Mr Darwin's Shooter (15 page)

Covington had been struck on the forehead and bled a trickle. His pocket violin had her bridge broken and strings awry, but was otherwise intact. He huddled her to him and promised repair. The rain stopped and cloud lifted away from the trees in misty patches. The sun came over a rise and smacked him in the eyes. ‘Hey ho,' he whistled, ‘what am I to do?'
Laugh
, for what else was there to do in the pit of fortune?

He strung his breeches on a bush and waited for them to dry. He bathed in a nearby stream that amazed him with its many clam shells, all pearly within. Spotted flowers were everywhere on the forest floor, and ropes of vines. He could not have been distant from the Beagle but had never been so far inland on any of his earlier voyaging. It felt like another world, a better and a stranger one. His Polly sounded dull and damp when he plunked her in his lap, but Lord, she had known worse. Covington fought battle with a giant mosquito, and won.

He craned his neck. Bahia stood as distant from his hopes as poop deck stood from topgallant forecastle, or a boneyard stood from the House of Lords. But would that ever discourage him? Fixing his eyes upwards he gave thanks for life, and saw through a gap in the trees his fall-marks streaked from ledge to ledge. There was no trail
back the way he had come. When he tried to re-ascend he slithered down again.

He was late returning and knew he was up for a flogging. But what matter, he thought, still somewhat dizzy, ‘Let me conspire with fate or die in a devil's nightcap.' He returned to the stream and cooled himself in the shallows. His head cleared. He put a feather in his Phipps's hat, that had half-melted in the rain, and with a strip of vine wove a necklace of small flowers. He was filled with a bubbling bravado, finding joy in everything, even to a leech that sucked his ankle of bad blood and swelled to the size of a chestnut. He cleaned his fingernails with a split shell that he tucked in his waistband, took up his broken Polly and wandered a muddy, meandering path through the deeps of the forest. He gave thought to the idea that Brazil might become his home in preference to a flogging.

Thus dreaming of estates where he would keep slaves, but in kindly comfort, selecting females for his use, Covington went on for a time; when, rounding a bend, he heard loud gunshot echoing through trees, and winced, thinking it was aimed in his direction. But then through the woods he saw a figure coming, and lo—and to a great laughter welling inside him—it resolved itself into the spectacle of Mr Midshipman King, jaunty as a fresh cheese.

Covington ducked down to hide himself from an unwanted encounter and planned to stay there, hunched as a stoat, when a pigeon flapped at his feet, stunned but other wise uninjured. Covington's spirit overcame him. He gathered the creature into his hands, sprang up full square to show himself in a column of hazy sunlight, making himself, as it were, into a vision of the kind Mr Earle delighted rendering in water paints—the English sailor ashore in a forest clearing, clad somewhat in the native fashion.

King spluttered, ‘
Covington
? What in the name of Zeus?!'

Covington could not restrain himself, but cackled, and threw the bird up to deny King his prey. As the bird gave a few determined flaps King at close range raised his blunderbuss and let fly with fearsome accuracy. Powder stung Covington's nostrils and the report made a ringing in his ears. Of the bird there was little more to tell: when the smoke cleared there were only a few floating feathers.

King congratulated himself as a great huntsman might, by pounding his chest. ‘Thank you, Covington, what sport! Say we taught that bird to fly!'

Only then was Covington aware of a second figure traipsing from the side bushes with an armful of greenery. King pointed at Covington as he scrambled to his feet, ‘Boom-boom!' and their gent—for it was he—greeted Covington oddly:

‘
Levar flor! Levar flor!
' he muttered, very red in the face. Covington was dumb-foozled. Here was the man who had fingered Covington's scalp; who saw Covington every day within the small compass of their walnut shell; but who mistook Covington for a peon of the place.

‘
¿Que?
' Covington responded, a vicious repartee in his head.

‘
Flor
…
levar flor
… flowers … carry to
pueblo
… to town …'

‘Darwin, you're a nincompoop,' chortled King. ‘Look what he carries—a fiddle!'

The gent laid his seed pods and branchlets on the ground in a tumble of green. ‘Too much, too many,' he grunted, then straightened and met Covington's eye. ‘
You?
'

Covington raised his hat: ‘Aye.'

