‘What’s the stratigraphic diagnosis, Philos?’ said Sulivan goodhumouredly. ‘Tell us all.’
Darwin stared, transfixed, into the monstrous eye-sockets.
‘I do believe it is a Megatherium,’ he offered finally. ‘If so, it would be only the second to be discovered. The first was found at Buenos Ayres in 1798, and resides in the King’s Collection at Madrid - where, for all purposes of science, it is as much hidden as if still in its primeval rock. This is an incredible discovery!’
‘How long has it been buried here, Philos?’
‘Well, this earth is a conglomerate of quartz and jasper pebbles, which means it is comparatively new in geological terms. And these broken shells must also be of recent origin — all these creatures are extant today. This creature cannot be more than a few thousand years old.’
He indicated a small section of shoulder-plate that had been exposed by Sulivan’s pickaxe, below the jaw-bone.
‘Do you see how its bones have been buried in alignment? That suggests its remains were fresh and still united by their ligaments when they were deposited in the silt. This creature appears to have drowned.’
‘Yet it is fifteen feet above the high-water mark,’ FitzRoy pointed out, his heart thumping at the implication.
‘Bless me, Philos,’ said Sulivan excitedly, ‘these could be the remains of an animal wiped out in the great flood itself. An animal too large to fit into the ark.’
FitzRoy observed that Darwin chose not to reply. Instead, the philosopher began to scratch at the exposed bank, where a number of jet-black plates, septagonal in shape and osseous in nature, protruded like bad teeth between the jumble of white shells.
‘What are they, Philos? Are they part of its carapace?’
‘I would say these were typical of the plates on an armadillo’s back. Except they are enormous. To sport such a coat, an armadillo would have to be the size of a carriage - perhaps eight feet high and ten feet long.’
‘A giant armadillo!’ Midshipman King conjured up a thrilling mental image of the creature rampaging down Piccadilly.
“‘The end of all flesh is come before me,”’ murmured Sulivan.
‘Let us not waste any more time in chatter,’ said FitzRoy. ‘It will take all afternoon to dig this fellow from his grave.’
So they set to the cliff with a will, the soft conglomerate rock crumbling before their onslaught, and gradually the head of the Megatherium emerged. Each took a turn at making bolder progress with the pickaxe, while Darwin took charge of the more delicate excavations and made notes with his bramah pen. Their task was almost complete when a shout from below alerted them to the presence of two schooners running into the bay. At least, FitzRoy could not find a better description than ‘schooner’: the two vessels were tiny, no bigger than the Beagle’s whaleboats, but each was possessed of twin masts and a covered deck. The lead schooner appeared to be crewed by a single sailor of quite enormous bulk, who clung to the mast shouting and waving, the little craft lurching from side to side so violently beneath him that it seemed he must upset her. The overall effect was that of a hugely overloaded bobbin, its spindle swaying fit to break.
‘He’s calling to us,’ said Sulivan.
Despite its ungainliness, the little schooner and its fellow-craft were being expertly piloted, sidestepping the muddy shoals and darting through the watery channels towards the beach at great speed.
‘The Bill is passed!’ bawled the man.
‘What’s that?’
‘Are you Englishmen, sir? I said, the Bill is passed!’
A shudder of excitement ran through the little group. The Reform Bill had passed through Parliament at last!
‘Mr James Harris, sir, and this is Mr Roberts.’ Florid with exertion, the fat sailor squelched into the shallows, crushing a dozen small crabs in the process. His face wore a just-boiled look.
‘Commander Robert FitzRoy, captain of His Majesty’s surveying-brig Beagle,’ responded FitzRoy, stepping forward. He threw manners out of the window. ‘Does His Majesty still reign or is there a republic?’
‘I know not, sir. We spoke to a mail packet bound for San Francisco. All I know, sir, is that every man of property shall have the vote. The Bill is passed!’
Every man stood thrilled, transfixed, but fearful, too, that there might no longer be an England to go back to.
‘You are sealers?’ FitzRoy’s practised eye took in the two vessels at a glance, both of them smeared with a filthy black cocktail of rancid seal and sea-elephant-oil. Harris and Roberts themselves were no less well greased.
