This Thing Of Darkness (40 page)

‘Darwin, do you have any idea for how many miles the coast of the Brazils extends? You would have a ninety-foot brig blockade a nation the size of Europe? My orders are to survey the bays and inlets of Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego. And my remit as commander of this vessel is to follow those orders, not to take issue with the policies of His Majesty’s government.’

‘You would follow any order you were given, however immoral, however illogical?’

‘Now you are being absurd. My orders are not immoral or illogical. But in answer to your question, yes, I would follow any order given to me. Not to do so would constitute an act of mutiny.’

‘But FitzRoy, picture to yourself the threat ever hanging over
you,
of
your
wife and
your
little children - those objects that nature urges even the slave to call his own - being torn from you and sold like beasts to the first bidder! And these deeds are done and palliated by men who profess to love their neighbours as themselves, who believe in God and pray that His will be done on earth! It makes one’s blood boil to think that we Englishmen and our American. descendants, with their boastful cry of liberty, have been and are so guilty.’

‘Are you not forgetting the African who sells his brother man to the slavers, the Arab who first turned Africa into a slaving-ground, and every other nation on earth that partakes of this vile trade?’

‘Do not try to abjure our national guilt over this matter, FitzRoy. The fact is, you Tories have always had cold hearts about slavery.’

‘What gammon. I abhor slavery as much as you do.’

‘But consider those innocent children, FitzRoy, plucked from the very bosom of their family! Brought up in a world where freedom is for ever to be denied them!’

‘Mr Darwin, you will allow me to observe that I was entered for the Service when I was twelve years old. Mr Musters is eleven. Mr Hellyer is twelve. Mr King has been on this vessel since he was ten. Almost every soul aboard has been afloat since they were young children. Some of the oldsters were once pressed men, torn from their families. It is the lot of each and every one of us to do exactly as we are told. If a sailor disobeys an order, he is flogged. If he disobeys again, he is hanged. If he escapes and is recaptured, he is hanged. If I did as you suggest, my fate would be no different. Do not speak of slavery as if it were somehow unique.’

‘If an equivalent misery is caused by the will of our institutions, then great is our sin - but how this bears on slavery, I cannot see.’

‘It appears that you cannot see very much. All is relative. Compare the lot of the starving farm-worker in southern England with the well-fed slave whose master is merciful.’

‘At least the farm-worker suffers by his own hearth. Even the best-trained slaves wish to return to their countries.’

‘Repatriation would be impossible. Nobody can hope to know which slave came from where. They do not even speak each other’s language. I repeat, I am no advocate for slavery, but I have met slaves who knew enough of the world to realize that they were better off where they were.

‘And was their master present when they asserted so?’

‘I cannot possibly recall.’

‘Even if he was not, the slave must indeed be dull who does not calculate on the chance of his answer reaching his master’s ears. It is you who are naive, not I. I know what I speak of. My family has stood steadfastly against slavery for three generations. Both my grandfathers, Erasmus Darwin and the first Josiah Wedgwood, pledged to fight this scandalous trade. It was Josiah who produced the famous cameo depicting a Negro in chains with the slogan “Am I not a man and a brother?” - a brooch that he sold in the thousands, if not the hundreds of thousands, to concerned gentlefolk across Great Britain.’

‘And where did the profits of that most popular trade find their resting-place? Were they donated to the fight against slavery? I very much doubt it.’

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘I believe that you heard me.’

‘My grandfather lived right among his labourers, all fifteen thousand of them, at the Etruria works in Stoke-on-Trent.’

‘And your uncle Jos? Does he live at the works? I think not. I think that the proceeds of the cameo to which you refer purchased him a handsome manor house, while his workers continue to live at the mercy of the factory system, a form of penury more iniquitous than which it would be difficult to imagine.’

‘My uncle’s workforce is free to come and go as they so please. How dare you make a comparison with the slave trade?’

‘Free to come and go as they so please? So your uncle’s workers are not tied to his cottages, his insurance societies, his penny-halfpenny wages?’

‘Each and every one of the lower orders in my uncle’s employ has the potential for advancement.’