‘Ah, yes, how could I forget?' he puffed, his phrasing as delicate as if he had said
lumpy noggin
, and then: ‘What brings you to the forest, sailor?'

‘
Alone
,' interposed King—it being against Capt's orders to venture ashore without companions in foreign ports.

‘I wish I could easily tell you,' Covington answered. ‘For I was set upon by a gang and pushed over a cliff.'

‘Is it such a dangerous town? I had not thought so.'

‘Covington is a rogue,' said King. ‘You must not believe a word he tells you.'

Covington bowed, crimping his annoyance. ‘And you must believe your ha'penny is good silver,' he thought to himself.

Darwin studied Covington and Covington studied Darwin in return. This was in effect their first meeting. It would ever be Covington's pride to cloak dependence on good opinion by sending his glance back unflickering.

‘He's cut,' said King.

‘I am sober,' said Covington.

‘You have a nasty
wound
,' said Darwin, and fingered Covington's temple, finding a tender place where skin peeled open. ‘I loathe to do this,' he added aside to King as if Covington had not jug-ears to listen, and then performed a rough bandaging on a gouge that had not bothered Covington at all, using a roll of cotton or tow kept in his rectangular basket that bore the sickly smell of putrefaction.

Covington spluttered his thanks: ‘Sir …'

‘It is nothing,' said he. ‘Now find your way to the ship, taking care not to stumble.'

Words stuck in Covington's throat. He wanted volumes to speak out what was in him. He knew in his heart it boiled down to a plea:
Know me
.

‘Mr D?'

Darwin swung back on Covington, smiling to hear a nickname coined so unaffectedly. ‘Follow the pathway, take the fork by the mulatto's farm, where they keep spotted pigs and grow mango trees. Understand what I say?'

‘
Sir
,' Covington almost pleaded, still trying to get something out that choked him and surprised him by its occurrence in his heart.

‘Yes?' with puzzled impatience. ‘What else, lad?'

Must Covington remind the young gent of what he'd found in him by kneading his nut by the ship's rail?
Friendliness
,
helpfulness
,
adhesiveness
,
amativeness
, just to name four prominences that might yet determine the direction of Covington's life.

‘I am well,' Covington said.

‘Yes, Sailor Covington, excellent, you are well. You are bared to the bone by a cutlass, but you are well. Indeed you are well. Now along with you!'

Covington saw he must fling himself home to the gent if there was any hope in heaven.

‘I cannot,' Covington said.

‘Cannot?'

‘Meaning will not,' quipped King, making a sign with his hands for Darwin's eyes, slashing the fingers of his right hand across the palm of his left, representing a man being flogged.

‘Oh, my Lord, I had not thought of
that
,' Darwin sighed, and sank down onto a rotting log that shifted slightly under his weight, sending out a scurry of beetles that he followed with a glazed eye. His moleskin breeches were stained and caked with dirt; his skin was lumpy with insect bites; beads of sweat decorated his upper lip. Covington liked the picture he made, it was young and adventuresome, beginning a time of hero-worship. But he was half-gone with exhaustion and drink, and impatient, and without further talk scooped his belongings from the ground and stood ready to attend the gent's needs, leaving him only his bird-basket, that was strapped to his back.

‘What now?' the gent growled, submitting and objecting simultaneously to Covington's proffered arrangements.

‘Covington is our hammerman!' shrilled King.

‘Indeed?'

Covington half-bowed, acknowledging his place on earth as a servant. At the same time he was quick to make it seem as if he had been done an injury, or would be, if his
arrangements were questioned. This pertness in his adopting a role unasked-for put Darwin on his mettle, and showed Covington his way forward with him. If a medal was stamped to show their relationship henceforward, it would have sunrays leading back to this moment.

Darwin and King began walking and Covington followed. When they slithered down a slope of red soil and wandered into a country of ferns lofty as a cathedral Covington went along. At every turn Covington came on a little, and Darwin, easing the discomfort Covington's presence caused him, chose to beg assistance. ‘Come over here.'

‘Squire?' Covington leapt forward.

‘Are you afraid of snakes?'

‘I have yet to feel it,' Covington boasted.

