‘It’s Captain FitzRoy, isn’t it, sir? Of the Beagle?’ The three scare-crows had run all the way up the main street. Their leader introduced himself.
‘Lieutenant Collins, sir, of the Challenger. This is Assistant Surgeon Lane, and this is Jagoe, ship’s clerk.’
‘The Challenger? Seymour’s brig?’
‘That’s right, sir. You came aboard off Port Louis in the Falklands, sir. But the Challenger is lost, sir!’
‘Lost? Lost where?’ The blood ran cold through FitzRoy’s veins.
‘South of the river Leubu, sir. We were making eight knots an hour under treble-reefed topsails, courses and jib. By all fair calculations we should have been well out to sea - but something had happened to play merry hell with the tides and currents. Next thing we knew, sir, the officer of the watch noticed lines of foam in the water in the darkness. He ordered helm down and about ship, and Captain Seymour was fetched. The captain gave the order to haul the mainsail. The after-yards swung round, sir, but while we were bracing them up she struck. The rudder was destroyed, and the stern-post, the gunroom beams, the cabin-deck - all her timbers and planking were shivered to atomies, sir.’
‘My God. Did she go down at once?’
‘Not for a couple of hours, sir. The mate managed to get a line ashore in the jolly-boat. We cut the mizzen-mast down and made a raft, and got most of the supplies off. Just two men were lost in all, but the jolly-boat was the only one of the ship’s boats to survive the impact. Captain Seymour ordered the three of us to sail her to Valparayso, to fetch assistance from the commodore, sir.’
‘Thank God you have arrived safely. When did you get here?’
‘Three weeks ago, sir.’
‘Three weeks? What the deuce — ’
‘Commodore Mason, sir — he refused to send the Blonde south. He said it was too late in the season to land on a lee shore. And the Leubu river is Araucanian Indian territory, sir. He said it was too risky, sir. He didn’t want to peril another ship. But we heard that the Beagle was due in port soon, so we waited — ’
FitzRoy’s jaw set hard. ‘Then there is not another moment to lose.’
‘Captain Seymour set up camp on high ground overlooking the river, sir. He had a ditch dug, and erected a defensive barricade from barrels and timbers that were thrown ashore. But there is only so much ammunition available, sir. Of course we couldn’t get any of the cannon off the ship. We were hoping you might be able to use your influence to persuade the commodore to change his mind sir.’
‘Oh, I shall make him change his mind, Lieutenant, I promise you of that,’ said FitzRoy grimly. ‘Where may I find this Commodore Mason?’
The three men from the Challenger led FitzRoy to a pretty ginger-breaded cottage in the suburbs. They held back at the end of the lane, while FitzRoy walked up and knocked smartly at the door. It swung open to the touch. Marching past a startled Chilean maid with no word of introduction, he found Mason slumbering in a cane chair on raised decking at the back of the house, under the shade of a canvas awning. The commodore looked as if he might once have been handsome: certainly, he sported the breeches and hairstyle of another era. But he was running to fat now, pink jowls inflating with each breath. His sandy hair had turned all but grey. The tracery of broken veins on his cheeks and nose, and the half-empty geneva bottle on the table, suggested even at this early hour that the commodore had been drinking.
‘Captain FitzRoy, sir, of HMS Beagle, reporting as commanded,’ said FitzRoy, doing his best to disguise his impatience. He was, at least, going to give the man a chance to explain himself.
‘Is it your normal practice to enter the houses of superior officers without introduction, Captain?’
‘The door was on the jar and unattended, sir.’
A harrumph from Mason. ‘Well, I have been expecting you for some weeks. You have new orders. A pearl-oyster-fishing vessel, the Truro, has been plundered in one of the islands of Tahiti. The Admiralty is demanding compensation of two thousand eight hundred dollars on behalf of the owner. You are to make yourself known to Queen Pomare of those islands and extract the required sum of the Tahitians, using force if necessary. You are heading home via Tahiti, I take it?’
‘In due course, sir. But in the meantime there is a more pressing matter. The crew of the Challenger, sir — ’
‘I know all about the Challenger, Captain.’