‘The potential for advancement? Fifteen thousand people are confined to your uncle’s slums, amid disease, poverty, grime and filth, and you claim that any one of them has the potential for advancement when their families are daily broken up? When mothers and children are forced to labour twelve hours or more per day because their husbands and fathers earn insufficient for their keep? When babies are brought up by their sisters and fed on laudanum tonic to keep their silence? And a further consequence of the factory system, as we both know, is an entire absence of all regard for moral obligations relating to sex - you know well the manner in which many young women brought up in the shadow of our factories are forced to supplement their income!’

‘How dare you, sir? How dare you?’ Darwin’s voice rose to a shout. ‘Do you think that the lower classes of the Tory shires are happier? At least my uncle’s workers do not starve, sir.’

‘At least the farm-workers of England know what it is to see daylight, sir.’

‘I thank my better fortune that living in proximity to you has not made me a renegade to my Whig principles. The devil take you, sir!’

His face drained of blood by fury, FitzRoy called for his steward. ‘Tell Lieutenant Wickham to present himself to my quarters immediately.’

‘Aye aye sir.’

The two fumed in silence in the few brief seconds before Wickham made himself known.

‘Mr Wickham.’

‘Sir.’

‘Mr Darwin has made himself presumptuously impertinent to me. He will not be taking his meals in this cabin henceforth. Please escort him from my quarters at once.’

Cold with rage, Darwin rose to his feet, his neck bent as ever to avoid a collision with the ceiling, and stalked out. Wickham followed in silence and shut the door. As Darwin placed his first furious tread on the companionway, Wickham lightly touched his arm.

‘Philos? It sounded as if you and the skipper had fallen to loggerheads back there.’

‘You heard?’

‘It could be heard throughout the ship.’

‘Pray forgive me the disturbance.’

‘Philos? If you would care to mess with us in the gunroom henceforth, I am sure it could be arranged.’

‘Thank you most kindly, Mr Wickham. I appreciate your consideration.’

With that, Darwin climbed up to the maindeck and went into his cabin to begin packing. He was perhaps halfway through the task when a knock at the door announced the presence of Lieutenant Sulivan.

‘Philos?’

‘Yes?’

‘Compliments of Captain FitzRoy. The captain extends his humblest apologies - he wishes to say sorry for his unreasonable behaviour - and begs you to continue to live with him.’

‘Is this your doing, Sulivan?’

‘No, Philos, it is not.’

Darwin considered. ‘Please tell Captain FitzRoy that, on the contrary, the fault was entirely mine, and that I should be delighted to continue to live with him.’

Sulivan smiled with relief. ‘Thank goodness for that. The skipper has need of you. You must forgive him, Philos. He is a remarkable man, and a brilliant officer. All of us reverence him. But the pressure placed upon one man’s shoulders is immense.’

‘I will tell you, Sulivan, he is altogether the strongest marked character that I ever fell in with. I never before came across a man whom I could fancy being a Napoleon or a Nelson. If he does not kill himself, he will achieve wonderful things.’

‘Let us hope it is the latter, shall we?’ replied Sulivan brightly, and headed back in the direction of FitzRoy’s cabin.

 

Two cannon salutes, one each from the
Warspite
and the
Samarang,
rolled across Rio de Janeiro Bay as the wind rippled the
Beagle’s
sails and she made for the harbour entrance. She was a popular little vessel, who had impressed everybody with her smartness and efficiency, and the mighty stalwarts of the South American station were sorry to see her go. They knew, especially, that she was headed - unaccompanied - into unknown and uncharted waters, where a hidden spear of rock could send a little surveying-brig to the bottom at any instant, and they wished her well. The Beagle’s crew revelled in their moment of fame, and proudly put their backs into all the heaving and pulling of departure.

‘Close-hauled, Mr Chaffers, we should be able to lay south-east comfortably,’ FitzRoy remarked to the master.

‘Come on, Mr Musters!’ barked Midshipman King, at his young charge. ‘Tail on to that rope and put some effort in! Damned kid, thinks he’s a lieutenant already.’

Musters plunged on to the end of the rope and heaved with all his might. FitzRoy, pacing the deck, saw him totter with the effort.

