The next day, he seized the opportunity of accompanying the mulatto guide back to Rio de Janeiro; they took a different route, heading for the only ferry crossing on the Rio Macaé, riding in silence on account of the language barrier, which Darwin felt was the least of the divides separating them. He collected an insect that was disguised as a stick, a moth that was disguised as a scorpion, and a beetle that was disguised as a poisonous fruit, but his heart was no longer in his work.
When they arrived at the riverbank, a powerful black ferryman stood to attention alongside a rudimentary raft, a punt-pole held aloft by his side in the style of a medieval pikeman.
‘Onde você gostaria de ir, Senhor?’ asked the ferryman.
‘I should like to cross the river,’ explained Darwin.
Both guide and ferryman looked at him, their faces full of incomprehension.
‘Eu não entendo. Onde você gostaria de ir, Senhor?’ the ferryman repeated.
‘I should like to cross the river,’ explained Darwin for the second time, waving his arms in the direction he wished to take. But as he gesticulated, the big ferryman cowered, his pupils widening in fright; the man dropped his hands, shut his eyes, and dipped his head in supplication. He fell to his knees and began to beg for mercy in Portuguese, pleading with the white man not to strike him. Darwin immediately understood what had happened; and he felt only shame and disgust.
FitzRoy dined alone, his plate of rice and peas strangely devoid of flavour in the absence of his friend. A knock briefly and foolishly raised his spirits, but they fell once again when the door opened to reveal McCormick. Despite his ever-rigid bearing, the surgeon’s moustache showed him to be in a state of some agitation. In his left hand, he carried a large wire birdcage, which housed a bright green parrot.
‘Excuse me, sir, but I must speak with you.’
‘I am at dinner, Mr McCormick. This is most incommoding - can it not wait until we are under way?’
‘I am afraid not, sir. It is uncommon urgent.’
‘So urgent that you have to bring your parrot with you.’
‘I have purchased the parrot this very morning, sir - at a most Jewish price, as it happens - for reasons of scientific investigation. It belonged formerly to an English merchant seaman, from whom it has gleaned a rudimentary grasp of our language. I intend to make a study of animal intelligence, sir, and to investigate the extent to which such creatures appreciate the import of their words, and the extent to which they merely mimic what has been expressed in their presence.’
‘I am glad to see that you are taking your responsibilities seriously, Mr McCormick. Pray tell me what English words your parrot has yet grasped.’
‘As yet it has but two English expressions, sir. One of them is “Great heavens” -’
‘Great heavens!’ interjected the parrot.
‘- and the other expression, common decency forbids me from repeating, sir.’
‘Go to the devil!’ shouted the parrot.
‘That is the other expression, sir.’
McCormick’s face remained blank, but the ends of his moustache twitched violently.
‘But I must inform you, sir, that it is not regarding the matter of this parrot that I have come to see you.’
‘Indeed.’ FitzRoy transferred a forkful of peas elegantly in the direction of his mouth.
‘No sir. I have come to see you regarding Mr Darwin, sir.’
‘Indeed?’ The peas paused in mid-air. ‘What about Mr Darwin?’
‘I have heard tell, sir, that Mr Darwin’s specimens have been sent to England carriage free, aboard His Majesty’s packet Emulous. Is this true, sir?’
‘It is.’
‘Great heavens!’ observed the parrot.
‘Then I must protest, sir.’
‘About what, Mr McCormick?’
‘Mr Darwin is not responsible for bringing together a natural history collection for the Crown, so it is not proper for the Service to see to the freight of his private specimens. Nor is it proper, sir, for his specimens to litter the deck, or for the ship’s carpenters to make packing cases for their transportation.’
‘What is proper, Mr McCormick, and what is not proper, are matters for me to decide.’
‘I find myself in a false position, sir. Mr Darwin sits at your table, discussing books and whatnot, whereas naval practice dictates that any philosophical debate on board should fall strictly under my jurisdiction as ship’s surgeon. Furthermore, sir, I hear that Mr Darwin intends to retain the right to ownership of his specimens upon their reaching England.’
