‘Should you indeed? Very well. If you say so,’ acquiesced Mason gruffly. ‘What’s the matter with this Hamond fellow?’
‘He is too frightened to continue in the Service, sir.’
‘Cowardice, eh?’
‘No sir. Mr Hamond is very far from being a coward. He appears to be suffering from a sort of extended shock. I think him an immensely brave man to admit to it, and to face up to it, sir.’ FitzRoy touched the peak of his cap insouciantly and, without waiting to be dismissed, took his leave of the commodore. Only upon reaching the safety of the street did he allow himself a smile of relief.
Chapter Twenty-four
Chatham Island, Galapagos,16 September 1835
‘It is indisputable evidence!’
‘My dear FitzRoy, one piece of evidence can rarely be said to be indisputable.’
“‘Chem” is clearly Shem. “Mount Theghin” is indisputably Mount Ararat. The legends of the Araucanians testify to the global nature of the deluge. My dear Philos, what more proof could you desire?’
‘But the story could have been introduced into the Araucanian tradition at any point — by the conquistadors perhaps - or even earlier, by a lone Christian travelling across the Pacific. Without a weight of evidence to back them up, the tales of this chief of yours - half a Spaniard, by his own admission - would scarcely hold up as scientific evidence.’
‘But the word of God is not a matter of scientific conjecture! Even if there were not a huge weight of evidence for the flood, God’s word is absolute!’
‘You will allow me to observe, I hope, that there is also direct evidence against the flood.’
‘Direct evidence against the flood? What evidence?’
‘Evidence I have witnessed with my own eyes.’ There was no other way forward now. His enthusiasm for argument heated under the broiling, oppressive, leaden Galapagos skies, Darwin blurted out the most controversial of his conclusions. ‘I did not wish to say this before, FitzRoy, for fear of offending you, but the natural life that I witnessed on the Patagonian side of the Andes was entirely different from that on the Chilean side.’
‘What of it?’ -
‘The Andes are newly uplifted land, which means that the differing species on either side of the cordillera came into being after the mountains were created. Those species were not created on the sixth day. They have - they have — ’
‘Transmuted?’ FitzRoy uttered the word calmly but grimly.
‘Yes, damn it, they have transmuted into existence, in relatively recent geological times. You will find an entirely different species of mouse on either side of the cordillera. If God created mice at the beginning of time, then why do not identical mice swarm over the western and eastern slopes today?’
‘What you speak of is adaptation. Variation within a species. Species themselves are immutable.’
‘I tell you they were different species of mouse.’
‘Come, Philos, if transmutation between species is possible, then show me your direct evidence. The fossil record does not convincingly document a single transmutation from one species to another. Where are the countless fossils of intermediate species, embedded in the crust of the earth? If wings grew from forelegs, where are the half-winged animals, and how could they have half flown? If lungs grew from gills, where are the half-lunged fish, and how could they have half breathed? If giraffes grew from antelopes, where are the fossils of all the short-necked giraffes?’
‘The fossil record is less than perfect, I grant you, but geology is a new science. In future ages, perhaps the fossil links you speak of will be discovered. Discontinuities in nature do not by themselves speak against transmutation, because these intermediate forms are now extinct, and may have become so very quickly. Did we ourselves not find the remains of an aquatic rodent the size of an elephant? Who knows what two orders of animals that creature might have bridged?’
‘Are you suggesting that your Chilean mice transmuted from aquatic elephants, or vice versa?’
‘No, of course I am not. I have simply come to realize that creation is far more fluid a business than our Church allows. How different are the fat little Fuegians from their lean, tall Araucanian neighbours? Yet all are supposedly descended from Noah and his wife. Where are the intermediate fossils there? And both species shall become extinct, I fear, when General Rosas has his way.’
‘Both species? The Fuegians and the Araucanians are men - one species - equal before the Lord, who one hopes in His mercy will save them from the depredations of your friend the general.’
