As you will. It is up to you. Just so long as you remember.’
‘Aye aye sir.’
After lunch, they pushed on to the principal crater, the floor of which was taken up by a grand assembly of blue-footed boobies. These preposterously earnest birds, white-bodied, black-winged, with bright turquoise beaks and feet, seemed to treat the business of guarding their nests rather casually. Darwin lobbed a few experimental stones at the nesting females, which bounced off their backs harmlessly, the victims looking no more than confused. King walked up and broke one’s neck with his hat. The other birds around merely stared up at him with expectant faces.
‘I suppose we had better shoot one to take with us,’ said Darwin, loading his rifle with the mustard shot which would make a cleaner job than King’s hat-brim. He levelled the barrel at the nearest booby. It gazed back at him, curious and uncomprehending. He tensed his finger on the trigger, and paused.
‘Everything all right, Philos?’
‘Yes, everything’s fine. Do you know, King - I’m not sure I can actually do this.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘I mean, I am all for the chase, but this - this is ridiculous.’ And what is a love of the chase but a relic of an instinctive passion? It is like the pleasure of living with the sky for a roof — it is no more than the pleasure of a savage returning to his wild and native habits.
The bird continued to gaze stupidly up at him.
He handed the gun to Covington.
‘Covington, shoot this bird, would you?’
‘Aye aye sir.’
Covington brought the gun up to his shoulder, took aim and fired. There was a deafening explosion, and he fell back with a scream, blood pouring from his shattered ear. The flame from the flash-pan had escaped into the magazine and detonated the loose powder within: one side of the weapon lay ripped open, where the explosion had torn the gunmetal apart from the inside.
‘Covington? Are you all right, man?’
Darwin and King, their ears ringing, knelt on either side of the writhing manservant, who appeared not to hear their urgent entreaties.
‘Covington! Are you all right?’
One hand pressed to the side of his head, fresh, bright blood streaming between his fingers, Covington rolled on to his back, his frightened eyes attempting to focus on his would-be rescuers.
‘Are — you - all - right?’
‘I cannot hear you,’ he whimpered. ‘Whatever it is you are saying, sirs, I cannot hear you.’
The drizzle having cleared, the party took their dinner out of doors, at a table set up on the governor’s lawn.
‘More turpin?’ said Lawson. ‘It is the breast meat — the most capital cut.’ He indicated the bowl of fatty, primrose-coloured meat that occupied pride of place in the centre of the table. ‘The rest of the animal is of indifferent flavour, except when employed in soup. The calipash is thrown away altogether.’
‘This is a local tortoise, I presume?’ asked FitzRoy, taking an elegant bite.
‘Oh no - we have them brought across from James, or Hood, or Albemarle,’ said the governor cheerfully. ‘Here on Charles Island, they have been hunted to extinction.’
The discovery of Lawson’s existence had been both a stroke of luck and a surprise, in that FitzRoy and his officers had been unaware that the Galapagos Islands - previously the province of buccaneers and whalers - even possessed a governor. Stopping at the postbox on Charles Island, they had come across Nicholas Lawson astride his horse, collecting his mail. Lawson was able to inform them that the islands had recently been annexed by the newly established Republic of the Equator, and that the Ecuadorians had not only constructed a prison for some three hundred black convicts on Charles Island, but had appointed him - as an Englishman of standing - their governor. The penal settlement was situated one thousand feet up and four and a half miles inland, where sodden, hanging clouds buffeted the highlands each year between June and November, creating a temperate zone of ferns, grasses and woodlands. There the prisoners cultivated plantain, banana, sugar cane, Indian corn and sweet potato, and hunted the pigs and goats that were permitted to run wild between the trees. Lawson had promised FitzRoy and the officers of his service, and had invited them to visit his domain later that day to enjoy, a dinner of succulent roast tortoise with home-grown vegetables.
‘It would appear that there was once a prodigious number of tortoises here,’ said FitzRoy, gesturing across Lawson’s precisely manicured lawn. Arranged at geometric intervals around the neat green rectangle, upturned tortoise carapaces served as pots for a colourful assortment of woodland flowers.