‘That is so,’ confirmed FitzRoy.
‘Great heavens!’ added the parrot.
‘Have you considered, sir, that Mr Darwin might intend to sell such items of natural history for his own personal profit?’
‘Your suggestion is absurd, Mr McCormick.’ FitzRoy’s voice hardened. ‘I suggest that you withdraw your allegation forthwith.’
‘It is vulgar, sir, to receive money for one’s researches.’
‘I will say it once more, Mr McCormick. I suggest that you withdraw your allegation forthwith.’
‘Great heavens!’
‘I demand, sir, that Mr Darwin be dismissed from the Beagle immediately.’
‘What?’
‘I demand, sir, that Mr Darwin be dismissed from the Beagle immediately.’
‘Go to the devil!’
‘Otherwise, sir, I shall tender my own resignation as ship’s surgeon immediately.’
‘I accept your resignation, Mr McCormick.’
‘What?’
‘Great heavens!’
‘I said, I accept your resignation as ship’s surgeon, Mr McCormick.’
‘Great heavens!’
‘I think I have your gauge, sir,’ said McCormick grimly, through hardened lips, ‘and I shall make it known throughout Whitehall when I return. Rest assured of that!’
‘You do not frighten me, Mr McCormick. Pack your bags and leave the ship immediately. You shall have ten minutes’ warning.’
His face a mask of suppressed fury, McCormick picked up the birdcage and headed for the door.
‘Go to the devil! Go to the devil!’ shouted the parrot merrily at FitzRoy, as its cage disappeared from view.
With a gentle downward pressure, Darwin sliced the head off the firefly. Its lifeless body continued to glow brightly against the gloom of the verandah steps.
‘Yeurch,’ said King.
‘Look! Look at this!’ said Darwin, eager with the excitement of discovery. Augustus Earle put down his fiddle - which in truth was a blessing, as his technique was rudimentary at best - and did as bidden.
‘The glow is continuous in death,’ explained Darwin, ‘which means it is involuntary. So when the firefly winks his light, he is turning it off, not turning it on.’
‘I see,’ said Earle, returning to his fiddle.
The three had taken a cottage four miles south of the city, between Corcovado and the lagoa, on the road out to the botanical gardens. It was, to Darwin’s mind, a veritable Elysium, free from seasickness and slavery. There were graceful coconut palms in front, with heavy clusters of fruit and long, plume-like drooping flowers. Passion vines climbed all over the house, dark crimson flowers concealed seductively between the leaves. He had spent a month making an exhaustive study of the insect life of the neighbourhood, with a pruriently thrilled Midshipman King as his sole audience. Together they had documented the gruesome habits of the hymenop wasp, which paralysed its victim before injecting eggs into the living tissue, there to hatch and feed and grow into fat, wriggling larvae. He found it hard to reconcile such suffering with the love of a merciful God, but then had not Job suffered horribly at the hands of the Lord? He did not, of course, share his theological confusions with his collecting partner.
King, in return, told him tales of the south, of icebergs and crimson seas and giant whales that leaped clean out of the water, tales that sounded too tall to be true. ‘Come, King,’ he woul
d gibe informally, ‘do not come your traveller’s yarns on me,’ and the boy would aver, hotly, that every word was true. He had discovered that he preferred King’s company to that of Earle, whom he found rather intimidating. The artist was old now - he was nearly forty - and troubled by the rheumatism that comes with age, so he would sit barefoot on the verandah, painting or screeching away at his fiddle, while Darwin and King gleefully roamed the neighbourhood with their insect-nets. It felt as if they were on holiday from school.
Their supper guests arrived just before eight, brought by a covered cart with big solid chariot wheels, two spherical slabs of wood like Saxon war-shields. A pair of statuesque mulatto women alighted, attired in layer upon layer of brightly coloured shawls, their hair piled high and twisting into extravagant headdresses. Their lips and cheeks were rouged, their eyes rendered dark and mysterious by lashings of makeup. Darwin had no idea where Earle had procured them, but they resembled - he realized uncomfortably - two ladies of the Haymarket.
