This Thing Of Darkness (13 page)

‘There’s a canoe up ahead, sir. They’re making a run for it.’

The small black shape of a native canoe was visible against the grey hummocks of the islands off the port side. It was paddling for the safety of the shore with all haste; but the cutter’s full sail and six enthusiastic oarsmen made for an unequal contest. The fact that the canoe was fleeing suggested to the pursuers that they had struck lucky right away. Within twenty minutes they had run her down, guns and swords arrayed in a powerful display, and had made the flimsy bark vessel fast to their own. Inside the canoe sat a Fuegian family, sullen, unmoving, staring at the European sailors. One of the women in the rear section was breastfeeding. It had begun to snow, thick white crystals whipping in on the breeze and melting against the sailors’ faces. FitzRoy noticed that the snow did not dissolve on the Fuegians’ skins: mother and child sat in a mute tableau, a white mantle slowly forming on the woman’s breasts and the child’s face.

‘Search the vessel, Serjeant Baxter.’

Baxter and two of his marines stepped into the canoe, sending it wildly rocking, and poked with their rifles into mounds of mussel shells, brushwood and rotten seal meat. One sent the fireside pile of green leaves flying.

Silently intimidated, the Indians did not move. Hidden in the base of the leaf-pile was a curled section of the whaleboat’s leadline.

‘Well, well, well,’ said FitzRoy.

‘Well, well, well,’ said one of the Fuegians helpfully, the first time that any of them had spoken. FitzRoy ignored him.

‘We will take a hostage, Serjeant Baxter. It is what Captain Cook did when his cutter was stolen in the Pacific, and the boat was returned. Take one of the young men, who has no dependent wife or children.’ He pointed out the youth on the near side of the canoe. ‘Let him be given to understand that he must lead us to the whaleboat, if he values his liberty.’

With various gestures, mainly of the cut-throat variety, and much waving of the severed end of the leadline, the young man was given to understand that he had better co-operate. With a disarming eagerness, he climbed aboard and waved his captors north, between the row of islands, to a narrower, more confined sound that ran parallel to the first.

As they sailed into the unknown, a rough map began to assemble itself in their wake, its legends bearing hasty and literal witness to their passage: Whaleboat Sound, Cape Long Chase, Leadline Island, Thieves Sound. Finally, in the gloom of the mid-evening, spurred on by their eager hostage guide, they rounded a promontory and found themselves in full view of a small Indian village: a cluster of wigwams, men warming seal blubber around a circle of glowing embers, a woman carrying water in a bark bucket, another sewing together two sealskins, children playing naked in the icy shallows. The cutter was upon the unwitting villagers almost before they had realized it. The men round the fire were first to react, jumping to their feet and fleeing into the beech forest. A small child ran terrified towards its mother, who seemed torn between flight and the pull of maternity. As the boat slid rapidly through the shallows, the red-jacketed marines were already over the side and splashing through the low breakers in pursuit. The woman fled. The child began to scream, incessantly, standing forlornly in six inches of cold water.

Are they not going in too heavy-handed, sir?’ said Murray, who looked worried. ‘We don’t even know if these people had anything to do with the theft.’

There was a warning glint in FitzRoy’s eye. ‘Justice is not always pretty, Mr Murray. One of the reasons these people live in such a degraded state is that they seem to have no laws. Not even the law of God - any sort of god. If we do not teach them the difference between right and wrong, then who will do so?’

Murray remained silent. There was something odd about the captain - something not quite right.

After five minutes, the marines had secured the beach, their final tally of prisoners totted up at six women, three children - including the screaming infant - and a man apprehended sleeping in his tent. They had also discovered part of the whaleboat’s sail, the boat’s axe and tool-bag, an oar - already refashioned into a short paddle - and the loom, roughly carved now into a seal club. FitzRoy indicated the lone male, who was squatting on his haunches, cowed and unsure.

‘We appear to have apprehended one of the miscreants, and six of their wives. Take that man hostage. He is to be our second guide. We shall embark immediately.’

‘Don’t you think we should pitch camp ourselves, sir? It is practically dark.’

‘You would do well to keep your counsel, Mr Murray.’

Again Murray saw the strange light in FitzRoy’s eye, and did as he was bidden.

