waistcoat with a hint of pride. ‘One does one’s best to peg away at the subject, Captain FitzRoy. When one is a Robinson Crusoe, there is little else to occupy one’s time.’

‘The
Beagle
has its own naturalist, in Mr Darwin here.’

Darwin, who had been miles away, reliving the flaming explosion of his gun into Covington’s ear over and over again in his mind, came to with a start. ‘What? I’m sorry ... I do beg your pardon ...’

‘Mr Lawson here was telling us of the varieties by which the wildlife of each island may be distinguished, and of his Robinson Crusoe existence.’

‘Ah, but you will be interested to hear, Mr Darwin, that these islands had their own Robinson Crusoe,’ related Lawson, pressing on to spare his inattentive guest any further embarrassment. ‘His name was Patrick Watkins, an Irishman who was shipwrecked here at the turn of the century. He built a hut, and planted some potatoes he retrieved from his ship, and made a healthy living of it. By the time a vessel arrived to rescue him, he had become a ragged muffin, with wild, matted red hair and a beard down to his knees, and was sufficiently content that he quite refused to leave. He even abducted a Negro from a passing whaler to serve as his Man Friday, but the fellow escaped.’

A chuckle rippled round the table.

‘You say that you are a naturalist, Mr Darwin.’

‘Indeed.’

‘Then you will be aware that the islands are volcanic, and of comparatively recent origin?’

‘One could hardly fail to notice it.’

‘It is my belief that we are not the only Robinson Crusoes here, Mr Darwin. The animal population of these islands finds its echo on the South American mainland. The south-easterlies wash driftwood from the mainland against our shores, as well as bamboo, cane-stalks and palm-nuts. One can see them strewn across the beaches at low tide. I believe that the animals of these islands floated across the Pacific on these natural rafts, and adapted to their surroundings once they had arrived. It is why there are no frogs or toads here.’

‘Of course!’ said Darwin. ‘Because such reptiles cannot abide salt water.’

‘Then the Galapagos are not an original centre of creation, but have been colonized since from other lands,’ said FitzRoy. ‘How fascinating.’

The debate was interrupted by the arrival of Bynoe, on a borrowed horse.

‘Ah, the good doctor,’ said Lawson, gesturing for Bynoe to dismount and take a chair at the feast. ‘How is your patient? Recovering from his most tragic accident, I trust?’

Darwin cast a faintly guilty look in Bynoe’s direction.

The young surgeon looked grave. ‘Covington will live, I am glad to say. He begins to amend. But I do not think he will ever hear again. I am afraid he is become quite deaf.’

 

‘These finches are not the same.’

‘I beg your pardon, sir?’

‘These finches are not the same as those of Charles Island. Nor, for that matter, do they even resemble each other.’

FitzRoy put down his collecting-cage and seated himself on a rock to watch. Bynoe came over and sat alongside.

‘The ones we took on Charles had short beaks, thick at the base like a bullfinch. They were using them to squeeze berries and break seeds. But these birds have fine beaks, like a warbler. Look - that one there is piercing the fibre of the tree, in search of moisture I suppose.’

The two men observed the finches’ miniature endeavours in absorbed silence for a few minutes, before Bynoe spoke: ‘My God, sir, look. That little fellow there is using a twig like a tool. He appears to be trying to extricate something from the crevice in the trunk - an insect, or a grub.’

‘Is it not extraordinary, Mr Bynoe? It is one of those admirable provisions of infinite wisdom by which each created thing is adapted to the place for which it was intended. One single species has been taken by the Lord and modified into a number of different varieties, for a number of different ends.’

Bynoe agreed that it was indeed extraordinary.

The
Beagle
lay anchored off the north-west coast of James Island, her decks groaning following a full victualling with thirty live tortoises, several piglets, and twenty sackfuls of convict-grown pumpkins and potatoes purchased from Mr Lawson for the journey home. The piglets, Lieutenant Wickham had noted with wry amusement, had been fetched aboard two by two. Now, the officers’ collecting party was making a final sweep through the lowland thickets of Buccaneer Cove, just behind the rocky shore: it was to be the last halt of their visit to the islands.

