This Thing of Darkness

  ‘I beg your pardon, Mr Bennet?’

  The coxswain wore a huge grin of relief. ‘Those aren’t clubs they’re holding, sir, they’re fish. They’ve come to sell us fresh fish!’

  At first light, leaving Kempe in charge of the Beagle, FitzRoy sent Murray east to map the open end of Nassau Bay, and Stokes west to explore the side-channels there. He, Bennet and King, fortified with plenty of fresh-cooked fish, headed north, where the walls of the bay narrowed. Strange, bright green conical structures lined the shore, which proved on closer inspection to be huge mounds of discarded sea shells, turned emerald by mould, and a profusion of wild celery shoots twisting through and around them. Despite the cold, this was the most heavily populated area they had visited: it was dotted with ramshackle, cone-shaped, brush wigwams, which looked like badly tended haycocks. The people seemed even poorer, muddier and more degraded than those to the west, having no sealskins, but their manner — in spite of Boat, York and Fuegia’s terror — was unquestionably friendlier and more tractable. As soon as they saw the cutter they would rush to their canoes to trade fish and shellfish, waving their tiny ragged otterskins to attract attention. They would shout for a ‘cuchilla’, the Spanish for ‘knife’: evidently, at some point in history, a party of Spaniards had passed this way. Miles of stubbly shingle beach fringed this end of the bay, guanaco hoofprints showing in the muddy banks of streams; after a year in the storm-battered depths of Tierra del Fuego, even the knowledge that a herd of guanaco was nearby felt like a friendly harbinger of civilization.

  They sailed the cutter up into the northern arm of the bay, where it narrowed to a twisting channel barely wide enough for two ships to pass. Here, they came across an obstacle: three native canoes in line abreast, blocking their way.

  ‘They don’t wish us to go any further,’ said King.

  ‘They’re trying to protect something,’ said Bennet, realizing.

  ‘Proceed slowly.’

  The cutter pushed forward and, without a sound, the three native canoes parted to let it pass. The morning sun shone brilliantly for the first time in months; the water was glass. The sailors’ breath rose and condensed frostily in their overgrown hair. At a quarter speed, the cutter drifted inch by inch along the final hundred yards of the narrows, to the place where the rock walls opened out once more. There it stopped; some of the men stared to the west, and some stared to the east, but in whichever direction they chose to look, the sight before them took their breath away.

  ‘Well hang me,’ murmured King.

  ‘Great heavens,’ said FitzRoy.

  They were sitting in a channel between the mountains, except that the word ‘channel’ hardly sufficed. This was a ravine, a chasm, an axe-cut running through the heart of the continent, straight as an arrow, for perhaps sixty miles in either direction. It was about a mile or two in width, with snow-capped mountains three or four thousand feet in height ranged on either side, their sunny summits apparently suspended vertically over the deep blue water. Beneath the mantle of white, countless magnificent azure glaciers gushed cascading meltwater from side valleys balanced hundreds of feet in the air. Every arm of the sea in view was also terminated by a tremendous glacier; occasionally a steepling tower of ice would crumble from one of these cliffs into a distant corner of the sound. The far-off crash would reverberate through the lonely channels like the broadside of a man-of-war, or the distant rumble of a volcano. Hundred-foot ice blocks would bob gently through the water, like polar icebergs in miniature, and when the ripples reached the cutter, dazzling light flung itself out from their surface and broke into stars. Along the entire length of the ravine, the tree line ran absolutely level, as if drawn by a child with a ruler. The beech leaves clinging to the cliffs glowed an autumnal red at the base, merging into the customary yellow-green further up, where the cold had retarded the action of the seasons. Not for the first time, FitzRoy wished that an official ship’s artist had been retained aboard the Beagle.

  ‘This is unbelievable, sir. It’s incredible. We have found a channel to rival the Straits of Magellan.’

  ‘Indeed we have, Mr Bennet. If its two ends can be located and are joined to the sea, as they surely must be, then we have found a navigable channel that escapes the necessity of rounding the Horn.’

  ‘What should we call it?’

  ‘The narrows that brought us here will be named after Mr Murray. This channel is too important to be named after any one man. I think we should call it the Beagle Channel.’

  ‘Are we to survey it ourselves, sir?’ asked King.