‘Then may I take it you will be mounting a rescue effort without further ado, sir?’
‘What you may take, Captain FitzRoy, is what you are given. Have I made myself clear?’
‘Sir, the men of the Challenger have been encamped on an exposed and dangerous shore for some four weeks now — ’
‘The men of the Challenger will have to fend for themselves. Those are my orders. You have your own orders. The fate of the Challenger is none of your damned business.’
‘Captain Seymour is an old friend of mine, sir.’
‘Then you are allowing personal friendships to cloud your judgement, Mr FitzRoy. It would be foolhardy in the extreme to put more men on to that coast in the middle of winter. The Spanish have failed to defeat the Araucanians since three hundred years - I hardly see that one frigate’s-worth of men will succeed where an entire nation has been found wanting.’
‘There may be other means than military action, sir. Let me go, sir - I have only recently surveyed that very coastline.’
‘Are you deaf, Captain?’ Mason’s tone was icy. ‘I would remind you that you were only made post a few weeks since. You would do well to hold your tongue and go about your duty without further ado.’
‘My duty, sir, is to go to the aid of my fellow officers and their men.’
‘Your duty, Captain, is to do as you are commanded!’
‘If you will not go to the aid of the Challenger, sir, then I shall have no option but to go myself.’
Mason’s face turned puce as he levered himself from his chair. ‘I will see you court-martialled if you do not get out of here this instant and do exactly what I tell you to do!’
‘If you are too scared, sir — ’ began FitzRoy scornfully.
‘Damn you for a scoundrel, sir! How dare you? You may be satisfied that you will pay for your impertinence!’
‘On the contrary, sir,’ said FitzRoy coolly, ‘it is you who shall pay. I shall see to it on my return to England that you are court-martialled for cowardice.’
‘By the devil!’ spat Mason. ‘If I was twenty years younger I would knock you down, you young puppy.’
FitzRoy’s eyes gleamed. ‘If you were twenty years younger you would not be standing now, you blackguard. That is, if I could bring myself to soil my hands upon a despicable coward - sir.’ FitzRoy turned on his heel and stalked out of the house, leaving Mason speechless with rage.
He met the three ragged emissaries from the Challenger at the corner of the lane, their faces optimistic as puppies’.
‘How was it, sir? Did the commodore change his mind?’
FitzRoy smiled grimly. ‘Yes, Lieutenant. I found the commodore exactly of my opinion. He has ordered me to mount a full-scale rescue of the Challenger’s people. Follow me, if you please.’
The ship’s company of the Beagle, mustered on the maindeck, waited expectantly for FitzRoy to speak. Something was up, they knew. Lieutenant Collins and his colleagues had been cleaned up and fed, and dispatched to wait on the wharf, safely out of earshot. FitzRoy was sure that he could trust each and every one of his own crew, but that was as far as it went. Poker-faced, he stepped up to the azimuth compass and gambled his entire career on a single eventuality.
‘You will no doubt remember HMS Challenger from the Falkland Islands. I have grave news to impart. The Challenger is lost. Her crew are stranded three hundred miles south of here, in Araucanian Indian territory. To go to their aid would be a most dangerous venture. So dangerous, in fact, that the British officer commanding here in Valparayso, Commodore Mason, has refused to sanction any such rescue mission.’
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A murmur of consternation rolled around the ship’s company.
‘I have decided to disobey that order.’
The murmur became an aftershock, a thunderstruck wave surging through the throng.
‘It is my intention to commandeer HMS Blonde, the commodore’s frigate. I am doing so in the contention that Commodore Mason is in serious dereliction of his duty. I am telling you this because I fear that the crew of the Blonde shall be almost no use as seamen. Were I to take a small contingent of men from the Beagle to lick them into shape, my task should be that much easier. So, in a moment, I shall call for volunteers. But I must warn you: our only hope of escaping the most serious repercussions, and it is a faint hope, will be to effect a successful rescue. I sustain myself with no flattering delusion otherwise. To be proved not only resolute and brave, but absolutely correct in taking authority into our own hands, will be the only possible defence of our actions. For all that I am aware, the men of the Challenger may already be dead. If our bid fails, I need not tell you of the consequences. Whoever volunteers risks not only their livelihood and their career, but also their neck. To be blunt, you might yet find yourself swinging at the end of a rope. But if nobody goes to their rescue, then the men of the Challenger will certainly die. Examine your consciences. I give you my absolute assurance, here and now, that there shall be no shame in failing to volunteer. No blame, no censure, shall attach to any man who prefers to leave this business to others. I am looking for fifteen men, and two officers. Think carefully before making your decision. Now — who is in for it?’