‘You believe God will save those heathen savages from the Christian armies? From white men?’
FitzRoy reacted with anger.
‘Those “heathen savages” are heathens because they have yet to receive the word of God, and savages because they have yet to receive the blessings of civilization that attend it. Your friend Rosas may profess Christianity, but he is little more than a tyrant and a murderer who takes God’s name in vain.’
‘Perhaps the Fuegians are not men as we are, created indivisibly by God. Perhaps they are a separate species of man, more akin to the higher apes. I do not know. I do not know, FitzRoy. But I do know that to believe in every word of the scriptures, the ark, the creation of all life in a matter of days, is to believe in the impossible and the unintelligible.’
‘If what you say is true, then the stars of heaven, the showers and the dew, the mountains and the hills may no longer be called to exalt the Lord with us by praise.’
‘No. I merely question the word of God as it is written by man in the scriptures.’
‘This won’t do, Philos. The scriptures themselves say, “If any man shall take away the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part out of the book of life and out of the holy city.” You are risking damnation in the hereafter!’
‘Hang it, FitzRoy, such threats are themselves a damnable doctrine. The Old Testament is a manifestly false history of the origin of the world, and I do not believe that the true story of the creation of life by God is to be found there.’
‘But look what you seek to put in its place!’ Both men were fairly screeching at one another now. ‘What are the chances of species somehow transmuting out of nothingness in the first instance? Something as beautiful and complex as a flower cannot result from a random process! An earthquake destroys a cathedral - it does not construct one! The grain that man makes into bread, the cattle that provide his meat and milk, the dogs that aid him in his work - did all these transmute by some accident of nature? A spider’s web? A beautiful butterfly? An electric eel? Did all these transmute by accident as well?’
FitzRoy pulled a book from the shelf above. ‘Listen to Paley: “The marks of design are too strong to be gotten over. Design must have had a designer. That designer must have been a person. That person is God.”’
‘I do not deny that the Lord God has designed all living things! I just ... I just ...’ Darwin faltered, his sails sagging as the initial blast of his enthusiasm began to subside. ‘I just believe that once an animal has been divinely created, it is free to transmute itself gradually, by some unexplained mechanism, into another related species.’
‘Tell me, Philos, on your expedition, were there ants to be found on either side of the Andes?’
‘Of course.’
‘Different species of ant?’
‘I dare say - I do not recall.’
‘And the sterile worker ants - how precisely had they transmuted gradually from one species into another when they cannot breed?’
‘I do not know.’
‘You do not know. There is no mechanism to explain it - that is why you do not know. I repeat, what you have witnessed is variation. An adaptation from one mouse to another mouse through the vagaries of climate, which has been presupposed by God as part of His divine plan. A secondary consequence of a primary act of creation. There is a moral aspect to nature as well as a material aspect, and it is the task of science to link the ma
terial to the moral. Any man who denies this is deep in the mire of folly.’
Darwin attempted one last throw. ‘If there is no such thing as transmutation, then why do the most closely allied species occur in the same countries? Why did the Lord place many species of penguin towards the South Pole, but none towards the North Pole?’
‘You have yet to visit Australia, Philos. When you get there, you will find a swan identical in every respect to its British counterpart — except that where the British swan is white with a yellow beak, the Australian version is jet-black with a scarlet beak. The two birds were created many thousands of miles apart, in perfect isolation. Why? As objects of beauty, and no more.’ FitzRoy folded his arms with cold satisfaction and sat back.
Darwin looked down at his shabby, sweat-stained shirt. All his shirts and waistcoats were showing their age now, patched and repatched as they had been during the preceding five years. He wanted to wear clean, new clothes again. He wanted to relax in his favourite armchair at the Mount. He was fed up with quarrelling. He was fed up with this wretched little cabin. He was fed up with ceaselessly feeling seasick. He was fed up with the dyspepsia and constipation and piles that had pursued him here from Valparayso. He seriously doubted whether any schoolboy had ever longed for the holidays as much as he craved his home and his family. The day when the lookout hailed the Lizard lights ahead would be a momentous one indeed. He no longer had the strength or the inclination to argue.