‘Mr Darwin, Mr King, may I introduce to your acquaintance Rita and Rosa?’
This is all wrong, thought Darwin. He has introduced us the wrong way round. The man has no sense of propriety.
The introductions over, they went through to the supper-table. The ladies had no English, but seemed content to giggle among themselves. The only communication between the two halves of the supper-party was via Earle’s pidgin Portuguese, a dialect in which the artist proved himself singularly adept at flirting.
The servant brought out bottles of red wine, and plates piled high with feijão beans, carne secca, bread and a strange, sausage-shaped, creamy-coloured fruit.
‘Pray what is this?’ asked Darwin.
‘Banana,’ replied Earle.
‘Oh! I have never eaten a banana before.’
‘Ele nunca havia visto bananas antes,’ remarked Earle to the two women, who giggled voluptuously.
‘May I know the source of the amusement?’ enquired Darwin, reddening.
‘I simply informed them of your virginity vis-à-vis the banana.’
The two women continued to giggle, one concealing her merriment behind a Chinese fan, and Darwin thought that perhaps there was something attractive about them after all. With a glass of wine under his belt, he was prepared to admit to himself that they did not share the normally disagreeable expression of the mulatto. They were not ladies, in the sense that Fanny Owen was a lady, but they definitely possessed a certain charm. He glanced across the table at King as if in search of endorsement, but the normally talkative lad had become utterly tongue-tied since their guests’ arrival. In fact, he had spent most of the evening trying to steal furtive glances at the women’s cleavage, between long periods spent staring fixedly at his plate.
‘Você gosta de bananas?’
‘Rita wishes to know how you like your banana.’
‘I find it rather mawkish and sweet, without too much flavour, I am afraid,’ replied Darwin stiffly; for some unaccountable reason he had begun to feel embarrassed.
‘That is beyond my meagre Portuguese, I fear,’ smiled Earle. ‘I shall tell her yes.’
‘Você gosta do Brasil?’
‘How do you like the Brazils? Rosa wishes to know.’
‘Tell her that hers is a most gloriously attractive nation, but that I most heartily wish it were not disfigured by the curse of slavery.’
Earle attempted a translation, and it was clear from the women’s response that they were in agreement. They crossed themselves and spoke in low tones of something called a matican.
‘The matican,’ explained Earle, ‘is a slave-hunter. He is paid to hunt down slaves who escape and to kill them, be they man, woman or child. And when he has run down his quarry, he slices off the ear as proof of death.’
‘I used to do that with rats for my father, when I was a boy,’ offered King, pleased at last to be able to contribute something to the conversation.
‘Perhaps I will not translate that into Portuguese, Mr King.’
‘Will you excuse me for a moment?’ said Darwin suddenly, rising from his seat as he spoke, his gaze fixed unwaveringly on the window opposite.
‘Is everything all right, Mr Darwin?’ asked Earle.
Darwin did not answer, but shot through the doorway and out on to the verandah, reappearing a moment later on the outside of the window, his nose pressed to the glass. There, in front of his face, a tiny copper-coloured frog clung to the smooth surface, its eyes wide and unmoving, its throat palpitating silently to its own inner rhythm. Darwin reappeared in the doorway. ‘That frog. It has suckers on its feet, so that it may climb a vertical sheet of glass!’
‘Gosh!’ said King, excited.
‘Many of them do,’ said Earle, who had to explain to the confused women that the gentleman was a filosofia da natureza.
Darwin resumed his seat, and the supper-party continued as before, Earle complimenting his guests extravagantly in Portuguese, Darwin offering the occasional politeness, and King unsure where to look. Eventually it grew late, but there was no sign of the two women preparing to leave or of their cart returning. As another burst of merriment erupted from their end of the table, Darwin was seized by an uncomfortable thought.
‘I say, Earle,’ he whispered awkwardly.
‘Yes, Darwin?’ Earle leaned back, his collar undone, his face flushed with drink.
‘I hope it is not your intention that I ... entertain one of these ladies after supper has finished.’
