‘My dear FitzRoy, I can see that I have angered you. I do not set up for one second to deny that man is created by God to reign over the animals, that the two are utterly separate, that there can be no transmutation between one and the other. As I told you, I have no truck with Lamarck. I meant only that the Fuegians have fallen so far as to adopt some of the ways of the animal kingdom. They seem to exist, for instance, in a state of equality like a herd of cattle; a way of living that can only retard civilization and prevent improvement. And man here is in a lower state of improvement than in any other part of the world.’
FitzRoy did not know whether to make concessions to Darwin’s conciliatory tone or go on the attack; but he was saved from the need to decide by a knock at the door.
It was Sulivan. ‘I’m afraid it begins to look pretty filthy to westward, sir. The barometer is falling. I think you had better come on deck.’
FitzRoy rose. ‘Well, Philos. It seems you spoke too soon about the famous Horn.’
What had begun as an ominous line of inky clouds on the western horizon was to become a twenty-four-day nightmare for the crew of the Beagle, as gale after gale pinned them just to the west of Cape Horn. Pummelling winds and relentless seas battered them day and night, until everyone and everything in the ship was drenched. At the end of each watch the exhausted men, with no dry clothes to change into, turned in ‘full standing’: bones aching, they retreated to their soaking hammocks still wrapped in their sopping oilskins, and fell asleep in an instant.
The temperature plummeted. Even though it was supposedly the middle of summer, the watch on deck were whipped by sharp snowflakes and stung by driving hail. It was impossible to stand upright below decks, and almost as difficult on deck, where the planking had become a slippery sheet of ice. Masts, spars, rigging, everything was sheathed in a thick icy coat, which had to be continually chipped off at severe risk to life and limb. Even the officers of the watch froze into ghastly attitudes, their oilskins masked with ice, lashed to the wheel under a crazily swinging oil lamp. Great green rollers powered ceaselessly aboard, a good foot of water coursing freely through the gunports, but the momentary relief such waves afforded, being warmer than the air, was soon lost as further layers of ice crusted quickly on the men’s clothes.
In the poop cabin behind the wheel, Darwin lay in a permanent pool of vomit, his specimens ruined, his dried-flower collection a sodden mess. Christmas came and went, and New Year too, but nobody noticed. There was no sign of a let-up in the mountainous breaking seas. Finally, on 13 January, through sheets of spray that obscured the horizon, they caught sight of the stark black tower of York Minster, their destination, looming amid driving clouds. They had come just a hundred miles in three and a half weeks.
‘There she is, sir - jolly old York Minster!’ yelled Bennet cheerily over the howling wind.
‘Excellent!’ FitzRoy was in a good mood. He had just been to inspect the chronometers with Stebbing. Oilskin thrown off, his head wrapped in a towel to prevent dripping, he had dried the glass top of each machine and scattered flour upon it. Then, through a magnifying glass, he had checked the grains for signs of vibration or slippage from the horizontal. Nothing. Every chronometer and every gimbal was in perfect working order.
‘Biblical weather, ain’t it, sir?’ roared Sulivan.
‘Now we know how Noah felt,’ added Bennet. ‘Do you think we shall have the full forty days and forty nights?’
‘“ion the morning thou shalt say, would God it were even. And at even thou shalt say, would God it were morning!”’ Sulivan laughed out loud. FitzRoy gave silent thanks that the men of the Beagle were so indefatigable, so good-natured, whatever the obstacles placed in their way.
An albatross wheeled about the ship, gliding effortlessly against the buffeting wind. On each pass it would sweep gracefully down into the wave-troughs, breaking the occasional crest with an exploratory wingtip, before soaring up the face of the next rising arch, never once needing to flap its wings.
‘That bird. How long has it been following us?’ FitzRoy asked, disappearing up to his thighs in a surge of green seawater.
‘As long as we’ve been on watch, sir.’
‘And has it been flying clockwise about the ship throughout?’
‘Yes sir. Leastways, I think they always do fly clockwise, sir.’