FitzRoy looked out across the mass of sailors and marines, and then behind him at the line of uniformed officers, their dark coats providing a neat and sombre backdrop to the raised stage of the poop deck. In front, a sea of hands had shot up, with not a dissenter among them. Behind, every single officer had taken a decisive step forward.
‘Thank you, gentlemen. I am proud of each and every one of you. It seems I must choose among you. I shall inform you of my decision within a few minutes. You may return to your duties.’
As the milling crowd slowly dissipated, Darwin, who had observed proceedings from the rail of the companionway, gave FitzRoy a sympathetic smile.
‘Whatever became of the officer who would follow any order given to him, however immoral, however illogical?’
FitzRoy grimaced. ‘He grew up.’
John Biddlecombe, master of the Blonde and officer in charge of the afternoon watch, observed the Beagle’s packed cutter slice purposefully through the waters of Valparayso Bay with an inexplicable feeling of apprehension. Such was the determination etched into the approaching sailors’ faces that, had they not been British tars, he would have said they wore the aspect of a boarding party. He recognized the captain, the highty-tighty sort who had been sniffing around that very morning, and had been sent away with a flea in his ear. His return, mob-handed, looked worryingly like some sort of retribution. Let’s hope he hasn’t been stirring up trouble with the old man, thought the master.
FitzRoy hauled himself aboard, followed by Coxswain Bennet, Bos’n Sorrell, Midshipman Hamond and fifteen hard-faced members of the Beagle’s company. He had deliberately opted, much to the bitter disappointment of Sulivan, Wickham and the others, to take with him his most junior officers: the higher up the tree his co-mutineers, the more they stood to lose. The only exception was Midshipman King. He dared not have looked the boy’s father in the face, had he involved the younger King in an insurrection that had turned to catastrophe.
‘Mr Biddlecombe, is it not?’
‘Sir.’
‘I have orders from the commodore to take command of the Blonde, and to proceed without delay to the mouth of the Leubu river where we are to effect the immediate rescue of the crew of HMS Challenger.’
‘Orders from the commodore, sir?’ Biddlecombe fairly goggled.
‘As I said.’
‘But where is the commodore, sir? Is he not to take command of the expedition himself?’
‘The commodore is indisposed ... He felt that his state of health was such that his presence would merely incommode our passage.’
That sounds like the cowardly old bustard, thought Biddlecombe.
‘Tell me, is your bos’n aboard?’
‘No sir, he is ashore. A number of the officers - Lieutenant Tait, Midshipman McKenna — ’
‘It matters not. I have brought sufficient matlows with me to cover any want of men. Mr Sorrell? The maindeck is yours. Let’s have this ship ready for sea. The sooner we are under way the better.’
‘You heard the officer,’ growled Sorrell, advancing like a pugilist upon the Blonde’s startled crew. There was an air of confidence about the little Bristolian now: he seemed far removed from the nervous spinning-top of a man who had lashed out right and left with his rattan on FitzRoy’s first day as captain. Today he did not use his rattan. He did not need to. He was imbued with purpose, and the afternoon watch could feel the force of his intent.
‘Those topsail gaskets are slack! Those horses want mousing - a man could fall from the yard if they’re not tied properly! Where’s the captain of the foretop?’
‘Come on, look lively!’ bellowed a furious Bennet. ‘This is one of the King’s frigates, not Almack’s Assembly!’
The master’s jaw, FitzRoy observed, had fallen slack.
‘Let us see, Mr Biddlecombe, whether we cannot open the eyes of everyone, fore and aft, in this ship. Now, do you not have a course to plot?’
‘Yes sir,’ said the defeated Biddlecombe, and tottered off in search of his charts.