A few days later, Darwin, Covington and Midshipman King were landed in high surf on the north-east coast of Chatham Island, with armfuls of collecting-boxes. The water was goosepimple-cold on account of the polar current - Stebbing had fetched up a bucketful, which had measured 58 degrees Fahrenheit - but the air, roasting slowly in the glare of a high, burnished sun, had registered closer to 90. Darwin jammed his thermometer into the black sand, whereupon the mercury promptly shot off the scale, meaning that the ground temperature exceeded 137 degrees Fahrenheit. Within seconds, the glimmering heat had dried out their clothes, then resoaked the trio once more in their own sweat.
Before them lay a buckled, rippling, jagged country, black as anthracite, except that it resembled sea more than land, a churning nocturnal sea that had been paralysed in an instant. Everywhere they looked in this tortured, twisted wasteland were volcanic craters: craters bursting like sores from other craters, little craters concealed within bigger craters, craters with solidified lava spilling over their rims like boiling pitch caught at the moment of tipping from a cauldron. Here and there were fumaroles, smoking vents and steaming fissures that ran in angular, contrary splits against the flow of the rock. It was, reflected Darwin, reminiscent of the iron-foundry country around Wolverhampton. The south side of each crater was the lower, he noticed, and in some cases it had been destroyed altogether. These cones have been formed under water, he realized. The wind and the waves here arrive from the south. They have battered at these rocks while they lay in the sea, before they ever were raised out of the water.
By rights, such a furnace should have supported little in the way of life. The pitiless vertical sun, the stifling climate and the rocks that glowed like a cast-iron stove should have been no more hospitable than the infernal regions of Pandemonium itself. But it was not so: every square foot of land was dotted with shuffling, scaly, primordial creatures, while the surf teemed with darting, flashing shapes. The sea creatures were, for the most part, those of the polar regions - penguins, sealions and the like — whereas the cacti and lizards ashore were similar to those of the arid lands near the equator. Huge, crimson-chested frigate birds sailed overhead, puffed up with self-importance, arrowing down towards the surface of the sea where they would deftly pluck out a fish without even getting their feet wet. Little mockingbirds ran up and pecked at the explorers’ boots. Bright vermilion Sally Lightfoot crabs swarmed across the glossy ebony rocks of the shore, shuttling backwards and forwards with aimless determination. It was an extraordinary panorama, the like of which none of them had ever seen.
The most commonplace denizen of Chatham Island was a fat, sluggish, sooty-coloured iguana, some three feet in length, clumsy of movement, with a horny mane, long webbed claws and a slack pouch hanging beneath its slack mouth. These imps of darkness lined the beaches, basking in the infernal heat, yet never straying more than ten yards from the sea. Occasionally one would lumber into the water, where it would be transformed into a sleek obsidian dart, its normally splayed legs tucked out of sight, its tail propelling it deftly through the water like a miniature crocodile. In common with the other land creatures of the Galapagos, these reptiles were extraordinarily tame, and utterly receptive to being poked and prodded. By way of an experiment, Darwin grasped one of the beasts by the tail, whirled it about his head and flung it into a tidal pool.
‘What larks!’ shouted Midshipman King, while Covington stared at his master with what looked like disapproval.
Really, it was good to be romping about the country with King once more; he was not much use as a naturalist’s assistant, it was true, but he was much jollier than the servant. Covington, to be fair, was fast making himself indispensable - the horse-butcher’s son was learning so quickly, he had even started his own limited sub-collection - but he remained curiously unapproachable. He was not, after all, a gentleman. King was putting the fun back into collecting.
‘Look, Philos, it’s coming back.’