  ‘It would take a month at least. We are in want of provisions — we have only a few weeks’ aliment left — and we are ordered to reach the Brazils by June. No, this is a task for some future expedition.’

  They sat in silent awe for some twenty minutes further before finally setting to work. They surveyed the immediate locality of the channel and the Murray Narrows, climbed a nearby summit (which they named Mount King) by following the guanaco trails, collected greenstone samples for stratigraphic analysis, and gathered specimens of local barnacles and other shellfish. They camped that night on a narrow shelf of shingle, close-packed and shivering in their makeshift tent.

  On their return through the narrows the next morning, the three silent canoes, each containing its own family, lay strung across the channel exactly as before, like guards of honour to an invisible potentate. A gentle breeze had sprung up, presaging the end of the precious clear spell, so the crew of the cutter tacked back down the narrows, a judicious oar here and there helping to keep them on course.

  ‘Pull alongside that canoe.’

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘We have three of the western tribe aboard the Beagle — the Alikhoolip. We do not have any of the Yamana.’

  ‘We are to take them with us? As specimens?’

  ‘Not as specimens, Mr Bennet. As fellow men, to share in our civilization, that we may form them in the ways of our society. Besides, the die is now cast. We have not the provisions to return to the west, but if we release our three Indian guests here I suspect they will be torn limb from limb. So, yes, we are to take them with us.’

  As bidden, the cutter slid alongside the middle canoe, over which a man in his mid-thirties appeared to preside. His face was crossed laterally by two painted stripes: a red one, running from ear to ear across his upper lip, and a white one that ran above and parallel, linking the eyelids. FitzRoy stood up and gestured to the man, suggesting that he, or one of his family, might like to join him in the cutter. The man grunted suspiciously, but a short, round youth alongside him, plucked by curiosity, stood up and peered at the strangers. A low, clicking conversation ensued, and the boy finally clambered into the cutter alongside the waiting FitzRoy. The older man, who was presumably the boy’s father, held his hands outstretched and essayed a beseeching look, to indicate that he ought to be given something for his trouble. It was an awkward dilemma. FitzRoy had wanted a volunteer; he had not wanted to purchase another human being. But this was not a transaction, he told himself, merely a consideration paid out of respect to an elder of the tribe. He was here to help these people, not exploit them. He rummaged in his pocket and found a solitary mother-of-pearl button, which he tossed, not entirely convinced by his own argument, to the Indian in the canoe.

  The rotund boy alongside him seemed placidly unperturbed by the exchange, but the older Indian gasped as if he had been showered with gold doubloons. He held up the shining button to the sunlight in wonderment and then, gesturing to the rest of his family, indicated to FitzRoy that for another button he might take whomever he wanted. His wife? His daughter?

  ‘All hands to the oars. Let us make for the Beagle.’

  And so the cutter set off back down the channel, tacking to port and then to starboard against the breeze. The Indian’s canoe, presumably mistaking the zigzagging of the cutter for evasive action, clung gently in its wake, striving to follow its movements. The putative salesman stood in the bow throughou
t, now grinning and gesticulating enthusiastically to indicate that his entire family was for sale, if only the Europeans could provide another shiny object; the family in question, meanwhile, paddled calmly but energetically in pursuit of their reluctant purchaser.

  ‘I can’t say I care for this fellow overmuch,’ observed FitzRoy, casting another embarrassed glance over his shoulder.

  The boy alongside him grinned delightedly at the chase, urging the sailors via sign language to redouble their efforts, but it was to be a good hour before they shook off the enthusiastic salesman. In the meantime, FitzRoy endeavoured to distract his new charge’s attention by producing a looking-glass, as much for his own interest as for the boy’s entertainment. The young Indian took it in astonishment, gazing first at his reflection, then over and over again behind the looking-glass in search of his imaginary twin, then even behind himself in confusion. Finally he arrived at the stage of pulling faces, testing his reflection, pushing the Doppelgänger in the glass to extremes in the hope that it could be provoked into nonconformity. Relieved to have so captured the boy’s interest, FitzRoy indicated to him that he could keep the looking-glass for himself.