Darwin, feeling debilitated and irritable and curiously bereft without the ministrations of his servant, had marched ahead: he now found himself suddenly at the centre of a clandestine meeting of several rust-red, swishing
-
tailed
Amblyrhynchus.
As the beasts adjourned their furtive business and lumbered away across the black lava, he was struck by the primeval nature of the scene: the reptiles had been first to colonize this virgin land, ahead of the higher mammals who were now driving them to extinction, the same process as had occurred throughout the rest of the earth during an earlier epoch. These land lizards, presumably, had transmuted from the marine lizards that had swum out to the newborn territory, just as the land tortoises would have transmuted from the sea turtles that were still to be seen making their laborious circuits of the islands. What was the creative force behind this explosion of life? Was it all controlled by the good Lord Himself? Or was it out of His hands, a process set in motion at the beginning of time that had been allowed to run riot of its own volition? One conclusion seemed reasonably certain: any species that moved into a new territory was reshaped by its altered environment to an extraordinary degree. Quite how, he did not know. There were clues here, he was sure, to that mystery of mysteries, the first appearance of new beings on the face of the earth; clues that might help to undermine the very stability of species itself. But they felt frustratingly and elusively out of reach. Here was a bare, naked rock that had been clothed for the first time in the not-too-distant past; here should have been everything he needed to crack the mystery. But in the absence of shade, with no escape from the beating sun, his head aching, his boils chafing and his guts rumbling, his brain simply refused to apply itself. He hated these islands, he realized. It was hard to imagine a location so entirely useless to civilized man, or even to the larger mammals.

Bynoe pushed through the leafless brush, mopping the sweat from his brow.

‘Presents for you, Philos. For your collection. I found them in a fissure in the rock.’

Darwin forced himself to remember his manners. ‘That is extremely decent of you, Bynoe. You oblige me.’

The young surgeon held out a boxful of giant tortoise eggs, perfect white spheres some eight inches in diameter. In his other hand he brandished a wooden cage. ‘There are some interesting finches, too, that the skipper thought you should take a look at.’

‘That is very kind ... but I already have a pair.’

Darwin held up his own collecting-cage in which a sooty-coloured male finch and its tobacco-coloured mate twittered with annoyance.

‘I think these are different, Philos. For one thing, the female of this pair is black.’

‘Did you see the nest?’

‘It was roofed, with a clutch of pink-spotted eggs. I have collected a few of those too.’

‘Then it is almost certainly the same species. I dare say the female plumage darkens with age. But please inform the captain that I am most indebted to him for the thought.’

‘I will, Philos, I promise.’

Bynoe moved away again, and Darwin was left to his thoughts once more.

If men and their dogs were now bringing destruction to the tortoise population of the Galapagos, because the huge reptiles were utterly ill-equipped to deal with their new predators, then surely there was no more wonder in the extinction of an entire species than in that of an individual? Was this the explanation for the jumps in the fossil record? Darwin’s mind positively ached with the effort. He felt close, so tantalizingly close, to comprehending the scheme of things - to knowing the Lord’s mind on this most momentous of issues. So close, but still not there.

Razor-sharp spires of rock, jagged like the shards of a broken window, the glens between them hiding quietly from the light of day; luxuriant groves of coconut palms crowding at their base, interspersed with stands of glossy breadfruit trees and cheerful clusters of bananas; below them, a glassy lagoon whispering softly at the sides of its fringing reef; and beyond that, breaker after breaker of dazzling white foam, beating optimistically against sturdy walls of coral, built up across the centuries by the herculean efforts of myriad tiny sea creatures. It was a picture all of them had seen a hundred times in engravings and watercolours, and daubed upon the canvas of their imaginations; but flushed with the brilliant light of the Pacific sky, it took on a welcoming glow to melt the weariest heart.

‘Otaheite,’ intoned FitzRoy reverentially.