‘Ah, the flowerpots,’ said Lawson, smoothing the angles of his clipped, triangular beard. ‘We live something of a Robinson Crusoe existence here, Captain FitzRoy: happily self-sufficient in our necessities, but absolutely devoid of the merest luxury, and therefore forced to improvise. In answer to your question, there were indeed a great many turpin here, not ten years back. Some of the bigger frigates were taking away seven hundred at a time, to consume while crossing the Pacific. I myself once saw two hundred loaded in a day. Those that were too big to lift had the date engraved upon their carapaces: 1786 is the oldest I have yet witnessed. We killed those larger beasts ourselves where they stood, and carried the meat here, until every turpin on the island was gone. The other islands’ populations are headed the same way. During the dry months they are killed for the water reserves in their bladders. The species shall be extinct, I believe, in another twenty years. Now our turpin must be brought from a variety of different islands, in an attempt to preserve the supply for as long as possible. Once they are gone, I dare say we shall consume the sea turtles.’
‘It is an uncommon pity to see one of the Lord’s creatures made extinct in this fashion,’ offered a troubled Sulivan.
‘But did the Lord not place the turpin here for man’s benefit in the first instance?’ said Lawson, carefully adjusting his wire-rimmed spectacles. ‘One might reasonably propose it, Lieutenant.’
‘Indeed one might.’ Sulivan smiled politely.
‘Forgive me,’ said FitzRoy, who had been casting a scientific eye at the upturned tortoise-shells, ‘but are there not some considerable differences between these several carapaces? Did you not say they originated in different islands?’
‘You are most observant, Captain FitzRoy. The turpin of each island do not assort with each other at all. Those from Hood Island have a thick ridge of shell in front, turned up in the manner of a Spanish saddle, like that one there. The one to the left is from James Island - do you see? It is rounder and blacker, and its meat is incidentally more flavoursome.’ He held up his loaded fork and smiled. ‘Generally, the turpin of the lower islands have longer necks, whereas those of the high country are dome-shaped with shorter necks. You will find such variations in all the wildlife hereabouts, safe enough.’
‘I am very much interested about this. Do tell us more.’
‘You have seen the marine iguanas? The Amb/yrhynchus cristatus? They are not strictly iguanas, I should say, but of the genus Amblyrbyncbus. Well, they are larger on Albemarle Island. And there is also a land Amblyrhynchus, a burrowing animal, terracotta in colour, to be found only on Albemarle, James, Barrington and Indefatigable.’
‘I apprehend that you are something of a naturalist, Mr Lawson.’
Lawson straightened his starched but threadbare waistcoat with a hint of pride. ‘One does one’s best to peg away at the subject, Captain FitzRoy. When one is a Robinson Crusoe, there is little else to occupy one’s time.’
‘The Beagle has its own naturalist, in Mr Darwin here.’
Darwin, who had been miles away, reliving the flaming explosion of his gun into Covington’s ear over and over again in his mind, came to with a start. ‘What? I’m sorry ... I do beg your pardon ...’
‘Mr Lawson here was telling us of the varieties by which the wildlife of each island may be distinguished, and of his Robinson Crusoe existence.’
/> ‘Ah, but you will be interested to hear, Mr Darwin, that these islands had their own Robinson Crusoe,’ related Lawson, pressing on to spare his inattentive guest any further embarrassment. ‘His name was Patrick Watkins, an Irishman who was shipwrecked here at the turn of the century. He built a hut, and planted some potatoes he retrieved from his ship, and made a healthy living of it. By the time a vessel arrived to rescue him, he had become a ragged muffin, with wild, matted red hair and a beard down to his knees, and was sufficiently content that he quite refused to leave. He even abducted a Negro from a passing whaler to serve as his Man Friday, but the fellow escaped.’
A chuckle rippled round the table.
‘You say that you are a naturalist, Mr Darwin.’
‘Indeed.’
‘Then you will be aware that the islands are volcanic, and of comparatively recent origin?’
‘One could hardly fail to notice it.’