‘Certainly not.’
‘Of course not, of course not,’ said Darwin hurriedly, his voice suffused with relief. ‘I just thought for one moment that . . .’ He tailed off.
Earle fixed him with a pointed look. ‘Both these two are for me. You want company, Darwin, you go fetch your own.’
The Beagle sailed into Rio harbour - now correctly located on the Admiralty chart - in mid-May, ahead of time but low on fresh food and water. They had tried fishing for groupers, but fearless sharks would invariably seize the fish from the lines before they could be reeled in, so seamen Morgan, Jones and Henderson were detailed to take the dinghy (as FitzRoy had decided to rename the jolly-boat) on a snipe-shooting expedition around the islets of the bay. The voyage had left FitzRoy disturbed: they had passed two frigates anchored off Cabo Frio, which had been identified by challenge-and-response as the Lightning and the Algerine, engaged in salvaging bullion from the wreck of the Thetis. How many of his old shipmates had been taken by the sharks, he wondered. Or was such an end preferable to death by drowning, and that terrifying, lung-bursting moment when the victim knows he can hold his breath no longer and must accept his agonizing fate?
A knock at the door interrupted his morbid reverie. It was Seaman Morgan, who had built the coracle, and Volunteer Musters.
‘Permission to speak, sir!’ Musters stood ramrod straight.
‘Yes, what is it, Mr Musters?’
‘Able Seaman Henderson has cut his leg, sir, and will be unable to take part in the snipe-shooting detail. As the best snipe-shooter in the ship, sir, I would like to take his place. Furthermore, sir, as the expedition has no officer in charge, I feel it is only right that I should command the expedition, sir.’ Musters had managed to cram his entire request into a single breath, and now exhaled with relief.
‘Is this true, Morgan?’
‘Henderson has cut his leg, sir, and the lad, I mean Mr Musters, well, he’s a fine shot for his age, sir.’
FitzRoy smiled. ‘Very well, Mr Musters, you may command the snipe-shooting expedition. As long as you remember that you are to do exactly what Seaman Morgan tells you at all times.’
‘Yes sir!’
A beaming Musters retreated, Morgan clutching his cap behind.
The cutter collected Darwin, King and Earle late the next morning, together with a score of boxes, crates and specimen jars.
‘My dear Philos! I see that you have been busy!’ was FitzRoy’s warm greeting to his friend.
‘Indeed I have,
my dear FitzRoy. Professor Grant always stressed the importance of the analytic method, by which one derives one’s conclusions from as many observations as possible. I fear it will not please Mr Wickham, nor our Mr McCormick, who prefers to start with a hypothesis and illustrate it with observations; but then, he is a philosopher of rather an ancient type.’
‘Mr McCormick is gone. Bynoe has taken his place.’
‘Gone? Gone where?’
‘He is “invalided home” once more, on HMS Tyne.’
‘Well, my dear fellow, he is no loss. I must confess that he put me in mind of Mrs Campbell’s performance as Lady Macbeth.’
Both men laughed.
‘Mr McCormick was an empty-headed coxcomb, but I fear the consequences of his departure. I can ill afford the Admiralty’s displeasure on this matter.’
‘My dear FitzRoy, we shall not return to England these next two years, by which time I am sure that all will be forgotten. Now, let us to dinner, for I could eat a horse - or a plate of rice and peas, at any rate.’
‘Rice and peas be hanged. Today, in honour of the philosopher’s return, we shall have fresh snipe!’
The pair squeezed themselves into FitzRoy’s cabin and ate royally, while Darwin told of his discoveries, of Earle’s disgraceful licentious-ness and of the idyllic cottage by the lagoa, upon which he had laid out no less than twenty-two shillings a week.
‘I fear I shall have to write to my father for a further fifty pounds. In the meantime, you couldn’t make it convenient ... ?’
‘Of course. Seek out the purser Mr Rowlett after dinner, and tell him that I have authorized a loan. I fear that by the end of our voyage your poor father will have become a slave to his son’s divertissements.’