The iguana had indeed crawled laboriously back to its former spot at Darwin’s feet. As it arrived, he picked it up by the tail once more, and flung it back into the pool. Again, the beast attained the shore, and again disdainfully marched back to its place. A third time it was returned to the water, and a third time, pompously, patiently, it regained its former situation.
‘Hereditary instinct is telling it that the shore is a place of safety,’ concluded Darwin. ‘I could kill it in an instant, yet it does not fear me.
‘Not very bright, is it, Philos?’ said King cheerily.
‘Lizards in Europe know to fear man,’ Darwin mused aloud. ‘It is a knowledge they possess from birth. Yet reptiles do not rear their young - indeed, they may never encounter them. They cannot teach their young anything. The knowledge is inherited. Were these iguanas to learn to fear man, how would that knowledge pass to their descendants?’
‘Well... I suppose it wouldn’t,’ said King, by now somewhat baffled.
‘He’s talking about transmutation,’ jabbed Covington, catching Darwin’s eye and holding it for a telling second.
‘Transmutation ... That’s a load of Godless gammon, isn’t it?’ said King, unhappily aware that he was not party to some shared knowledge.
‘Yes. Yes it is,’ said Darwin bluntly, and moved purposefully away across the corrugated ground.
They ascended the island’s central cone by way of a series of paths through the undergrowth that seemed to be converging on some unknown central point. The mystery of who or what had made these tracks was solved when they came upon two huge tortoises, each as high as a man’s chest, snuffling up the hill in front of them. The latter beast had the numerals ‘1806’ carved into its shell. As the collecting party marched up behind, the animals took no notice; but when Darwin moved into the eyeline of the rear tortoise, it hissed at him, sat down, and withdrew its head and legs into its carapace.
‘It seems they are quite deaf,’ he deduced.
King took a run at the lead tortoise and leaped aboard. Even with the weight of a sturdy youth on its back, the vast reptile seemed unaware that anyone was behind or even upon it. Darwin jumped aboard too, but still the animal did not slacken its pace, keeping to a speed that — he calculated with the aid of his pocket-watch - would amount to about four miles per day.
‘Giddy up!’ yelled King, and thrashed the animal’s hind-quarters with a switch. ‘What about a race? We could be at the summit by the end of the week!’
Both men laughed, while Covington brought up the rear in respectful and possibly reproachful silence. br />
They lunched soon afterwards, watched by a large hawk that perched upon a low branch. Darwin approached the bird with his gun, and placed the barrel squarely in the centre of its face. The hawk remaining entirely unmoved, he nudged the nozzle against its beak, before finally shoving the bird to the ground. With an indignant flap of its feathers, it dusted itself down and climbed back to its perch as before.
‘Extraordinary,’ he murmured.
Covington, he noticed, was writing something in a small notebook. ‘What is that, Covington?’
‘It is nothing, sir,’ mumbled the manservant.
‘What is it?’
‘It is my journal.’
‘You keep a journal ?’
‘Yes sir.’
‘Give it here.’
Covington complied, slowly and reluctantly. Darwin flicked through the pages. In a large, rounded, deliberate hand were entries - some of exceeding brevity — going back to the start of the voyage. Capital letters and underlined words mingled freely with those in lower case; on occasion, Spanish happily cohabited with English. Darwin stopped at the entry detailing their expedition northwards from the Rio Negro, in the company of Esteban and his gauchos.
In the camp or country there are lions, tigers, deer, cavys, ostriches both large and small. Aperea here has a much finer fur THAN ELSEWHERE. THERE ARE armadillos. Partridges ARE both large and small (the former has a tuft or crest on its head). C. D. Caminando por tierra, desde Rio Negro a Buenos Ayres.
Darwin shut the journal and handed it back to its owner. ‘Upon my soul, Covington, I never had you down as an author.’
‘No sir,’ muttered the big youth.
‘Just so long as you remember that you are my servant, and that all important observations are to be shared. I am, if you recall, to be the author of the official natural history of the voyage.’
‘Aye aye sir. Shall I do well not to write any more, sir?’