‘That we are, sir. I constructed them myself.’ Harris gestured towards the boats, perspiring proudly. ‘The Paz displaces fifteen tons, and the Liebre nine. I converted her from a frigate’s barge.’ Roberts’s craft was little bigger than a coffin. ‘As you will have seen, sir, the channels hereabouts are too shallow to risk a brig at low tide, or a barque. But at high tide an open boat like your own runs the risk of being swamped. The tide races are strong and the seas are uncommon heavy. These vessels present the ideal solution. The decks keep out the waves. If they go aground, one simply steps overboard and heaves them afloat. And one’s own bodyweight answers admirably in trimming such craft.’
Yours especially, thought FitzRoy uncharitably. ‘There are many such bays further down the coast?’ he enquired.
‘A hundred miles of them, sir, and each a maze of muddy creeks. But I am tolerably acquainted with them all.’
FitzRoy’s mind raced, and a plan began to formulate therein.
The two sealers had come ashore to visit the fort at Argentina, the last permanent military encampment on the coast, in search of supplies. In view of Harris’s advice regarding the incoming tide, FitzRoy instructed the shore party to pull the boats on to the shore and bivouac for the night, and went ahead with Harris and Darwin to the lonely outpost. A few miles’ brisk walk across a level greensward, cropped short by semi-wild horses and cattle, brought them to La Fortaleza Protectora Argentina, a squat polygonal fortress some three hundred yards across, boasting thick mud walls and a defensive ditch. The walls were pitted and scarred, their wounds a vivid testimony to the number and intensity of recent Indian attacks.
An assemblage of creaking pulleys raised the main gate at their approach, and a reception party issued forth to greet them. At their head was an immensely tall half-caste mounted on a lean horse; dark of visage, his combination of army uniform and Indian dress was as confused as his lineage. Behind him rode several gauchos, wild, unshaven and desperate-looking, each man liberally adorned with knife-cuts; yet they were as gaily dressed as if in the service of an Eastern potentate. Gleaming white leather boots with shiny spurs jutted up from hand-carved wooden stirrups; voluminous scarlet drawers billowed over their boot-tops; and above those, the whole was enveloped by the swirl of their brightly striped ponchos. Bringing up the rear was a far less impressive straggle of uniformed foot-soldiers, sad-eyed white boys taken against their will from the suburbs of Buenos Ayres. The leader of this curious platoon spoke, in slow, deliberate Spanish. ‘¿ Viernes de Buenos Ayres con provisiones?’ Do you come from Buenos Ayres with supplies?
‘I am a seal-man,’ replied Harris in fluent Spanish. ‘I have come to Argentina to purchase supplies.’
‘There are no supplies here. Buenos Ayres has forgotten us.’ The tall horseman spat derisively upon the ground.
‘There must be beef,’ objected Harris.
‘There is always beef. But who are these men? They are not seal-men.’ He indicated FitzRoy and Darwin.
‘They have come by ship from England.’
‘I am Commander FitzRoy of His Majesty’s Ship Beagle.’ FitzRoy spoke for himself, equally fluently, while Darwin, who was still learning the language, struggled to keep up. ‘I represent King William of Great Britain.’
‘I do not know of such a place. You must report to the commandant.’
The three allowed themselves to be led through the fortress gate to the far side of a
n outer courtyard where raucous children played. A group of naked and frightened Indian prisoners crouched shackled together, gnawing at the carcass of a roasted horse.
‘What will happen to those men?’ enquired Darwin of Harris.
‘They will be sent north to be interrogated. Then they will be shot.’
‘They will be shot? In cold blood?’
‘You should see what the Indians do to white prisoners. Shooting is a mercy by comparison.’
The party was escorted to a simple room where pieces of rough wooden furniture stood upon a floor of beaten earth, and squares cut into the walls served as windows. There they were instructed to wait for the commandant. Two enormous pewter plates of beef were brought, one roasted, the other boiled, and an earthenware jug was filled from a water-butt in the corner. No cutlery or drinking-vessels were provided. Presently the tall horseman returned, fetched back by his curiosity.
‘Your country,’ he enquired. ‘It is to the north?’
FitzRoy assented.
‘Is it warmer or colder than here?’
‘Great Britain is colder than here in the summer, but warmer in the winter.’
