The next few hours, all that remained of the short southern day, were spent climbing to the frost-shattered summit of Mount de la Cruz to survey the land around. Even though the peak was only two thousand feet above the shore, it was a hard slog. All of Tierra del Fuego’s lowlands seemed to be covered by a deep bed of swampy peat: even in the forest, the ground was a thick, putrefying bog, overlaid with spongy moss and fallen trees, into which the party frequently sank up to their knees. Finally, they reached the sleet-scoured rock above the treeline, took their round of angles, and left a soldered canister - containing a crew list and a handful of British coins - beneath a cairn for posterity.
When they clambered back down to the beach, there was still no sign of the Fuegians, but the canisters were gone. FitzRoy took another two, placed them in the same location, and retreated to the edge of the clearing. Then, with the exception of Midshipman King, he sent the sailors back to the boats. With precautionary pistols loaded, he and King sat on their haunches, their breath condensing in the evening gloom, and waited silently for night to fall.
After a long, cold half-hour, the dark rectangles between the tree trunks were brought into focus by smoky torches. There was a whispering in the forest, a strange, guttural confection of clicks and throat-clearings. King, nervous, edged closer to FitzRoy. Finally, the red-painted man appeared at the far edge of the clearing, tentative, wary. They could see him better now. He had the eyes of a Chinee, black, slanted at an oblique angle to his nose, which was narrow at the bridge but flattened at the point, where his nostrils flared against his face. Beneath these two black holes his face was split in two by an exceptionally wide, full-lipped mouth. His teeth, bared in his nervousness, were flat and rotten, like those of a badly tended horse; no sharp canine points disturbed their even brown line. His chin was weak and small, and retreated into the thick muscular trunk of his neck. His shoulders were square, his upper body tremendously powerful under its broad coating of fat, weighing down on the short bow legs beneath it; his feet were turned inward, his toes levelled off in a perfect rectangle. As the Indian paused, considering flight, FitzRoy could see that the backs of his thighs were wrinkled like an old man’s; presumably from a lifetime of squatting on his haunches. He was like no other creature, man or beast, that FitzRoy had ever seen.
The Fuegian advanced slowly and cautiously towards the two canisters, keeping his eyes on FitzRoy and King throughout, inching forward until his fingers closed on his prize. His fellows watched from behind tree trunks and flaming brands, poised for a general evacuation. But just as he was about to dart for the safety of the woods clutching his reward, FitzRoy spoke in a calm, clear voice: ‘Yammerschooner.’
The man bared his horse-teeth again, not from nerves, this time, but in a smile. Then he seized the two canisters and darted back a pace or two, but stayed poised there, half lit on the edge of the clearing.
Slowly FitzRoy extracted a box of Promethean matches from his pocket, with a small glass bottle containing the ignition mixture of asbestos and sulphuric acid. He unscrewed the lid and dipped the match head into the liquid. It ignited instantly, and a gasp ran round the clearing to see fire flare so mysteriously from one end of a tiny wooden stick. FitzRoy held the flaming Promethean aloft.
‘Yammerschooner,’ he repeated.
Curiosity overcame the red-painted man’s fear, and he edged forward.
‘Mr King,’ whispered FitzRoy, ‘do you have any tobacco about your person?’
‘Yes sir.’
‘Slowly now.’
Gingerly, King removed his tobacco pouch from his pocket, extracted a pinch and held it forward.
‘Tabac, tabac,’ said FitzRoy. It was a word the Patagonians had learned. Perhaps it had filtered this far south as well. Certainly the sight of the dried leaves seemed to interest the Fuegian. A few clicks with his tongue and he beckoned the white-painted man and his blue colleague into the clearing.
‘He’s got something in a sack, sir.’
The white-daubed Indian was indeed holding a sack sewn from animal skin, which appeared to be wriggling in his grasp. The man edged forward, gestured eagerly at King’s full tobacco pouch, then opened the sack to reveal the wet eyes and bemused face of a month-old puppy. From the Indian’s gestures it was clear that he wanted to trade.
‘Shall I give him the tobacco, sir?’
‘Well, we might benefit from a ship’s dog. Why not?’
