This Thing Of Darkness (15 page)

‘Shall I carry her below, sir? Is she getting in your way?’ Boatswain Sorrell reached a hand down affectionately to the little girl.

‘No, no, thank you, she’s fine where she is. It is no trouble.’

‘She’s become a regular pet on the lower deck, sir. The men call her Fuegia Basket, sir, on account of Morgan’s sailing basket.’

‘Yes, I had heard that. It rather suits her. Has she picked up any English yet?’

‘Not so as I could say, sir, but she can repeat anything you like straight back at you. She knows her lines as regular as a prayer-and-response.’

‘Make sure everybody keeps trying. Then I’m sure she will soon get in the way of it.’

‘Very good sir. She’s a sweet little thing, sir, seeing as how them’s little more than animals.’

‘Quite so, Mr Bos’n.’

FitzRoy decided to let the comment pass. He had in fact been side-tracked by a sudden blinding realization: that in all his dealings with the Fuegian race, stretching back the better part of a year now, he had not seen a single old man or woman. Every Fuegian they had encountered was young, strong and fit. Where were all the elderly people? Where were all the cripples, the invalids, the mental defectives? Were they simply unable to survive the harsh southern winters? Or was the answer more sinister than that? He glanced down at the gurgling, happy little girl at his feet once more, as if to read her mind, but she just beamed sweetly back at him.

By now the lone canoe was no more than ten yards ahead of the Beagle’s prow. With a few deft paddle-strokes the natives within brought her alongside, hauling on the
Beagle’
s manropes to make her fast. The sturdiest and tallest of the Fuegians, a relative giant at some five feet tall, climbed out of the canoe, scaled the battens on the ship’s side and stepped on to the deck. At once his fellows detached their grip on the ropes, and their canoe sheered off to starboard. The man stood stock still, the cynosure of all eyes, a primitive, feral visitation in the centre of the maindeck. Powerful, brooding and quite naked, with arms and legs like tree trunks, he stared around him through narrowed eyes. He exuded physical confidence. FitzRoy felt the hairs at the nape of his neck rise instinctively.
Who is the animal now?
he thought.

‘Do we take paying passengers, then?’ asked King, coolly.

‘Place is turning into a regular menagerie,’ mumbled the boatswain to himself, disapprovingly.

Fuegia Basket was the first person to move. Clutching up her skirts, she skittered across the maindeck and presented herself to the visitor. Giggling with delight she spoke, the first time she had done so in her own language, with the now-familiar concoction of guttural clicks and throaty noises. Poised motionless, holding himself rigid with a solemn muscular reserve, the stranger replied: a slow, low, brutal voice, the words obviously selected with caution and delivered with exactitude. Fuegia Basket’s eyes widened in response, and there was a second’s pause. Then, suddenly, she threw back her head and erupted in a peal of laughter, turning delightedly to share her merriment with the watching crew.

FitzRoy kept his eyes on the new arrival. The man’s expression remained as unmoving as stone.

 

On a height above Christmas Sound, reading angles, FitzRoy was able to take in the sheer impossibility of his task: a hundred peaks, a thousand caves, a million tiny shards of rock flung into the sea. The subtle undulations of the land were obscured by thick beech forest, no riot of vegetation but a slow, dull march, close-ranked and impenetrable. Metronomically accurate now in his map-making observations, not so much immune to the cold as habituated to it, he allowed his thoughts to drift to the
Beagle’
s two new acquisitions. The male Indian, named York Minster by the crew after the location where he had boarded the ship, could not have been more different from little Fuegia. Sullen and taciturn, he continued to say nothing, but FitzRoy could tell that he was watchful. His eyes were as restless as his posture was immobile. In particular he watched after the girl, his narrow gaze never once leaving her as she skipped about the decks. She would dance merrily with the crew in the evenings, or play with her makeshift dolls, a whole family now sewn together from rags by some kind soul. All the while his eyes would bore into her back from his squatting position up by the foremast chimney grating, where he stored his uneaten food like some big cat back from the prowl. It seemed to FitzRoy that York’s was an intelligent gaze; whether this was conventional intelligence of the European kind, or merely low animal cunning, it was hard to tell. Certainly, dressed as he was now in the slops and ducks of the common sailor, York Minster could have passed at first glance for an unusually short and stout member of the crew. His immense physical strength, though, marked him out from the others. Challenged to arm-wrestling matches, he was - once he understood what was required of him - easily a match for any two of the sailors put together.

FitzRoy could tell from York and Fuegia’s chatter, from the way that new sensations stimulated them to communicate with each other in their strange clicking language, that some kind of shared reasoning power united these two disparate characters. He felt enormously frustrated by the limits to his understanding.
There is less dfference between most nations or tribes than exists between these two individuals. If I could help to prove that all men are of one blood, what a difference it would make.

He had consulted Captain Stokes’s copy of the
Dictionnaire Classique,
which divided men into thirteen distinct races, but to no purpose. The book marked Tierra del Fuego down, quite erroneously, as a Negroid area. Nobody, it seemed, had ever deigned to study the curious inhabitants of South America’s southern tip. Cracking the code of language, FitzRoy knew, would be the key. Unfortunately, York would not talk to any of the sailors. Fuegia would only parrot English with a wide, beaming smile. But they did speak to each other: already he had identified a noise like the clucking of a hen as ‘no’.

And then, on that wild, lonely peak above Christmas Sound, FitzRoy was struck by a big, beautiful idea.