  In the early afternoon, as the crisp autumnal light began to fail, they arrived back at the Beagle to find a scene of pandemonium. The ship was still at the centre of a flotilla of canoes, packed with Indians eagerly trying to trade fresh fish, shellfish and ragged otterskins. York, Boat and Fuegia appeared to have taken charge of the trading, and were hurtling about the deck collecting worthless scraps - strips of cloth, rusty nails, glass beads and so forth - which they were exchanging for food. They appeared to have overcome their fears of the previous morning, and had adopted the swagger of stallholders at a country fair.

  FitzRoy was first out of the cutter. ‘What is going on here, Mr Kempe?’

  ‘Your savages, sir’ - Kempe was careful to put the stress on the your - ‘are trading with the other savages. Your only orders were that they were not to leave the Beagle. As they are not part of the chain of command, sir, I confined myself to implementing precisely those orders I received from yourself.’

  Boat Memory ran past at this moment, laughing all over his face. ‘Capp’en! Capp‘en! Yamana, foolish man! Yamana, foolish man! Boat give Yamana button! Yamana give Boat fish! Foolish man! Foolish man!’ And he ran off excitedly to find another button, having used up all those on his own jacket. How excited would Boat have been just a few weeks ago, FitzRoy pondered, to exchange a fish for a button? At least they were learning.

  A moment later, Coxswain Bennet escorted the Yamana boy over the rail. The effect was instantaneous. Seized with shock, York, Boat and Fuegia froze to the spot.

  The youth, overcome with fear, began to cry. York strode forward, jabbed a finger at him, and shouted, ‘Yamana! Yamana!’

  The boy quailed in terror, and began to shake with sobs. FitzRoy stepped between them. Boat ran up and jeered at the new arrival over FitzRoy’s shoulder. ‘Yamana! No clothes! No clothes! Yamana foolish man!’

  ‘No clothes! No clothes!’ yelled Fuegia excitedly.

  Unable to understand, the frightened youth blurted a few words back, through his tears.

  ‘What does he say, Boat? What does he say?’

  ‘Boat no understand. Boat no talk Yamana talk.’

  My God. Of course. They do not have one language. Theirs is not one nation. These two do not understand a single word the other says.

  Fuegia ran up and spat in the boy’s face. ‘No clothes! No clothes!’ she screamed.

  Chapter Seven

  Rio de Janeiro, 1 August 1830

  The sun stole down behind the dark, high mountains that threw a protective arm over the city to the west. The sea was quite smooth, but a freshening breeze on the Beagle’s quarter carried her on, at an exhilarating thirteen knots, towards the harbour entrance. Behind, her foaming wake glowed with a pale, sparkling light, and before her bows, two milky billows of liquid phosphorus parted to let her through. Sheet lightning played incessantly on the northern horizon, and sometimes the whole surface of the sea was illuminated. As the daylight faded, the Beagle hauled her wind and stood in the offing for the night. Her sails were clewed up and stored, the anchors were let go, and a light was hoisted to the fore yard-arm, shining like a lone star against the setting sun.

  ‘It’s a beautiful evening, isn’t it, Jemmy?’ said FitzRoy.

  Jemmy Button, as some wag had christened the Yamana boy, glanced up from the looking-glass that had become his constant companion.

  ‘It’s a beautiful evening, isn’t it, Capp’en Fitz’oy? God make stars, God make sun, God make sea. God make Jemmy,’ he grinned.

  Humour and vanity were combined in Jemmy in equal measure. Sporting an ever-present smile, he would pick his way across the deck with a delicacy that belied his pot-bellied proportions, never taking his eyes off his own reflection, but never once tripping over a block or coil of rope. He looked after his new clothes with a fastidiousness bordering on obsession. The months since he had joined the ship had seen his relations with Boat Memory and Fuegia Basket cautiously advance towards the cordial; as for York Minster, Jemmy had established the same warily mute relationship with which everyone but Fuegia had to content themselves. The language barrier separating Jemmy, Boat and Fuegia had forced them to converse in English, which had lent unexpected impetus to their education. Jemmy’s ready tongue and constant grin had made him even more popular with the crew than the little girl was, and FitzRoy sensed that the sailors had become proud of their human cargo. They were making a difference, they felt, helping to bring light to the darkness. The next survey ship that returned the four Indians would be like an arrow fired into the heart of the savage nation, an arrow tipped with the elixir of Christian civilization, which would spread through that country’s bloodstream until all Tierra del Fuego was suffused with the word of God.