King poured the tobacco into the proffered sack, keeping the leather pouch back for himself, and took the puppy from the Fuegian by the scruff of its neck. There were friendly grins all round.
King, however, wrinkled his nose in disgust. ‘The stench is frightful, sir.’
It was indeed. On close inspection, it became clear that the Indians, as well as decorating themselves in outlandishly bright colours, had smeared their naked bodies from head to toe with an insulating coat of rancid seal fat. King had to restrain the puppy from licking its former owners.
‘Keep smiling, if you can bear to,’ said FitzRoy, through a fixed grin.
The white-painted man gestured for the pair to enter the wigwam. King looked enquiringly at FitzRoy, who nodded, and they crawled beneath the tent-flap, into a close, dark world, which reeked of stale smoke and rotting sealskin. The men followed, extinguishing their flaming brands, and more men after them, then women and children, until the tent was heaving with Indians, and curious faces filled the triangle left at the open flap. Brushwood was brought, and before long the wigwam was filled with leaping flames and eye-watering clouds of smoke. Again, FitzRoy mounted a match-lighting demonstration to the amazed crowd, before making a present of box and bottle to the red-painted man.
‘Prometheans,’ he said.
‘Prometheans,’ repeated the Fuegian, remarkably accurately. FitzRoy placed a finger to his own chest.
‘I am Captain FitzRoy.’
The red man pointed to his own chest and repeated gravely: ‘I am Captain FitzRoy.’ The watching crowd in turn indicated themselves and murmured that they, too, were Captain FitzRoy.
FitzRoy smiled, genuinely this time, and gestured to indicate King and himself. ‘Englishmen,’ he announced, and then, pointing to the red man, he added: ‘Indian.’
‘Englishmen,’ repeated most of the Fuegians, each indicating his or her fellow, before pointing out FitzRoy and announcing, ‘Indian.’
‘Did you fetch the notebook?’ FitzRoy asked King, whereupon a chorus of Fuegians also enquired whether King had fetched the notebook.
‘They’re first-rate mimics, sir. It’s why nobody has ever learned their language,’ King explained, handing the book across.
‘Why nobody has ever learned their language,’ added a small boy.
‘They’re first-rate mimics, sir. It’s,’ said a fat lady helpfully.
‘Look,’ said King, shoving a finger up one nostril and crossing his eyes.
‘Look,’ repeated the Fuegians, and every Indian in the tent pulled the same face.
‘This is getting us nowhere,’ sighed FitzRoy.
‘This is getting us nowhere,’ sighed the blue man.
So FitzRoy took the pen, and started to sketch a nearby woman instead. Eagerly, the Indians gathered round to look. A reverential silence settled upon the tent. Emboldened, FitzRoy produced his handkerchief and wiped the white streaks from the woman’s face. She did not object, but adopted the air of a dignified hospital patient. When the sketch was finished, to general approbation, FitzRoy was rewarded by his model, who ornamented his face with white streaks in turn. There were murmurs of approval all round.
Food was brought: mussels, sea-eggs, yellow tree-fungus and a huge slab of putrid elephant seal blubber two and a half inches thick. This last item reeked more fiercely - if such a thing were possible - than any of the inhabitants of the tent. The Fuegians took it in turns to heat the blubber on the fire until it crackled and bubbled, before drawing it through their teeth and squeezing out the rancid oil. Then the slab was passed
on so that the next person might repeat the process, all of them expressing exaggerated delight at the richness of this delicacy. Finally, the blubber was offered to King.
‘I would refrain from trying that if I were you, unless you wish to spend the next fortnight clutching your stomach in the heads,’ remarked FitzRoy, to a chorus of imitations.
Both men politely declined the offer, which seemed to cause not the slightest offence. The blubber slab was passed instead to a small child, whose mother tried ineffectively to hack off a piece with a sharpened mussel shell. FitzRoy drew his knife and came to her assistance, an action that drew gasps of admiration - not for his gallantry but for the razor-sharp blade he had produced. Making beseeching noises, the white-painted Fuegian who had traded the dog for King’s tobacco now indicated that he wished to have the knife as a gift. FitzRoy demurred: it would not do, he reasoned, to start arming the natives.