‘I wonder — is that because of the magnetism of the earth? If one were to release an albatross in the northern hemisphere, would it fly anticlockwise?’
‘Shall we try to catch it, sir?’
‘No, no. I do not wish to lose an officer to the cause of natural philosophy, however noble the enquiry. But it leads one to ponder the incredible migrations of birds, their astonishing sense of direction — might it be magnetic, do you think?’
Another peak furled across the deck, water blasting violently through the gunports. FitzRoy yelled into Sulivan’s ear, ‘Mr Sulivan, would you ask Mr May to have the gunports secured? Let us try to reduce the amount of water on deck. It is like trying to stand in a sluice.’
‘Pardon me, sir, but do you think that is a good idea? The weather is worsening. If any really big waves get up, and the deck becomes flooded, fixed gunports could trap the water in the ship, sir.’
He indicated the line of cliffs off to the north-east, all of two hundred feet in height, where a vast battering surf was sending spray scattering over the cliff-tops.
‘Let us put our faith in the old girl - she is more buoyant than she used to be,’ insisted FitzRoy.
‘Very well, sir.’ And Sulivan rushed off in the gap between waves to locate the carpenter. He found May in the galley, desperately trying to warm himself against the scalding iron of Mr Frazer’s patent closed stove.
‘Mr May? Captain says you’re to secure all the gunports.’
May sighed. Although hardly dry, he had at least steamed a little water out of his saturated clothing over the preceding two hours. Now he was to go back on deck, and give himself another soaking. ‘Aye aye sir.’
‘And Mr May?’
‘Sir?’
Sulivan hesitated. He would never countenance disobeying any superior officer, but this was not exactly disobedience.
‘Keep your handspike about you in case they need to be opened in a hurry.’
‘Sir.’
On the way back up to the maindeck, Sulivan put his head round the door of FitzRoy’s cabin to check on Edward Hellyer. It was the young clerk’s first real storm.
‘You all right, young man?’
‘Yes sir, thank you, sir.’ Hellyer, pale and scared, did not look at all convinced.
Sulivan glanced over the boy’s shoulder at the ship’s log. ‘Hard at hand, I see,’ he said approvingly, and scanned the boy’s work. ‘Well done, Mr Hellyer. That’s first-rate. When we look back and argue about this here blow, your log is the place we’ll come for all our answers. You’re doing a splendid job.’ He clapped Hellyer on the back and the lad seemed to brighten up, for the moment at least.
By the time half an hour had elapsed, it was clear that an already desperate situation was getting worse. FitzRoy’s concern was for the masts, which for all their girth were straining like saplings. ‘We must take the topgallant sails off her. She is careening to her bearings.’
Bos’n Sorrell resorted to the speaking-trumpet: ‘Very well, my lads, very well indeed! Topgallants clewed up and furled!’ In an instant the icy rigging was alive with dark shapes, carrying out the order with well-drilled precision.
‘I fear, sir, we cannot carry the topsails much longer,’ said Sulivan. He knew that FitzRoy liked to keep a main topsail and five reefs as a minimum, even in the worst weather, to ensure steerage way. But such a rig would be impossible to maintain any further: the wind was screaming through the rigging now, and increasingly mountainous seas were rising ominously beneath the ship. The boundary between sky and sea was becoming blurred: seething white froth filled the air, and breakers were hurling themselves continuously across
the deck. FitzRoy gave orders to take her down to storm trysails, close-reefed. He was now barely in charge of the Beagle: the storm had all but wrested control of her.
The men were still in the rigging when they saw coming towards them, head-on, a vast, implacable cliff of grey water advancing at speed. Dear God, thought FitzRoy, that wave is almost as tall as the boat is long. A monster. The equation was simple. Any taller, and they would go down. Any less, and they might ride it. With mounting horror, he saw Nicholas White, the seaman clinging to the jib-boom end, disappear into the face of the wave a good fathom under, as the little brig tried desperately to climb its featureless slope. All on deck stood frozen with fear. The two men clinging to the staysail netting were next to disappear, as the wave swallowed the Beagle’s entire bow. But she was still rising, her deck sloping further and further back, until it seemed she must be catapulted vertically into the raging sky. Then, at last, she breasted the wave, and FitzRoy felt his stomach plummet with the ship as she surfed crazily down the other side. There was White, still alive, gasping on the jib-boom; there were the sailors on the staysail netting, spluttering and choking but indubitably alive.