Led now by two mysteriously enthusiastic guides instead of one, both grinning and gesticulating to the sailors to continue rowing north-east, the exhausted party reached the head of Thieves Sound just after nightfall. They had been battling the elements now for almost eighteen hours. Two tents were wearily improvised using the boat’s sails, oars and a boat hook. The two hostages were invited to sleep on the shingle, under a tarpaulin that Murray had given them. FitzRoy, though, could not sleep: he felt alert and alive and suffused with excitement. Odd sensations stirred through his muscles and across his skin, as if his body was no longer his own. He paced the beach until dawn broke, listening to the waves lapping loud against the stones, turning over possible courses of action in his mind. At five o’clock, as the western hills took on the faintest rosy halo, he ordered the marine sentries to wake the sleeping sailors and the two hostages.

A moment or two later, as he stood staring fixedly out into the sound, there was an embarrassed cough behind him. It was one of the marine sentries. ‘Sir. The prisoners have escaped, sir.’

‘What?’

‘The prisoners. They’ve escaped, sir.’

‘I heard you the first time.’

FitzRoy strode angrily up the beach and threw back the tarpaulin. Two roughly human-sized mounds of stones were positioned where the two Fuegians had lain the previous night. Murray and Serjeant Baxter emerged blearily from the tent, just in time to inspect the damage.

‘Serjeant Baxter, I thought I gave orders for night sentries to be posted.’

‘I posted them, sir.’

‘Then why were two Indians able to get up and walk away under their very noses, after first constructing these - these simulacrums?’

‘I don’t know, sir.’

Baxter looked daggers at the two sentries.

‘And as for your confounded tarpaulin, Mr Murray, it became a cloak for all evils.’

‘Were you not awake yourself, sir? Did you see nothing during the night?’

‘You are insolent, Mr Murray!’ snapped FitzRoy, eyeball to eyeball with the master. ‘Hold your tongue or I shall have you flogged like a common sailor!’

There was a shocked silence. The wind tugged mischievously at the corner of the tarpaulin. The captain, it seemed, was a changed man.

‘Pack and stow the tents. We shall embark in ten minutes. We shall return to the village forthwith.’

 

After four hours’ hard rowing, the hungry sailors found themselves back at the Indian settlement, but it was deserted. FitzRoy himself felt no hunger, no exhaustion. He felt guided by instinct now, or by some unseen force, as if the world itself was leading him. It was as if he could see himself from the air, moving forward decisively, with conviction. Optimism roared within him.
It is my duty to do the right thing. My sacred duty. I must not fail. I simply must not fail in my duty
.

Three canoes lay drawn up on the beach.

‘Burn their canoes. Then spread out and search the vicinity. We must find them.’

Silently, the odd exchanged glance their only sign of apprehension, the sailors and marines fanned out through the ragged beech forest.

After twenty minutes’ walk, the trees thinned and gave way to a slope of rain-soaked bare rock criss-crossed with crevices and gullies. By signals and gestures, one of the marines indicated that he had seen something ahead. About eighty yards in front, a thin plume of smoke was drifting from a fissure in the rock. FitzRoy felt all his senses tensed, intensified, accelerated.
Others will one day see the path we have taken. They will chart the angles and shapes our footsteps have made, as surely as we chart the bays and islands. They will see that we have followed the only path
.

He called the search party together. ‘They have taken refuge in that cave. We will attack them immediately. Robinson, Borsworthwick and Gilly, make your way to the right of the cave. Elsmore, White and Murray to the left. When you are in position, you will lay down an enfilade, whereupon the marines will launch a frontal assault. Make all haste.’

With pistols and cutlasses drawn, the sailors moved forward in their two groups, keeping to the concealment of the forest edge as closely as possible. About fifty yards on, however, a ferocious barking announced that they had been spotted, by the Fuegians’ dogs if not by the Fuegians themselves. Some of the sailors shot questioning glances across to FitzRoy, who beckoned them urgently to proceed. Still there was no sign of life from the mouth of the cave. Fifty yards further, and the left-hand party found their progress blocked by a rushing stream some ten feet across, edged with muddy banks. FitzRoy beckoned them to cross. Seaman Elsmore, who was the foremost of the party, took a running jump in an effort to clear the stream at one bound, but lost his footing on the far bank and slithered back into the water. As he tried to claw himself back up the slope, his fingers dug helplessly into the slippery mud. Suddenly two squat figures appeared from behind nearby rocks, then another, and another. Clutching large, sharp stones as weapons, they fell upon Elsmore, raining blows upon his head. As he fought to free himself, a huge stone was brought down two-handed into his eye-socket, which disappeared in a welter of blood. Insensible, his body was held under water by two of the Indians. The others continued to batter him, crimson bubbles marking the last of the air leaving his lungs.

