Galapagos Regained (63 page)

Piloting the flying-machine along a course that veered into the bay and back to the beach, Léourier dropped anchor in a black dune, then moored the gondola a mere three feet above the ground. Chloe jumped onto a tract of tuff, raced to the barrel, and glanced at the notice board. A third Kaffir War had broken out in Southern Africa. The United States Congress had passed a Fugitive Slave Law. Alfred Tennyson was now the British Poet Laureate.

Like Joe the poacher gutting an ill-gotten deer, she plunged both hands into the barrel's papery depths. She sifted through scores of packets, inspected dozens of envelopes, but found nothing bearing her name. Melancholy swelled within her, a lump of indigestible disappointment. Whither Algernon? Had he gambled away his three hundred
contos de réis
on the stern-wheeler back to Belém? Was Papa still alive? Had his Holborn Workhouse masters tasked him to death?

Throughout Post Office Bay several species of chaos reigned. In keeping with Kommandant Hengstenberg's directive, the prison guards and their former charges had climbed aboard the
Hippolyta,
cast off the mooring lines, and set her adrift. Alas, none of the embryonic Marxians knew how to skipper a two-masted schooner, and so everyone began screaming imprecations at his comrades. Hengstenberg held the helm, doing his best to steer the vessel towards Albemarle, though until somebody figured out how to hoist the sails his efforts would clearly be in vain. The
Cumorah,
meanwhile, was on the point of putting to sea, Rebecca Eggwort having piloted the shallop out of its berth whilst the other sultanas coiled the lines and spread the canvas. But the
Cumorah
's departure would not be free of complication, for Tappert and Hatch had just arrived on the shore. Charging down the wharf, the unhappy Latter-Day Saints addressed the renegade women in tones of urgent indignation.

“Mildred, bring that boat back here!” shouted Tappert.

“Not in a million years, you salamander!” Mildred replied.

A boulder came hurtling over the cinder cones and crashed into the bay, throwing up a funnel of spray.

“Kitty, you got no right leavin' us to the volcano's wrath!” cried Hatch.

“We're leavin' you to God's mercy!” explained Kitty.

“You got no right doin' that, either!”

“Cleavewife Patricia, you can't take my sons from me!” wailed Tappert.

“You don't even know their names!” retorted Patricia. “In fact, you don't even know they're your sons!”

“Where's my husband?” inquired Rebecca Eggwort.

“We hanged him!” answered Hatch.

“Successfully?”

“Yes!”

“You still can't come with us!” shouted Rebecca.

Chloe hurried back to the airship and climbed the rope ladder to the larboard hatch, thus prompting Léourier to raise the anchor, ignite the boiler, and take flight.

Eventually the bewildered Marxians on the
Hippolyta
concluded that, since the
Cumorah
was likewise headed for Albemarle, they should exploit the nautical expertise of Eggwort's harem. When at last the schooner came within shouting distance of the shallop, Hengstenberg pleaded with Rebecca to send over her best sailors. Shortly before the
Lamarck
blew free of the harbor, Chloe slid the glass through the larboard window and beheld four erstwhile Mormon wives row themselves to the
Hippolyta,
scramble aboard, and set the schooner on a westerly course, Hagar in command, Miriam at the helm.

One hour later the flying-machine alighted on Hood's Isle. Chloe surveyed her fellow adventurers, all of them faint from hunger and exhaustion following a morning filled with a raging volcano, a seraglio rebellion, a Socialist revolution, an aerial rescue, Stopsack's assassination, and Eggwort's fateful encounter with the noose. Yitogua and Rapra, the Huancabambas who'd stayed behind, had cooked up a large quantity of crab chowder, and the vulcaneers gratefully availed themselves of the feast, as did Ralph and Solange.

“We played our parts admirably, don't you think, Chloe?” said Mr. Chadwick. “Our aeronaut, the Indians, the ex–vicar of Wroxton—and, of course, you yourself. I daresay, I found the whole
scenario
exhilarating.”

“I did not share your amusement,” said Chloe. “I shan't soon forget the image of Ralph with a rope about his neck.”

“Nor shall I,” said Solange.

“To say nothing of our sea-witch's noose,” said Chloe.

“An artifact arguably even less amusing than Ralph's noose,” said Solange.