‘Is everything all right, Mr Musters?’

‘I don’t feel very well, sir,’ replied Musters feebly. ‘I feel hot and sweaty.’

‘It is probably a little fever from your snipe-shooting trip. I am sure it is nothing. Come with me to Mr Bynoe - I have no doubt he will make much of you.’

FitzRoy led Musters below decks to the sickbay. The
Beagle’s
was a fully equipped modern pharmaceutic facility, with ventilation, hanging cots and a full range of medicinal drugs, quite unlike the dark, windowless, unhygienic sickbays of the past. It was with every confidence that FitzRoy flung open Bynoe’s door; a feeling of assurance that evaporated immediately when he saw the expression of Seaman Morgan, who was seated on a stool within. Fear was etched around Morgan’s eyes, his face a pale, sweaty mask.

‘Hello, young ’un,’ he breathed. ‘You here too?’

No one was in the mood to correct the informality.

‘Yes,’ said Musters, biting his lip uncertainly, sensing that something was wrong.

‘It’s just a fever, lad. We’ll be set all squares on the morrow,’ Morgan reassured him, and all the adults in the room knew him to be lying.

‘May I speak with you a moment, sir?’ asked Bynoe.

He and FitzRoy stepped outside. Concern tinged the young surgeon’s every word. ‘I am afraid, sir, there is every certainty that these men have contracted malaria.’

FitzRoy was stunned. ‘How? In the islets of the harbour?’

‘They followed the snipe flocks into the estuary of the Macacu river.

FitzRoy clenched his fist into a ball of frustration. ‘I categorically ordered them to stay away from dry land.’

‘They did, sir. They stayed out in the waters of the estuary at all times.’

‘Then how ... ?’

‘Pestilential malaria is caused by a miasma or vapour arising from marshland when it is affected by the heat of the sun. Dr Ferguson has shown that the poison is generated by the drying process, which is why hot climates are the most unhealthy. There were outbreaks in the marshes at Westminster, if you remember, during the hot summer a few years back. But the vapour can be carried out to sea by the winds. Many is the instance, sir, of native populations being decimated by European diseases brought by white explorers, the reason being that the vapours containing the disease are blown along on the same winds as their ships. The miasma is at its most concentrated in the darkness, so by sleeping in the estuary overnight, all three men will have undoubtedly exposed themselves to the windblown vapours.’

‘Is there any physic that you can give them?’

‘Quinine is known to alleviate the symptoms. The only cure lies with the Lord. Our best recourse is to pray, sir.’

‘Thank you, Mr Bynoe.’

The surgeon returned to the sickbay while FitzRoy reeled back against the wall of the passageway in despair. He thought of the promises he had made to Musters’s mother, of how he would take all care of little Charles. He struggled to make sense of the medical diagnosis.
If the miasma evaporates from the marshes during the heat of the day, why then is it at its most dangerous in the cool of the night? Is it because of a check to perspiration caused by sheets or blankets? If so, then why is a sleeper outside a tent more vulnerable than one inside?
Something was wrong with the orthodox medical explanation, he could tell - but what?

Overcome with his own intellectual impotence, he felt tears well in his eyes. They were tears of frustration, he knew, as much as tears of sadness.

 

Five days out of Rio, Bos’n Sorrell and his mates wrapped Mr Musters, Seaman Morgan and Seaman Jones in their hammocks, weighted them with roundshot, and sewed them in. Each was covered with a flag and placed in turn on a hinged plank, the same one that had been used when ‘Crossing the Line’, from which vantage-point they slid silently into the waters of the Atlantic. FitzRoy read the funeral service. No other sound was heard on deck.

‘Poor kid,’ whispered Jemmy, when he had finished.

‘Poor kid,’ echoed Fuegia, and then the deck fell quiet again.

The silence followed FitzRoy into his cabin afterwards, where he sat motionless before a blank page of the ship’s logbook for the better part of an hour. Eventually Edward Hellyer, his budget of papers similarly ignored, ventured to speak.

‘Sir?’

‘Yes, Mr Hellyer?’

‘Sir, why did God take Mr Musters? Had he done something bad?’