‘It is my belief that we are not the only Robinson Crusoes here, Mr Darwin. The animal population of these islands finds its echo on the South American mainland. The south-easterlies wash driftwood from the mainland against our shores, as well as bamboo, cane-stalks and palm-nuts. One can see them strewn across the beaches at low tide. I believe that the animals of these islands floated across the Pacific on these natural rafts, and adapted to their surroundings once they had arrived. It is why there are no frogs or toads here.’
‘Of course!’ said Darwin. ‘Because such reptiles cannot abide salt water.’
‘Then the Galapagos are not an original centre of creation, but have been colonized since from other lands,’ said FitzRoy. ‘How fascinating.’
The debate was interrupted by the arrival of Bynoe, on a borrowed horse.
‘Ah, the good doctor,’ said Lawson, gesturing for Bynoe to dismount and take a chair at the feast. ‘How is your patient? Recovering from his most tragic accident, I trust?’
Darwin cast a faintly guilty look in Bynoe’s direction.
The young surgeon looked grave. ‘Covington will live, I am glad to say. He begins to amend. But I do not think he will ever hear again. I am afraid he is become quite deaf.’
‘These finches are not the same.’
‘I beg your pardon, sir?’
‘These finches are not the same as those of Charles Island. Nor, for that matter, do they even resemble each other.’
FitzRoy put down his collecting-cage and seated himself on a rock to watch. Bynoe came over and sat alongside.
‘The ones we took on Charles had short beaks, thick at the base like a bullfinch. They were using them to squeeze berries and break seeds. But these birds have fine beaks, like a warbler. Look - that one there is piercing the fibre of the tree, in search of moisture I suppose.’
The two men observed the finches’ miniature endeavours in absorbed silence for a few minutes, before Bynoe spoke: ‘My God, sir, look. That little fellow there is using a twig like a tool. He appears to be trying to extricate something from the crevice in the trunk - an insect, or a grub.’
‘Is it not extraordinary, Mr Bynoe? It is one of those admirable provisions of infinite wisdom by which each created thing is adapted to the place for which it was intended. One single species has been taken by the Lord and modified into a number of different varieties, for a number of different ends.’
Bynoe agreed that it was indeed extraordinary.
The Beagle lay anchored off the north-west coast of James Island, her decks groaning following a full victualling with thirty live tortoises, several piglets, and twenty sackfuls of convict-grown pumpkins and potatoes purchased from Mr Lawson for the journey home. The piglets, Lieutenant Wickham had noted with wry amusement, had been fetched aboard two by two. Now, the officers’ collecting party was making a final sweep through the lowland thickets of Buccaneer Cove, just behind the rocky shore: it was to be the last halt of their visit to the islands.
Darwin, feeling debilitated and irritable and curiously bereft without the ministrations of his servant, had marched ahead: he now found himself suddenly at the centre of a clandestine meeting of several rust-red, swishing-tailed Amblyrhynchus. As the beasts adjourned their furtive business and lumbered away across the black lava, he was struck by the primeval nature of the scene: the reptiles had been first to colonize this virgin land, ahead of the higher mammals who were now driving them to extinction, the same process as had occurred throughout the rest of the earth during an earlier epoch. These land lizards, presumably, had transmuted from the marine lizards that had swum out to the newborn territory, just as the land tortoises would have transmuted from the sea turtles that were still to be seen making their laborious circuits of the islands. What was the creative force behind this explosion of life? Was it all controlled by the good Lord Himself? Or was it out of His hands, a process set in motion at the beginning of time that had been allowed to run riot of its own volition? One conclusion seemed reasonably certain: any species that moved into a new territory was reshaped by its altered environment to an extraordinary degree. Quite how, he did not know. There were clues here, he was sure, to that mystery of mysteries, the first appearance of new beings on the face of the earth; clues that might help to undermine the very stability of species itself. But they felt frustratingly and elusively out of reach. Here was a bare, naked rock that had been clothed for the first time in the not-too-distant past; here should have been everything he needed to crack the mystery. But in the absence of shade, with no escape from the beating sun, his head aching, his boils chafing and his guts rumbling, his brain simply refused to apply itself. He hated these islands, he realized. It was hard to imagine a location so entirely useless to civilized man, or even to the larger mammals.