Everyone agreed that siestas were in order. The plan presented no logistical difficulties, Yitogua and Rapra having readied a lean-to for Ralph and a hovel for Solange. Yawning extravagantly, Chloe stumbled to her shack, collapsed on the seaweed mattress, and attempted to quiet her brain.

But the organ declined to cooperate, being obsessed with the shattering effect her testimony had exerted on Tim the anarchist, Harry the panderer, and Joe the poacher. Having successfully subtracted God from the worldviews of three penal-colony inmates, was she not now obligated—for her father's sake and perhaps the human race's as well—to head home bearing a panoply of Galápagos fauna? Was she not duty-bound to make unbelievers of as many Anglican judges as possible? For an hour the problem tormented her, and then by the grace of Morpheus she drifted off to sleep.

*   *   *

Awakening in darkness, she left her shack and wandered towards the inlet, drawn by the pulsing of the surf and the guttural discourse of the sea lions. A wash of stars spilled across the equatorial sky. The moonlit breakers wore coronas of foam. Anchored to the beach, the
Lamarck
rocked on its tether. Dressed in silk shifts improvised from the airship's stores of balloon material, Ralph and Solange sat together on a lava boulder, limned by the glow of the cooking fires and speaking softly to each other. As Chloe drew near, her friends stiffened and their voices dropped away. The topic of their conversation, evidently, had been she herself.

Rumbling like shook canvas, the tide rolled in. The sea lions growled sotto voce. After an awkward interval, Ralph spoke to Chloe: “We've decided that, rather than brooding any further on the question, we shall put it to you.”

“The question being, in a word, matrimony,” said Solange.

An eddy of jealousy swirled through Chloe—a reasonable reaction, she decided, given her dalliances with Ralph and her residual yearning for his prowess—but it quickly passed, her feelings towards the mariner being no longer amorous, and how wonderful that two people she held in such high regard had become for each other a source of joy.

“Let me be first to congratulate you,” she said.

“You don't understand,” said Ralph. “I desire to marry
you,
the woman who saved my life.”

“I, too, wish to spend my remaining years basking in my deliverer's smile,” said Solange. “Occasionally I've bitten the Sapphic apple, and I'll wager that any she-devil worthy of the name would find such fruit to her liking.”

As if responding to this peculiar conversation, the sea lions emitted a strange laughing noise: perhaps they were guffawing at her friends' operatic emotions, or perhaps they were amused by the human preoccupation with matrimony—Chloe couldn't tell.

“You should know that, owing to the pleasure I took in playing Edward Cabot, I mean to retire from the sea and become an actor,” Ralph persisted. “My fair philosopher, you will have in me both a loving husband and a sympathetic colleague.”

“My own ambitions are no less lofty,” said Solange. “One day I shall be mistress of my own house, a brothel as elegant as the cathedral in Belém.”

“In making your decision take all the time you need,” said Ralph.

“Though sooner would be preferable to later,” said Solange.

“Perhaps I'll pick neither of you,” Chloe declared. “For it seems I've also sparked romantic sentiments in Mr. Chadwick and Capitaine Léourier.”

“The vicar?” said Ralph, indignant. “I think not.”

“The Frenchman?” said Solange, incredulous. “How risible.”

“Dear friends, I am flattered by your proposals,” said Chloe. “I can imagine many reasons to become your wife, Ralph. And though my inclinations don't correspond to yours, Solange, I shan't deny your witchy charms. As for seeking lost civilizations with Léourier, I confess to finding glamour in the idea. And Mr. Chadwick? Surely he would prove a fond and devoted helpmate. But betrothal is the last thing on my mind,
mes amis,
for I fear my father yet languishes in the workhouse, and so I must decide whether our fellowship should still attempt to win the ten thousand pounds.”

“I have an opinion on the matter,” said Solange.

“So do I,” said Ralph.

“Permit me to suggest that we three now walk together along the beach of this fair isle,” said Chloe, “speaking not a word of matrimony or Shelley Prizes but instead reviewing our adventures.” Her friends dipped their heads in assent. “The murmur of the surf will soothe us, likewise the lowing of the sea lions, and is there any sight so enchanting as moonbeams dancing on spindrift?”

 

15

A Book is Born, a Bishop Is Bested, and a Scientist Receives Solace on His Deathbed

Throughout the week that followed the noisy and extravagant rescue of her friends, Chloe pondered the quartet of marriage proposals she'd received on that tumultuous day. Although she could no longer read the transmutation sketch, its pages having been converted into skyrocket nose cones, her mind kept circling back to the author's argument concerning sexual selection. According to Mr. Darwin, the female gender, vertebrates and invertebrates alike, had played as decisive a role in evolutionary events on planet Earth as had their male counterparts—a notion she found so congenial as to be exhilarating.