A general consultation followed, and with great reverence a wicker basket was produced for FitzRoy’s benefit. He opened it. Inside was a sailor’s old mitten, and a fragment of Guernsey frock.
‘These are regular museum pieces,’ breathed FitzRoy. ‘They must be all of a century old.’
‘I wouldn’t give a farthing for them,’ snorted King under his breath.
Encouraged by the apparent show of interest, the white-painted Indian patted his stomach enthusiastically, then patted FitzRoy’s stomach and chest in a show of friendship, but to no avail. Still the Englishman would not trade. Rebuffed, the Indian left the tent in some dudgeon, whereupon the nocturnal silence outside was interrupted by curious thrashing and beating sounds, as if the would-be trader was laying about the nearby vegetation with a switch. After a minute or two he returned, flushed but evidently pleased with whatever he had done. FitzRoy and King were on the point of dismissing the episode as just one more of the evening’s inexplicable curiosities, when the man suddenly lunged forward, grasped the knife from its sheath on FitzRoy’s belt, and hurled himself at one wall of the tent. The skins on that side gave way immediately, and the white-painted man was gone, away into the night air by means of the passage he had just created. Of course. How could I have been so foolish? FitzRoy admonished himself. He has built himself an escape route while we sat here like two idiots.
The other Fuegians in the tent now flinched in fear, as if afraid that the Europeans might lash out and strike them, as a punishment for the misdeeds of their fellow. But so nonsensical was the whole episode that FitzRoy burst out laughing instead, as much at his own stupidity as at the antics of the thief.
‘I think we can overlook the loss of one case-knife in the circumstances,’ he conceded, and King concurred gratefully.
The evening had not delivered its last surprise, however. Within a quarter-hour the man had returned, painted black this time, his hair fluffed up wildly, and without a grass pleat that had previously functioned as a headband. FitzRoy, astonished, jutted out a hand to demand the return of his knife. Assuming an expression of aggrieved innocence, and with much headshaking and shoulder-shrugging, the Indian endeavoured to indicate that he had no idea what the Englishman was talking about.
‘Extraordinary,’ murmured FitzRoy to King. ‘He thinks that this disguise - for such we must presume it - has fooled us thoroughly.’
‘Extraordinary,’ agreed a nearby woman.
‘Fooled us thoroughly,’ added the blue-painted man.
‘They’re like a crowd of little kids,’ scoffed King.
The newly blackened Indian went on the attack now, shouting angrily at King, pointing at the puppy and demanding its return. He was sweating profusely in the fire-heat, FitzRoy noticed, as were all the Indians, even though they were naked and the outside temperature had dropped below freezing.
‘I feel it would be best if you returned the dog,’ he whispered to King.
‘But the savage has got all my tobacco, sir.’
‘On this occasion, the better part of valour is discretion. Let us take our leave.’
So they bade farewell to the assembled throng, and made their way down to the boats by moonlight, expertly parroted quotations from Henry VI Part 2 ringing in their ears.
As winter had given way imperceptibly to spring, the Beagle had finally battled its way up to the Pacific, where the three boats had made a rendezvous once more. This time King had ordered the Adelaide north, to explore the galaxy of tiny islands which constituted the coast of Araucania, while the Beagle had been sent south, down the storm-beaten west coast of Tierra del Fuego, a maze of islets, rocks, cliffs and fierce breakers. Ceaselessly they probed for channels, close-working against the wind and tide amid howling blizzards; it was, as FitzRoy wrote in his log, ‘like trying to do a jig-saw through a key-hole’. He had become as bearded, wiry and weatherbeaten as his crew, but he prided himself that their morale had stayed high, and that not one man had been lost to disease or sickness.
After the disaster of the Maldonado storm, the barometer and sympiesometer had proved reliable watchdogs, warning them to find sheltered anchorage ahead of the worst gales, and no further crew members had been lost to the elements. It was not the same, he knew, on board the other ships. Mr Alexander Millar of the Adelaide had died of inflammation of the bowels, and both vessels had as many as a quarter of their people in the sick lists. The Beagle’s only casualty had been Mr Murray, who had slipped on a wet deck and dislocated his shoulder, in a bay that had subsequently been named Dislocation Harbour; the master had since made a complete recovery.