Bynoe pushed through the leafless brush, mopping the sweat from his brow.
‘Presents for you, Philos. For your collection. I found them in a fissure in the rock.’
Darwin forced himself to remember his manners. ‘That is extremely decent of you, Bynoe. You oblige me.’
The young surgeon held out a boxful of giant tortoise eggs, perfect white spheres some eight inches in diameter. In his other hand he brandished a wooden cage. ‘There are some interesting finches, too, that the skipper thought you should take a look at.’
‘That is very kind ... but I already have a pair.’
Darwin held up his own collecting-cage in which a sooty-coloured male finch and its tobacco-coloured mate twittered with annoyance.
‘I think these are different, Philos. For one thing, the female of this pair is black.’
‘Did you see the nest?’
‘It was roofed, with a clutch of pink-spotted eggs. I have collected a few of those too.’
‘Then it is almost certainly the same species. I dare say the female plumage darkens with age. But please inform the captain that I am most indebted to him for the thought.’
‘I will, Philos, I promise.’
Bynoe moved away again, and Darwin was left to his thoughts once more.
If men and their dogs were now bringing destruction to the tortoise population of the Galapagos, because the huge reptiles were utterly ill-equipped to deal with their new predators, then surely there was no more wonder in the extinction of an entire species than in that of an individual? Was this the explanation for the jumps in the fossil record? Darwin’s mind positively ached with the effort. He felt close, so tantalizingly close, to comprehending the scheme of things - to knowing the Lord’s mind on this most momentous of issues. So close, but still not there.
Chapter Twenty-five
Point Venus, Tahiti, 16 November 1835
Razor-sharp spires of rock, jagged like the shards of a broken window, the glens between them hiding quietly from the light of day; luxuriant groves of coconut palms crowding at their base, interspersed with stands of glossy breadfruit trees and cheerful clusters of bananas; below them, a glassy lagoon whispering softly at the sides of its fringing reef; and beyond that, breaker after breaker of dazzling white foam, beati
ng optimistically against sturdy walls of coral, built up across the centuries by the herculean efforts of myriad tiny sea creatures. It was a picture all of them had seen a hundred times in engravings and watercolours, and daubed upon the canvas of their imaginations; but flushed with the brilliant light of the Pacific sky, it took on a welcoming glow to melt the weariest heart.
‘Otaheite,’ intoned FitzRoy reverentially.
‘I apprehend that we are now to call it Tahiti,’ objected Darwin.
‘Indeed we are,’ said FitzRoy, ‘but Cook called it Otaheite by mistake, and I have too much respect for the great man to call it by any other name.’
It had been a glorious crossing, the Beagle swept across the Pacific on the warm trade winds, her studding-sails set, eating up the miles at a rate of one hundred and forty a day. The maindeck was thick with tortoises, an array of domes to match St Mark’s Basilica in Venice, all sadly destined for the cooking-pot - save one fortunate individual by the name of Harry, which had been earmarked by Darwin as a domestic pet. Quite how his father would react to the sight of a giant Galapagos tortoise ploughing through his flower-beds was a question he intended to address at a later date.
The depth-sounding was called out as ten fathoms, and with it came the news that the tallow at the end of the leadline was no longer picking up dead coral and sand but impressions of the living reef. FitzRoy gave orders for the yards to be trimmed round, the anchor cables to be ranged and anchor buoy ropes to be made ready. As the Beagle swerved impeccably into Matavai Bay, her foretopsail was backed, the rest of the sails were furled, and the anchor was released into the turquoise water. This was the exact spot, he reflected, from which Cook and Banks had observed the transit of Venus in 1769, and the knowledge gave him a thrill of association. Point Venus was one of the key points in Beaufort’s chain of meridian distances around the globe, so FitzRoy, too, had celestial observations to make; after which there remained the research into the formation of coral islands that the hydrographer had asked him to undertake, and the unpleasant business of extracting a fine from the Tahitians at the behest of Commodore Mason. Much as he disliked doing that gentleman’s dirty work, he had sailed so close to the wind in the matter of the Challenger that he dared not rock the boat any further.