The country of Araucania, FitzRoy knew, was a beautiful, well-wooded land riven with steep, muddy ravines usually swelled to bursting with heavy rain. That, at least, was the theory. But embarrassingly, even with his newly drawn-up charts, he could not find the Leubu river for two days, so poor was the visibility. So thick were the wind and the rain, in fact, that he could scarcely discern the line of the surf, heavily as it beat upon the shore. The Blonde made sally after sally in towards the coast, the sea sucking at her hull as if to pull her on to the rocks, but, try as he might, he could find no sign of the missing crew. Finally, on the afternoon of the second day, Hamond caught sight of the Challenger’s flag through the spyglass, a faint rippling square on the distant heights, glimpsed for a scudding moment through rushing drifts of white. There was no way in for the big frigate, not on this coast, not in any weather. Her guns - which FitzRoy had hoped to have available as a bargaining tool - would be utterly useless in these conditions. He had no option but to haul off.
‘Mr Bos’n!’ he yelled, water sheeting from his oilskin. ‘Hoist out the cutter!’
‘Aye aye sir.’
‘But — but you’re mad, sir!’ Biddlecombe protested. ‘She’ll be swamped by the waves. You’ll never make it!’
‘You have obviously never been surveying in Tierra del Fuego, Mr Biddlecombe,’ FitzRoy shouted into the master’s ear.
Biddlecombe had proved a thorough liability on the voyage down; luckily Davis, the assistant master, had shown himself to be a capable sort. It was to both men that FitzRoy now gave the order for the Blonde to remain under way until he returned, making short tacks all night if necessary. With Bennet piloting the cutter, FitzRoy, Hamond and his fifteen handpicked sailors bounced crazily towards the shore through the drenching surf, searching in the gloom for the estuary opening.
‘We’re sh-shipping ’em green, sir,’ said Hamond, as icy water creamed over their thighs for the hundredth time.
‘When are we ever not, Mr Hamond?’ said a smiling FitzRoy, who was bailing like a Trojan. He was doing good, he knew, simple, uncomplicated good; so he was, for the time being, a happy man. All the dangers, the risks to his career, were as nothing compared to the fact that here, with his men at his side, he felt that he belonged.
Finally, after two weary hours in the ocean’s maw, they were regurgitated on to the sodden shore amid a network of mud-laced channels a
nd boggy islands inhabited only by a few foul-smelling seals. They dragged the heavy cutter across the shoals, caked to the waist in thick, miry treacle, before flopping down in the wet grass of the river’s southern flank. FitzRoy allowed them five minutes’ rest and no more, then they ploughed on. Bennet was left on guard by the cutter, with a gun and a supply of ammunition; the others followed the course of the riverbank uphill through a cleft in the wooded slopes, peering through silhouetted trees and swirling mists for another glimpse of the Challenger’s elusive ensign. After a mile, the forest opened out once more, and they marched knee-deep, up a soaking, sloping meadow; but even as the woods parted, the clouds descended about them in a billowing curtain, leaving them alone and stranded in a ghostly world of green and white. FitzRoy began to realize, uncomfortably, that he had no idea where in this disorienting wilderness Seymour and his men might be holding out - assuming, that is, that they were still holding out. The only direction he could safely follow was up.
‘Wh-what was that?’ Hamond froze. There had been a clinking sound, faint but unmistakable, in the mists ahead.
‘Quiet!’
There it was again. Nobody moved. Had it been dead ahead, or slightly to the side? Wherever it had emanated from, the sound had been borne away on the wind before it could be safely located. FitzRoy’s finger tightened about the trigger of his pistol. As he watched, a ragged hole was blown in the mists ahead; and through it rode a horseman, astride a raven mount. He was tall and muscular, with bronzed skin and cheekbones like the shoulder-plates of Darwin’s Megatherium. His long, lush black hair was parted in the centre and gathered by scarlet fillets. His countenance was grave, almost regal. He would have put FitzRoy in mind of Van Dyck’s studies of Charles I, were it not for the striped poncho and the wicked-looking chuzo, his bamboo lance, which tapered to an iron-tipped point some twelve feet forward of his body.