Slowly the map of the west coast had taken shape. They had discovered Otway Bay, Stokes Bay, Lort Island, Kempe Island and Murray Passage, and had successfully climbed Mount Skyring, a peak discovered by the Adelaide in the Barbara Channel the previous winter. The rocks on the summit had been so magnetic as to render FitzRoy’s compass useless; he had reason once more to regret the absence of a stratigrapher on board. What if there was mineral wealth waiting to be discovered in the mountains of Tierra del Fuego? There had been shell beds, too, on Mount Skyring. Was this further proof of the Biblical flood? As he dined in his cabin on soup and duff, the rain lashing against the skylight, he wrestled alone with these great questions.
January - high summer, although it was hard to discern any difference from the southern winter - had found the Beagle warping in and out of Desolate Bay; a risky process, with the ever-present danger of losing an anchor, but nonetheless safer than trying to close-manoeuvre a square-rigger in such a confined space. She had anchored at last in a narrow road, and boats had been sent out to survey the barren granite hills of Cape Desolation. FitzRoy and Stokes, their work done, had made it safely back to the ship. Now Murray and his men were missing. The search parties had found no sign of a sail. Had Murray struck a rock and drowned? To lose so many men ... It simply did not bear thinking about. FitzRoy shivered, turned up his collar against the rain, shut his eyes momentarily against the stress, and steadied himself instinctively against the pitching of the deck. He headed for the companionway and the sanctuary of his cabin.
He was awakened just after six bells of the middle watch by his steward pounding on the door. ‘By your leave, you’d better come quickly, sir. There’s a sail.’
FitzRoy fumbled for his watch. Ten past three in the morning. He grabbed his uniform, struggled into it and made his way up on deck. On the port side of the ship, lookouts with lanterns were straining their eyes towards a tiny, indistinct shape in the water. It most certainly wasn’t the whaleboat. It wasn’t a native canoe either.
Boatswain Sorrell, who had charge of the middle watch, was directing operations with more agitation than ever; he seized upon the advent of FitzRoy’s authority with conspicuous relief.
‘I called, “What ship?” sir, but the wind was too loud for them to hear - leastways, they never replied.’
‘Send up a night signal, Mr Sorrell. A flare.’
‘Aye aye sir. Which signal, sir?’
‘Any signal, Mr Sorrell. Something we can see them by,’ sa
id FitzRoy, exasperated.
A moment later, the flare went up.
‘Bless my soul,’ exclaimed FitzRoy.
There, fifty yards off the port bow in a choppy sea, was some kind of ... basket, roughly assembled from branches, canvas and mud, half full of filthy water. Inside, drenched, emaciated and shaking with cold, were three white-clad figures. The man at the paddle FitzRoy recognized from his hair as Coxswain Bennet. The other men, bailing furiously with their south-westers, were two of the sailors - Morgan and Rix, by the look of it. They were clad only in their flimsy cotton undershirts. How the ramshackle vessel had ever made it on to water at all, let alone half a mile out into the bay, was a complete mystery.
‘Hoist out the cutter at once!’
‘Aye aye sir!’
A burst of frenzied activity followed, and within five minutes FitzRoy was lifting the sodden, exhausted men aboard personally. Blankets were furled round them, and hot soup forced between chattering teeth. Concerned as he was, it was clear that FitzRoy could not afford to waste a second.
‘What happened, Mr Bennet? Where is Mr Murray?’
‘We were attacked, sir, by the savages. They stole the whaleboat in the night, with its masts, sails and all our provisions and weapons. Their vicinity was not at all suspected.’
‘Were not lookouts posted, as I ordered?’
‘I repeat, sir, that their vicinity was not at all suspected. Cape Desolation is a most remote location. They showed a most dexterous cunning, sir.’
‘And this - this basket?’
‘Morgan is from Wales, sir. They sail such baskets on the rivers there.’
‘We call it a coracle, sir,’ chipped in Morgan.