‘I have heard of Mendoza, and the United Provinces, and of Roma where the Holy Father lives. But I have never heard of this country you speak of.’
‘I have heard tell of Great Britain.’
The voice came from behind them: although weary in tone, its rich texture evoked the wisdom of years. All turned to see the comandante framed in the doorway. He was a lean, erect, narrow-shouldered man, somewhat lost in a bleached and frayed major’s uniform, his sun-gnarled face divided by a sagging grey moustache. In any other army, in any other part of the world, he would surely have been pensioned off many years previously. Clearly normal rules did not apply out here at the frontier, here in his personal domain.
‘Great Britain is a city in the country of London, which is connected by land to the United States of America. Am I right?’ The major sat down stiffly opposite FitzRoy, Darwin and Harris.
‘That is approximately correct,’ answered FitzRoy, diplomatically.
‘Please. Eat.’ He gestured to the two vast mounds of beef.
‘Will you excuse me?’ Darwin, whose fingers were still caked with the blue clay of the Punta Alta shore, poured water from the jug on to his hands and rubbed them vigorously. For good measure he splashed some on his cheeks, still flecked with mud from his geological exertions.
‘You are a Mahometan?’ asked the major.
‘No.’ Darwin looked puzzled.
‘Then why do you wash? I have heard that only Mahometans wash themselves.’
‘I am a Christian. In our country it is common for Christians to wash.’
‘You are a follower of the one true Catholic faith? You have confessed your sins?’
‘No ... I am not a Catholic, but I am a Christian.’
‘If you are not a Catholic, you cannot be a Christian. You must be a Mahometan. It matters not. If you have a God, then you will be safe under my roof. You are sailors?’
‘I am a sailor,’ clarified FitzRoy. ‘My friend Mr Darwin is a naturalist.’
The comandante looked puzzled. The term naturalista evidently fell outside the scope of his knowledge.
‘A naturalist is a man who knows everything,’ explained Harris helpfully through a mouthful of beef.
‘You know everything?’ The major raised an eyebrow.
‘No, no. I should say I wish to learn everything about your country.’
‘You are not a spy?’ The old man’s eyes narrowed.
‘I wish only to learn of the animals and birds and plants and rocks. Today we have made a most wonderful discovery - a great head. The head of a mammal — a dead animal — many thousands of years old. It is as wide as a man is tall. On the beach at Punta Alta. It is a great rarity.’
‘A big dragon-head.’ Realization dawned upon the old major. ‘The children like to play games with them. They knock out the teeth with stones. It is a good game.’
Darwin was momentarily nonplussed. The comandante gestured to the side door of the room. Darwin half rose from his stool, and craned his neck to see into the courtyard outside. There, grinning toothlessly back at him, was a Megatherium head identical - other than dentally - to the one they had spent all day excavating at the beach.
‘I will sell you three for a paper dollar, if you wish,’ said the major.
When the constraints of time eventually forced FitzRoy and his officers to abandon excavations at Punta Alta, the exposed cliff had yielded two further Megatherii, a Megalonyx measuring seventy-two feet from snout to tail, an icthyosaurus longer than the Beagle herself, an ant-eater the size of a rhinoceros, a twenty-foot armadillo, an extinct variety of horse and an aquatic rodent the size of an elephant. The ship’s once-pristine deck was thick with giant bones caked in blue clay.
‘Damned seal and whalebones!’ Mr Wickham shouted in exasperation. ‘Philos, you bring more dirt on board than any ten men!’
FitzRoy decided to run the Beagle back to Buenos Ayres to see if the specimens could be dispatched home by an English merchant there. Over a supper of water-hog shot by Bynoe, he and Darwin debated the implications of their haul.
‘The approach of a general calamity - the rising waters - would have affected the animals’ instinct for self-preservation,’ hazarded FitzRoy. ‘They would have been drawn to the ark. Then, as the creatures approached, might it not have been easy to admit some, perhaps the young and the small, while the old and the large were excluded?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Darwin unhappily. ‘The stated dimensions of the ark are but three hundred cubits by fifty cubits. How could all creation be herded into one vessel? Would the beasts not simply have destroyed one another? The story has always vexed me.’