  ‘Look, Jemmy! The sun is drowning!’

  The passing sailor who offered this cheery greeting was none other than Elias Davis, who had been so ready to blow Boat Memory’s brains out on the beach not a few months before.

  ‘Gammon!’ replied Jemmy, who relished English slang words. ‘Sun no drowning. Tomorrow morning get up again. Sun go round earth, come again tomorrow. Earth is round.’

  ‘Your people know this, Jemmy?’ enquired FitzRoy. ‘That the earth is round?’

  ‘My people know this, Capp’en Fitz’oy. Climb mountain, you see far. Earth not flat. Earth round.’

  These people are very, very far indeed frona deserving to be called savages, thought FitzRoy.

  ‘Do your people have a God, Jemmy?’

  ‘All people have God, Capp’en Fitz’oy. God love everybody.’

  ‘No, Jemmy. I mean, do your people have their own God?’

  ‘No, no. My people not know God. My people foolish people.’

  ‘Do your people think somebody made them? Who made you, Jemmy?’

  ‘Jemmy’s mother and father make Jemmy.’

  FitzRoy laughed. ‘Who made the mountains, Jemmy? Who makes the weather? Who makes it rain?’

  ‘A big black man in the woods.’

  The voice was not Jemmy’s. Boat Memory had materialized at FitzRoy’s shoulder, slender and earnest, his fine-boned features caught in the glare of the distant lightning sheets. As ever, his expression held a serious aspect, in contrast to the beaming cherub at FitzRoy’s left.

  ‘A big black man in the woods?’

  ‘Yes. My people believe such man makes the rain and the snow. If food is wasted, he becomes angry and makes the storm.’

  Boat Memory’s English had advanced by incredible leaps and bounds since he had come aboard, but FitzRoy continued to be taken unawares by the sheer agility of the Indian’s intelligence. He feared that his own contributions to their conversations were all too frequently mundane and unimaginative by comparison.

  ‘There are no black men in the woods, Boat. You will see black men in London. You will see black men i
n Rio. Many black men.’

  Boat looked longingly at FitzRoy, his eyes two inkwells. ‘I dream to see London, Capp’en Fitz’oy. See St Paul’s. See Wes’minster Abbey. See Temple Bar.’

  Jemmy chipped in: ‘My people say white man from the moon. White man white like moon. When white man take off clothes, wash in river, body white like moon.’

  ‘I’m not from the moon, Jemmy,’ smiled FitzRoy,‘I’m from England.’

  ‘Englan’ not on the moon. Foolish Indians think Englan’ on the moon. This is bosh.’

  ‘My people thought Mr King was English woman,’ revealed Boat Memory. ‘They don’t know he is boy because he has no hair on his face.’

  ‘Because he has no beard,’ said FitzRoy, highly amused.

  ‘Because he has no beard,’ said Boat, savouring the new word, rolling it around his tongue and storing it away for future use.

  ‘Beard look like tree on face,’ giggled Jemmy. ‘Jemmy no like beard.’ And he glanced admiringly into the looking-glass once more.

  FitzRoy caught sight of his own beard momentarily in Jemmy’s glass. He would be shaving it off the next morning before he reported to Admiral Otway. It sat oddly here, a wild intruder on his face, in some ways more redolent of the savage south than the two Fuegian tribesmen leaning against the rail to either side.

  He had written to the Admiralty back in early May, requesting permission to bring the four Fuegians home with him, hoping to secure the guarantee that His Majesty’s Navy would return them to their own country the following year. The Beagle had spoke the packet Caroline off Good Success Bay, bound from Valparayso to Falmouth, and had consigned the letter to her. It was now August, so with luck the Admiralty’s reply would be waiting for him at Rio; although what he was supposed to do if the answer was in the negative was beyond him. There were, in fact, five Fuegians on board, as Wilson had preserved the body of the attacker shot down by Murray in ice below decks; he intended to present it to the Royal College of Surgeons for scientific study. Wilson’s own post mortem had discovered a thick fatty layer of insulation below the skin, closer to that of a seal than a human being. Both Wilson and FitzRoy thought that this subcutaneous layer, and the distinctively top-heavy body structure of the Fuegians, were adaptations, created by the harsh climate and the Indians’ peculiar mode of life; it would be interesting to see whether or not the experts of the Royal College concurred.