At the moment that Elsmore had been attacked, FitzRoy had raised his loaded pistol and fired.
God has brought us here. This is our destiny. We must not fail Him.
But the weapon had missed fire: the powder, soaked through on the journey, had failed to burn. The Fuegian with the large rock raised it above his head again, ready to administer the fatal blow. Then, there was a deafening powder explosion and the man staggered back, a look of complete astonishment on his face. Murray had shot him clean through the heart. But he did not drop his rock. Somehow, with speed, precision and a strength that appeared positively superhuman to his European adversaries, he hurled the stone straight at Murray. The blow knocked the master off his feet, and shattered the powder-horn that hung from his neck. It was the Fuegian’s last act: abruptly, he pitched forward into the stream, dead before he hit the water. White was the first to arrive on the scene, pulling Elsmore back up the bank, cushioning his shattered face in his lap. Murray, only seconds behind, lifted the head of the dead Fuegian from the water by his hair. It was the second of the two hostages to whom he had given the tarpaulin the previous evening.

By now the other Indians were streaming out of the cave in fear, having witnessed the inexplicable and sudden death of one of their number. FitzRoy urged the marines forward, their weapons no longer necessary. Instead they fought to subdue the terrified Fuegians, who struggled with extraordinary strength. FitzRoy and Serjeant Baxter grappled with one slippery, brawny, barrel-bodied specimen, who - upon finally being manhandled to the ground, face flushed, eyes blazing - turned out to be a young woman of some seventeen years. Within a few minutes the contest was over, the majority of the Fuegians fleeing unhindered into the beech forest. There were eleven prisoners: two men, three women, and six children. The trophy count was far less impressive than before: merely a piece of the whaleboat’s tarpaulin, vandalized into small squares to no discernible purpose.

Breathing hard, his uniform ripped, FitzRoy ordered the prisoners to be frogmarched down to the cutter.

‘We will take the women and children on board the
Beagle
as hostages. Then the men will guide us to our missing whaleboat. The custody of their families will act as a security far stronger than rope or iron.’

The next morning the
Beagle
headed back south, out through the jaws of Desolate Bay, and round to Cape Castlereagh on the wave-lashed tip of Stewart Island. Fat, placid and apparently unperturbed in the sleeting rain, a gaggle of Fuegian women and children sat on the maindeck, gorging themselves on fatty pork and shellfish, swaddled in woollen blankets. They seemed profoundly undisturbed by the change in their surroundings, be it the staring Europeans or the waves that occasionally swirled among them, soaking their legs and haunches. At the prow the two male ‘guides’, as eager as their predecessors, urged the ship on with enthusiastic gestures and hand signals, apparently oblivious of the glorious mass of billowing sails above their heads. Crew members stood around bemused, unsure how to react to the invasion. Surveying operations, which had been carried out by Stokes in FitzRoy’s absence, had now been suspended. Both the cutter and the remaining whaleboat were provisioned for a week, and ready to embark at a moment’s notice. Lieutenant Kempe, who had charge of the forenoon watch, had assumed control of the
Beagle’
s steerage. FitzRoy, isolated, seemingly unable to communicate with anyone, paced the poop deck, a lonely figure grappling with his thoughts.
I must do the right thing by God. He has brought me to this place to do His will. I am not of Him, but He has created me. It is my duty to administer justice. To distinguish between right and wrong.

They put the cutter and the whaleboat into the water in bitter drizzle at Cape Castlereagh, FitzRoy and Bennet in the former, Murray commanding the latter. Led by their two willing guides they came upon a scattering of deserted wigwams just before nightfall, the native fires still smouldering, and were rewarded with a small prize in the shape of the remaining half of the leadline. They erected their makeshift tents on the shore once more, their Indian guides wrapped in blankets on the beach beneath the open sky. This time FitzRoy did not pace the shoreline, but lay awake in one of the makeshift tents, wrestling with his disembodied thoughts.
I am doing the right thing. I am the only one who realizes this.