As decisive a role? Quite so. For the choice of who might one day confer a child on Miss Chloe Bathurst—whether the mariner, the aeronaut, the vicar, or, against the odds, the sea-witch—ultimately lay with her. That said, Chloe felt no special desire to bring forth a baby (a category of mammal that had rarely stirred in her any emotion loftier than indifference), and she would always count her miscarriage during the premiere of
The Haunted Priory
amongst her life's more fortunate turns.

Although she had no idea what sort of husband and father Ralph might make, everyone believed he was the best person to fill the late Jonathan Stopsack's post. Despite this vote of confidence, Ralph assumed the mantle of Interim Governor only after his fellow adventurers promised to provide him with daily counsel. The first order of business, the new junto agreed, must be getting the half-dozen Indians safely home to the Jequetepeque valley. Léourier soon decided that the
Lamarck
would be equal to the task, having borne himself and five others over the Andes with only a minor disaster involving condors.

The ceremony of farewell occurred in Black Turtle Cove, the flying-machine bobbing about on its tether, envelope fully inflated, anchor embedded in the sand. At long last the European explorers and the Peruvian aborigines had discharged their duties to one another. The scales of obligation stood in equipoise. Hands were shaken, tears shed, embraces solicited and accepted, jokes traded in fractured Quechua and pidgin English.

Slowly and solemnly, Lady Omega's former disciples climbed aboard the
Lamarck,
Cuniche pausing long enough to inform Chloe that, although he and the other Huancabambas had taken little satisfaction in learning about Jehovah-Jesus, portraying transplanted Hebrews, living like savages in the Indefatigable mangrove glades, or filling tortoise shells with guano, the eruption had greatly amused them, and they would be “pleased to build another volcano for Señorita Bathurst one day.” No sooner had Chloe thanked the Indian for his sly sentiments than a favoring wind swept across the shore. Léourier ordered the anchor raised, then fired up the boiler, manned the helm, and set about bearing the Indians back across the Humboldt Current to the mainland.

It was apparent to neither Chloe nor Léourier when they would see each other again. Before his departure from Peru for Galápagos, the aeronaut had burdened the
Lamarck
with, as he put it, “every last drop of distilled petroleum in Puerto Etén.” Although he had sufficient fuel to reach the Jequetepeque valley, he would have to postpone his return until he located more kerosene, “and God alone can reckon where I'll find it—and even He, being nonexistent, will have difficulty making the calculation.” That said, Léourier declared that he was determined to “cast an eye on my fellow explorers once again, and perhaps even talk some of you into joining the search for El Dorado.”

As far as Chloe could tell, her silence concerning Ralph's marriage proposal had caused no rift between them, and so she eagerly played her new part as his grand vizier. She and her friends had recently moved to the hacienda, where they enjoyed the services of the four furloughed Ecuadorians (who now received a weekly stipend of sixpence from the treasury of Her Majesty's Galápagos Protectorate). Much to Chloe's satisfaction, Ralph proved happy to indulge her obsession with shielding the tortoises from the predations of visiting brigs. Perhaps this was his way of wooing her, but in any event she was pleased to draft a gubernatorial decree to the effect that all vessels landing in the Encantadas must assent to a thirty percent reduction in the traditional hunting quotas or face imprisonment in Mephistropolis for poaching.

Beyond advising Ralph, Chloe took it upon herself to read the late Governor's mail, for packets addressed to that unfortunate official routinely appeared in the Colnett barrel, word of his death having not yet reached England. Thus did she learn that, owing to the complaints of the archipelago's Ecuadorian proprietors, Prime Minister Russell no longer regarded Jonathan Stopsack as the right man for the job. Rare was the week in which Whitehall had not received from Quito a denunciation of Stopsack's failure to increase
orchilla-
dye production, clean out the pirate havens on Abingdon Isle, impose a tortoise-catching fee on the whaling masters, or solve the Eggwort problem. The ax, in fact, had fallen. As of Lord Russell's most recent letter, a replacement governor, one Richard Hilliker, would soon be dispatched to Indefatigable aboard H.M.S
Apogee,
under the command of Captain Hugh Pritchard.