‘Master Charles,’ admonished FitzRoy gently, ‘does not the exclusion of these monstrous creatures answer your question? Where are they now? Drowned, of course, in the deluge.’
‘Where, then, are the human fossils? If all humanity was wiped out at the same time, should not there be human bones entombed with those of the Megatherium, or the other great beasts that have been found across the globe? Perhaps these vast creatures walked the earth at a different date, an earlier date.’
‘A different date? My dear fellow, I need hardly tell you of all people that the scriptures allow no room for debate on the issue. Genesis two, nineteen: “And out of the ground the Lord God formed every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air, and brought them unto Adam to see what he would call them.”’
‘Come, come, my dear FitzRoy, you know as well as I that the scriptures are contradictory. In Genesis one, twenty-four, the Lord brings forth all living creatures before He maketh man on the sixth day, having already created fish and fowl on the fifth day. What if, as de Luc contends, these “days” were not days as we know them but great ages, epochs lasting many thousands of years? What if man never encountered these monstrous beasts?’
‘But, my dear Philos, you heard the comandante. A “dragon-head”, he called it. What, pray, are dragons, wyverns, griffins and so forth, if not the memory of huge mammals and reptiles handed down by tradition? What were the leviathan and the behemoth if not the megalosaurus and the iguanodon? Human folk-history contains innumerable mentions of such beasts. As to the human fossils, de Luc also contends that, in many places, earth and sea have changed places over the centuries. Perhaps human fossils await discovery at the bottom of our great oceans.’
‘But what if early man derived their dragon-tales from the discovery of great skeletons such as we have found? What if, far from actually encountering such beasts, they merely wove them into their myths and stories? Answer me this: if there was indeed an ark, why are the animals of the New World entirely separate from those of the Old? Why are the armadillo and the ant-eater confined entirely to South America, and the elephant and the rhinoceros restricted to the rest of the globe? If all creatures issued from the one ark, w
ould they not follow each other to all corners? But no! All creation is divided into geographical groups. And what fossils do we find in South America? Giant armadillos. Giant anteaters. The monstrous relatives of the modern animal population. Just as fossil elephants and rhinoceros are only to be found in Africa and Asia.’
‘Great heavens, Philos, one would hardly believe you a parson-in-waiting. Let me bring you over. Did not Noah’s sons Shem, Ham and Japheth go forth separately and beget the different races in the different parts of the world? Would it be beyond the good Lord to spread the animals of the ark over the lands newly laid dry according to their origin? Would He not logically return the armadillo to the lands whence it came, and the same for the rhinoceros? Besides, your argument is disproved by our friend the horse. The Spaniards introduced the horse to the New World. When they arrived, the horse was unknown to the native population. It has since thrived. Yet what did we discover at Punta Alta? A fossil horse. This is perfect horse-country, yet every horse that once inhabited these lands was wiped out at some point in history Only a mighty deluge could have done such a thing. Which is why, perhaps’ - FitzRoy smiled - ‘the good Lord brought the Spanish here, to restock the horse population.’
‘Please. My dear FitzRoy, I do not doubt the majesty of God’s creation for one instant. But a wooden vessel, stocked with pairs of animals by a six-hundred-year-old man? Noah is said to have been fetched an olive-leaf by a dove when the waters receded. Yet how did a deluge that would flatten and submerge the very mountains themselves fail to uproot or flatten a simple olive tree? It is a most unbelievable tale!’
Irritation began to temper FitzRoy’s affection for his friend. ‘You doubt the Noachian deluge? Have you not seen the diluvial evidence for yourself? There are water-smoothed stones and shell beds on mountainsides, drowned creatures above the high-water mark, unsorted deposits of clay and gravel and huge boulders scattered across the high hills and valleys - why, the very shape of the hills and valleys themselves shouts out to us of the deluge. And what of the evidence of the heathen peoples? Mesopotamian texts speak of the earth being destroyed by a mighty flood. Even the Hindoos know of the deluge. They speak of one man alone, Manu, being spared by God from the destruction of all humankind. Clearly, it is a garbled account of the Biblical flood. With such compelling evidence before you, can you doubt that the creatures at Punta Alta were wiped out by a massive catastrophe — the very catastrophe described in such detail in the Book of Genesis?’