The idea whirled in his brain, simple but fabulous. He would need Admiralty permission, of course, and both King and Otway would have to give their blessing, but if the Fuegians were educated at his own expense, then the Admiralty could hardly complain. The next survey ship could return the party to Tierra del Fuego. What could possibly go wrong?

A crack of gunfire from the beach below jolted him from his reverie. May’s boat-building party, hard at work on the replacement whaleboat, were under attack. Most of the sailors, armed only with tools, were rushing to take cover behind one end of the half-built boat. One of the crew, who must have been caught out in the open, lay face down in a pool of blood on the shingle, apparently dead. Two Fuegian women, who had apparently attacked him with sharpened rocks, were retreating from his body towards the far end of the beach, where a further ten or so of their number now gathered, chanting. They wore the white-feathered grass bands about their heads that, FitzRoy had come to learn, denoted hostility. Alone in the middle of this panorama, walking calmly up the beach towards them, firing into the air, reloading, walking a little further and then firing once more, moved the figure of Surgeon Wilson, a most unlikely hero. Perhaps Wilson’s apparent lack of imagination really betokened a serene inner strength after all, wondered FitzRoy. He ran forward down the hillside, Stokes at his heels, both men already drawing their pistols.

By the time they reached the beach it was all over. Wilson, normally one of the more invisible officers, had been feted as a hero, and was now engaged in trying to save the life of the injured man, whose skull was fractured. The Indians had taken to their canoes, but had been swiftly overhauled by a party of sailors in the cutter. All but one of the pursued Fuegians had dived over the side to escape capture, the exception being a frightened, slender youth, who now stood bewildered and shivering in the rough grasp of Davis, one of the crew. Beside him on the shingle was a length of the leadline (identifiable by its white five-fathom marker), a few tools and several empty beer bottles from the missing whaleboat. Shaking with rage, Davis pressed the muzzle of a loaded pistol to the boy’s temple. ‘Shall I shoot him now, sir?’

‘No! Put your gun down. This man is drunk.’

‘They’ve buzzed all the beer from the whaleboat sir. Every last drop sir.’

‘Let go of his arm.’

The boy fell slack on his back, looking up at FitzRoy, his unfocused eyes white with fear, his feathered headband limp with seawater.

‘Shall I just let him go then, sir?’ asked Davis, confused.

‘No. Bring him on board. Let him join his fellows on the
Beagle.’

 

The newcomer was quickly christened ‘Boat Memory’ by the crew, as their last potential link to the vanished whaleboat. He seemed eager to help out around the ship, as if to atone for his part in the murderous attack at the beach, but for that very reason he found it difficult to gain acceptance. Furthermore his slender physique, most unusual for a Fuegian Indian, made him unsuited to physical tasks that - had he been similarly amenable - York Minster could have carried out without breaking sweat. York treated the new arrival with the utmost contempt, perhaps on account of his status as a defeated warrior, refusing to speak to him or even acknowledge him. They took to squatting at opposite ends of the ship, staring at each other through the thickets of rigging, the one baleful and contemptuous, the other cowed and frightened. It was left to Fuegia, inevitably, to act as go-between: unaware of any such nuances, she treated Boat Memory to the same winning display of affection that she served up to everybody else. FitzRoy felt the boy’s sense of isolation keenly, and realized that this might provide him with the opening he needed. He found Boat Memory sitting forlornly by the poop cabin skylight, playing with a length of rope. FitzRoy stood ten yards away from him, and spoke in a loud, clear voice:
‘Yammerschooner.’

Without a word, obediently, Boat got to his feet, walked forward and presented himself humbly to the captain, holding out the length of rope.

FitzRoy could hardly contain himself. ‘It means “Give to me,”’ he breathed excitedly.
‘“Yammerschooner”
means “Give to me.”’

‘By Jove sir, you’ve got it!’ squeaked King over his shoulder, a delighted grin plastered across his puppyish face.

FitzRoy wiped any trace of levity from his own features. He stared directly and unwaveringly at the Indian, and pointed a finger at his own eyes. ‘Eyes,’ he announced.

‘Telkh,’
replied Boat Memory, without hesitation.

‘Fetch your notebook, Mr King,’ murmured FitzRoy, relief mingled with pleasure. The other officers began to gather round, interested despite themselves.

‘Forehead,’ tried FitzRoy, moving his finger upward.

‘Eyebrows.’

‘Nose.’

King scurried back breathless, notebook and pen in hand. FitzRoy ignored him and kept going.

‘Mouth.’

‘Teeth.’

‘Tongue.’

‘Chin.’

‘Neck.’

King scribbled away, desperately trying to transliterate Boat Memory’s words and make sense of all the tongue-clicks. FitzRoy kept it slow, his eyes trained on his subject.

‘Shoulder.’

‘Arm.’

‘Elbow.’

‘Wrist.’

‘Hand.’

‘Fingers.’

‘Have you got them all, Mr King? Tell me you have translated them all so far?’

‘I think so sir, except for a couple when I was getting the book.’

FitzRoy took the notebook from his midshipman and read out the first entry as best he could. Pointing to his own eyes once more, he tried out:
‘Telkh.’

Without averting his gaze, the young man pointed to the same spot on his own face and said, clear as day: ‘Eyes.’

Then pointing to each body part accurately in turn, he continued without hesitation: ‘Forehead. Eyebrows. Nose. Mouth. Teeth. Tongue. Chin. Neck. Shoulder. Arm. Elbow. Wrist. Hand. Fingers.’

There was a complete silence for at least ten seconds on the upper deck. Quite simply, nobody dared breathe. Finally, FitzRoy spoke.