‘
Nota bene
,' said Darwin, with his boot planted on something threshing in the leaves. Covington leapt back. The other laughed: ‘What do you call that?'

Covington peered close. ‘A serpent, sir.' But the creature had legs, and Darwin laughed again, proving Covington's ignorance in the natural history of dry land. The creature was as big as a blanket-roll with teeth like a trap, and a head raised in proud alarm. It ran towards King, who leapt and yelled. It changed direction and rollicked towards Darwin, who made a gleeful cry, raised his gun, and blasted it front-on.

‘Do you call this duty?' cried King.

‘Nay, sheer delight,' Darwin answered him.

Soon Covington found that, as well as his Polly Pochette, he carried seed pods on a string around his waist, and
a crude bag woven of banana leaves, in which he hefted a weight of colourful clam shells from the stream bed he had washed in earlier. Still he was willing to carry more! Still the young naturalist kept scooping things up!

The noonday sun was high when King sidled up to Covington and said, ‘We are suffering a great heat.'

Covington said nothing.

‘He believes you are in for a flogging, Covington.'

Covington stared back at King wide-eyed, as if to say, we have not spake of the cat!

‘
He
is your only chance,' King persisted. ‘You shan't have a hope with me.'

‘Hush!' from up ahead.

Darwin raised a warning hand. On a low branch huddled a bird with a long curved beak. Its tail was flat as a paddle, its feathers black as
cachou de Laval
. It had a pale throat-patch that hung in the darkness as pretty as any white peach of Kent.

Darwin took the gun from King and loaded a smaller kind of shot. From branch to branch in the shadows the bird stepped along, squawking low. Covington squatted on his heels and watched. He had scant knowledge of shooting yet admired the hunting mode displayed, the naturalist not spreading himself cheesily in the woods like King, but turning thin sidelong to his target despite his large frame, and raising the gun-barrel deceptively like something in nature. When he fired, the bird fell among brambles with a thud.

‘There's a pickle,' he muttered, and stood with a hand to his belt.

‘Poor sport, Darwin,' carped the Midshipman. ‘Our kingdom for a dog?'

Darwin angled his head, and smiled faintly perspiring at Covington plaintively staring from his ground. Covington beamed his wishes and they lit on the young master with
unspoken understanding.
Should I yap?
Darwin gave the barest nod.

Slipping his load from his shoulders Covington plunged into the thicket. Angry buzzing flies stung him. He went on hands and knees. The soothing gent's voice coaxed him: ‘Be careful, there. Go a little to your left. Mind your bandage. Good man, fine fellow!' Covington crawled in a torment of existence. Welts came on his skin from a hairy vine. Gnats stung him. But he would not have wished himself anywhere else on earth.

He found the bird under his nose already teeming with ants, as if it were made of sugar. Shuffling backwards he emerged holding the dumpy creature unmarked by gunshot, except it oozed blood, as Covington did himself from under his bandage.

‘Whizz-bang, jolly good!' exclaimed King.

Darwin brushed the ants from the feathers and pronounced the bird as belonging to the family of toucans, notable for their great beaks disproportionate to the rest of their bodies. He addressed this information to King, in the manner of King himself—making all things obvious— Covington's brain noting throughout that his name was not used, through having been forgotten again, or withheld in discouragement to over-familiarity, or because with servants it was always just so, when all he longed for was acknowledgement, say as a pet desires a fondle around the ears, as the marmoset Joey had been to his handlers.

While Darwin stood by, King it was who took a little cotton and placed it in the bill and nostrils of the bird to stem its bleeding; King who took a pocket-knife in one hand and with the other parted the feathers along the bird's breastbone, making a rough cut between the outer and inner skin, while Covington knew enough of careful work to know it was damned clumsy.

Darwin growled: ‘Recall, as I showed you, King, use
patience, use care …' (King went slow.) ‘Yet do the whole thing promptly, as I say.' (King went fast.)

A memory returned to Covington's brain. In the first weeks when he never knew this gent except as a piece of yellow bile on a letter-case, King was given his leave to go roaming with a gun. Covington gave thought to who King's companion was on those countryside rambles. Covington's unconscionable jealousy came in a whirl as he stood in the steamy forest, breathing hard, observing the task at hand.