Any relief FitzRoy might have felt was short-lived. Another towering, monstrous wave was racing in on the heels of the first, only this time the Beagle’s momentum had been checked, her way deadened. She sat motionless in the water, waiting for the impact. There was nothing anybody could do but pray, and hold on tight.
The wave crashed front-on into the bow with a sickening shudder. The ship trembled from end to end at the shock. A pulverizing mass of green smashed across the deck, driving the air from the sailors’ gasping lungs. Darwin, who had been shivering in his hammock, too sick to sense the danger outside, suddenly found himself submerged, as a wall of freezing seawater blasted the library door from its hinges and engulfed him. Again the Beagle tried to rise up the face of the wave, but this time she was only partially successful. She slewed wildly to port before tipping crazily over the crest and careening sideways down the backslope. Not only was her momentum checked now, but she was sitting beam-on, dead at the helm and thrown off the wind. If a third wave came, she was a sitting duck.
All eyes squinted fearfully into the driving sleet, trying to separate the scudding black clouds from the maddened, frothing water. Then they saw it: a third wave, taller than a townhouse, towering over the Beagle, bearing down upon them. The ship lolled, helplessly, like a beaten drunk trying to stand up and throw a last punch. We’re going to drown. What is it like to drown? was all that anybody aboard the Beagle could think.
Like a broadside of cannon from a mighty frigate, the wave smacked hard into the ship’s side, its whole immense crushing weight pounding on to her deck. The world simply turned black. Men floundered and struggled and fought, not to keep their balance or their bearings but to live, just to live. Then the world cleared, but it had been turned on its side. The Beagle was on her beam-ends, her lee bulwark three feet under, and she was struggling unsuccessfully to rise again. The lee-quarter boat, a brand-new reinforced whaleboat constructed by Messrs William Johns of Plymouth on the diagonal principle, and mounted several feet higher than the whaleboats of the previous voyage, had filled with water and disintegrated as surely as if it had been made from pasteboard; but its new improved davits clung stubbornly to the Beagle, refusing to let go, the wreckage of the whaleboat threatening to drag its mother ship down into the lightless depths.
The port side of the deck was trapped several feet under, labouring under a colossal weight of water that could not escape, Sulivan realized, because of the sealed gunports. Through a faceful of blinding spray he saw FitzRoy, Bennet and a terrified Hamond at the lee quarter, helped by three ratings, hacking at the tangled whaleboat davits with hatchets; but at the bulwark there was only Carpenter May, up to his waist in water, struggling vainly with his handspike to free one of the secured gunports beneath the surface. Sulivan splashed frantically across the deck to May, seized the handspike, plunged into the frozen darkness, located the gunport, and with one burly heave, burst it wide open. Immediately, water surged out through the newly opened escape route, and slowly, very slowly, the Beagle began to right herself.
A fourth wave now, all of them knew, and they were dead men. Now, with the gunport open and the wreckage of the whaleboat cut adrift, all eyes looked to windward, screwed up against the blinding sleet, searching for the fourth and final instalment, the wave that would bring about their end. But it did not come. For twenty, thirty, forty seconds they waited, as the Beagle rose agonizingly back towards an even keel, staring into the maelstrom. But the fourth wave did not come.
‘What would Captain Beaufort have called that, then? A force fifteen?’ Sulivan was breezy and light-headed with relief. Driven almost back to Cape Horn by the storm, they had run in behind False Cape Horn and sought refuge in the Goree Roads. There they had dropped anchor in forty-seven fathoms, friendly sparks flashing from the windlass as the chain hurtled round it, to rest and lick their wounds.