‘I apprehend that we are now to call it Tahiti,’ objected Darwin.

‘Indeed we are,’ said FitzRoy, ‘but Cook called it Otaheite by mistake, and I have too much respect for the great man to call it by any other name.’

It had been a glorious crossing, the
Beagle
swept across the Pacific on the warm trade winds, her studding-sails set, eating up the miles at a rate of one hundred and forty a day. The maindeck was thick with tortoises, an array of domes to match St Mark’s Basilica in Venice, all sadly destined for the cooking-pot - save one fortunate individual by the name of Harry, which had been earmarked by Darwin as a domestic pet. Quite how his father would react to the sight of a giant Galapagos tortoise ploughing through his flower-beds was a question he intended to address at a later date.

The depth-sounding was called out as ten fathoms, and with it came the news that the tallow at the end of the leadline was no longer picking up dead coral and sand but impressions of the living reef. FitzRoy gave orders for the yards to be trimmed round, the anchor cables to be ranged and anchor buoy ropes to be made ready. As the
Beagle
swerved impeccably into Matavai Bay, her foretopsail was backed, the rest of the sails were furled, and the anchor was released into the turquoise water. This was the exact spot, he reflected, from which Cook and Banks had observed the transit of Venus in 1769, and the knowledge gave him a thrill of association. Point Venus was one of the key points in Beaufort’s chain of meridian distances around the globe, so FitzRoy, too, had celestial observations to make; after which there remained the research into the formation of coral islands that the hydrographer had asked him to undertake, and the unpleasant business of extracting a fine from the Tahitians at the behest of Commodore Mason. Much as he disliked doing that gentleman’s dirty work, he had sailed so close to the wind in the matter of the
Challenger
that he dared not rock the boat any further.

As the
Beagle
slowed to a stop, natives in canoes carved from hollowed-out trees swarmed into the water, laughing, chattering and calling out to the ship. ‘Hey,
manua
!
Manua
!
’
they shouted, as their little vessels crowded about the
Beagle
, their outriggers clattering against each other and frequently becoming entangled, such was their enthusiasm.

‘It means man-o’-war,’ said Stokes, realizing.
‘Manua
means mano’ -war.’

‘It’s a regular crush!’ said King.

‘I understood the Tahitians to have become a Christian people,’ said Darwin. ‘I cannot say much for their observance of the Sabbath.’

‘My dear Philos, we have crossed the international date line,’ pointed out FitzRoy. ‘Yesterday was Saturday, and today is Monday - one less Sabbath for you to worry about, my friend.’

‘That’s a puzzle and a half,’ said Sulivan. ‘How to observe the Sabbath when there isn’t one. “Verily, thou art a God that hidest thyself ”!’

The Tahitians poured aboard without waiting for an invitation, gleefully brandishing items for sale: fresh fruit, live piglets, sea-shells, and old coins that had once belonged to Cook’s men on the
Endeavour
or Bligh’s crew aboard the
Bounty
. The Tahitian males were broad-shouldered, athletic and muscular; the females were smooth-skinned and seductive, with white or scarlet flowers worn as earrings or pinned into their hair, which they wore with a curious monastic tonsure shorn from the crown. Both sexes were heavily tattooed, wore garlands of coconut leaves about their foreheads, and were quite naked to the waist; a combination that lent them a bacchanalian aspect, as well as contributing to the sailors’ keenness in welcoming the younger women aboard.

‘The shape of their ... heads is most attractive, phrenologically speaking,’ said Darwin, a faint flush of embarrassment colouring his cheeks.

‘Indeed - it would seem to indicate good humour, a tractable disposition, and other civilized characteristics,’ agreed FitzRoy, as scientifically as possible.

‘They are quite ridiculously naked, of course,’ grumbled his friend. ‘Really, they are in want of some becoming costume.’

‘Absolutely,’ said FitzRoy, averting his gaze from the display of flower-bedecked nudity. ‘The absence of any decorous attire imports a certain gracelessness, would you not say? Or are my ideas unduly fastidious?’