He followed how King treated the head of that bird, for he meant to do better when his day came. King snicked the skin of the ears and tore it over. The eyes soon appeared, as if from the inside of a glove; one broke and the other had a covering of filmy skin that Covington shivered to see, because it still seemed to be looking. King went on fiercely in a panic until the gent hooked him by the shoulder, steered him aside, and extracted the other eye using the point of a quill. ‘Botched,' he said, stifling extreme irritation. King must have thought he said ‘Tops,' for he grinned showing his long teeth and batted his morbid eyelids. Darwin in a few minutes had the feathered cape of the bird smoothed on a sheet of paper.

‘There so,' and the dripping, naked corpse lay in the grass. King whistled his achievement. Gent examined the flesh in silent fashion, and said he would cook it and keep the bones. Everything went into the basket, which Covington carried now, and they set forth to escape the forest.

Covington went ahead of the other two, pretending he was no barnacle on Gent's hull, but really ensuring there was no fork in the track where they might lose each other. If he came to one he looked back and Gent nodded. Within the half hour he found himself at the edge of the lower town, where a thatched hostelry offered meals and grog. Smartly he made himself understood to a Negro, and when Darwin and King arrived was heard calling for ‘a
cup of the good Sangorino for the officers, pray'. He had their beakers ready. He had other matters in hand, including the lighting of a fire and the procurement of a cookpot. Ere long the bird was boiled and cleaned of its flesh, and Gent thanked Covington for his trouble—even to taking a taste of the meat and pronouncing it fair, and bidding Covington to suck upon wine at his expense, and so Covington did, but after his previous night's rort a single cup made him ill in a patch of banana trees; meantime, Darwin and King made merry as schoolboys.

Covington sat shivering on a bench until they were ready, and it was time to follow them to the harbour. He had the beginnings of a fever. The truth was he had never been entirely well since his flogging. From the dockside the cutter was signalled to collect them. Door manned the sweep oar, raising his eyebrows with bemused expectation on sighting Covington all tattered, licking his lips and muttering into his face, ‘Well oh well, 'ere's some Christmas beef all fit for slicin'.'

Climbing the ship's ladder Covington lifted his eyes and saw Capt's lamp burning in his cabin. So he was home. Indeed he was home. So he was doing his tally of miscreants. Indeed he was adding 'em up. Covington felt a trembling in his shanks and cursed himself for cowardice as he traipsed along deck. John Phipps's eyes were upon him, somewhat cold. He had been gone from their bark near twenty-four hours. He would be hanged if Capt read the laws true. And when a hideous Capt emerged from below, and leered, it seemed he would be: ‘I am putting ye to the hoop,' lipped a horned figure with burning eyeballs and the tongue of a lizard. The whole catalogue of a commander's crimes came to him in the grin of a jack-a-dandy—for it was Jemmy Button, a Fuegian wanting clams for his chowder, and not the captain at all.
I am putting ye in my soup
. In hand-me-down gloves and polished shoes Jemmy was a right proper hog in armour. ‘I have mistook a savage
for an aristocrat,' grunted Covington. Jemmy's English was contained to a few words. ‘Where you bin gone, Sailor Cobby?'

‘
I
have “bin gone” nowhere, old sport, 'cept under King's Orders,' Covington replied, holding his breath and getting jigged up and down with Jemmy's arm around him.

‘Sailor Covington?' The voice was Darwin's.

‘Aye?'

With the gent using his name Covington's blood was refreshed.

‘Follow me.'

‘
Aye
.'

Ask Covington what happened next and he would burst his gizzard to tell of it. By silent consent of Capt he accompanied Darwin to his cabin—the cramped poop cabin, which he shared with two others—where he found himself occupied in cleaning, drying, storing and, if ye will believe it, in dispersing the rankest shellfish to the Fuegians' kettle. The gent solicitously asked, ‘Are you ill? Are you up to this?' and when Covington said nay and yea, he disbelieved him, and gave him a swig of gripe water, and a few drops of opiate, after which Covington was fit to carry on in true naval fashion, shedding all tiredness and standing to his colours.

If Covington looked like a beggar in his torn trowsers then so did his gent. There began with him the idea of brothers, the good elder and the willing younger. There began so many other ideas that his brain was a bucket of jewels to think of them.