‘I made a terrible mistake. You saved all our lives. After all the modifications I made to the Beagle, I thought ... Well, the simple fact is, I was too proud.’
‘Hang it, sir, that’s tosh and you know it. You cannot blame yourself every time we run through a bad blow. It was the modifications that saved us. The old Beagle would have been crushed to matchwood. Yet not a spar was lost, nor a single man for that matter.’
‘I should never have ordered the gunports secured. You were right and I was wrong.’
‘The man has not been born, sir, who never makes a mistake,’ responded Sulivan. ‘All of us make mistakes, all the time. It is how one reacts to one’s mistakes that is the measure of a man.’
‘Put like that, Mr Sulivan, I suppose it does sound better,’ conceded FitzRoy.
‘That’s more like it, sir. Now, shouldn’t you be sitting here with charts and diagrams, trying to discover the measure of that storm?’
‘There is no need. I have its measure already. You forget, I have had twenty-four days to think upon it.’
‘And?’
‘And the globe spins eastward. So does water, at a greater velocity - although with many a back-eddy. The atmosphere, which is almost free of obstacles, spins yet faster still. It too has back-eddies of wind, which articulate storm-breeding counter-spirals near the poles - together with a steady-flowing undertow at the equator - that’s the trade winds. All the elements are pluming forward to the east, all of them by-products of the pull that affects the earth. You see? The weather may appear unpredictable, Mr Sulivan, but it is not. Its effects are complicated, but its core principle, as laid down by God, is blindingly simple. And if we understand the mechanical principle behind it, there is no reason to doubt that, one day, we shall be able to foretell the weather.’
FitzRoy had become increasingly animated as he warmed to his pet enthusiasm, the cares of leadership slipping visibly from his shoulders; Sulivan regretted that Darwin chose that very moment to march in and interrupt the captain’s monologue.
‘Good morning, Philos. I trust this lovely calm morning finds you well?’
Darwin stood and stared at FitzRoy as if he were quite mad to ask such a question, after all that they had endured. But having held the pose for a moment he relaxed suddenly, and shook his head in bemused wonderment.
‘It’s my own fault, I suppose, for agreeing to spend several years cooped up in your little cock-boat. All my papers and specimens are ruined — all of them - and not a few of my books. Luckily volume two of Lyell is unscathed, for I have not yet commenced it, as is my copy of Persuasion, for all that it is worth.’
FitzRoy roared with laughter. ‘All of those unique specimens lost, and the means to interpret them, but you still have your Jane Austen! Why, we will turn you into a gossiping fishwife yet! Pray tell, Philos, why on earth you have such frivolities in your possession.’
‘My sister Caroline packed it for me. It seems my family think you to be quite the
Captain Wentworth, for some reason. And I suppose, after yesterday, that they are right.’
‘Oh, but we have Mr Sulivan to thank for yesterday’s heroics.’
‘Not a bit of it!’ protested Sulivan. ‘But see here, Philos - I have brought you a present.’ He leaned down under the table and produced a carefully wrapped box. ‘Something else that survived yesterday’s tribulations.’
‘What is it?’
‘The start of your new collection.’
Darwin unwrapped the packing and levered off the lid to reveal a sweetly glowing nasturtium flower - except that it was twice the size of any nasturtium he had ever seen before.
‘It is a Tropaeolum. I discovered it in the Brazils. A Tropaeolum majus, I suppose, if its Peruvian cousin were to become the minus.’
‘But, Sulivan, this is your very own specimen - I cannot possibly accept it as a gift!’
‘You can, Philos, and you will. Thy need is greater than mine.’
‘It is remarkable - wonderful! My dear fellow!’
‘Mind you keep the little chap warm, now. I wedge him behind the galley stove at night, and stand him beneath the skylight by day.’
‘You are too kind. I am overwhelmed.’
There was a knock at the door.
‘Bless me,’ murmured FitzRoy. ‘The place is become like Regent Circus this morning. Come!’
FitzRoy’s steward opened the door, and the three men could see the burly figure of York Minster silhouetted behind him.