This Thing Of Darkness (47 page)

The men were still in the rigging when they saw coming towards them, head-on, a vast, implacable cliff of grey water advancing at speed.
Dear God,
thought FitzRoy,
that wave is almost as tall as the boat is long. A monster
. The equation was simple. Any taller, and they would go down. Any less, and they might ride it. With mounting horror, he saw Nicholas White, the seaman clinging to the jib-boom end, disappear into the face of the wave a good fathom under, as the little brig tried desperately to climb its featureless slope. All on deck stood frozen with fear. The two men clinging to the staysail netting were next to disappear, as the wave swallowed the
Beagle
’s entire bow. But she was still rising, her deck sloping further and further back, until it seemed she must be catapulted vertically into the raging sky. Then, at last, she breasted the wave, and FitzRoy felt his stomach plummet with the ship as she surfed crazily down the other side. There was White, still alive, gasping on the jib-boom; there were the sailors on the staysail netting, spluttering and choking but indubitably alive.

Any relief FitzRoy might have felt was short-lived. Another towering, monstrous wave was racing in on the heels of the first, only this time the Beagle’s momentum had been checked, her way deadened. She sat motionless in the water, waiting for the impact. There was nothing anybody could do but pray, and hold on tight.

The wave crashed front-on into the bow with a sickening shudder. The ship trembled from end to end at the shock. A pulverizing mass of green smashed across the deck, driving the air from the sailors’ gasping lungs. Darwin, who had been shivering in his hammock, too sick to sense the danger outside, suddenly found himself submerged, as a wall of freezing seawater blasted the library door from its hinges and engulfed him. Again the
Beagle
tried to rise up the face of the wave, but this time she was only partially successful. She slewed wildly to port before tipping crazily over the crest and careening sideways down the backslope. Not only was her momentum checked now, but she was sitting beam-on, dead at the helm and thrown off the wind. If a third wave came, she was a sitting duck.

All eyes squinted fearfully into the driving sleet, trying to separate the scudding black clouds from the maddened, frothing water. Then they saw it: a third wave, taller than a townhouse, towering over the
Beagle
, bearing down upon them. The ship lolled, helplessly, like a beaten drunk trying to stand up and throw a last punch.
We’re going to drown. What is it like to drown?
was all that anybody aboard the
Beagle
could think.

Like a broadside of cannon from a mighty frigate, the wave smacked hard into the ship’s side, its whole immense crushing weight pounding on to her deck. The world simply turned black. Men floundered and struggled and fought, not to keep their balance or their bearings but to live, just to live. Then the world cleared, but it had been turned on its side. The
Beagle
was on her beam-ends, her lee bulwark three feet under, and she was struggling unsuccessfully to rise again. The lee-quarter boat, a brand-new reinforced whaleboat constructed by Messrs William Johns of Plymouth on the diagonal principle, and mounted several feet higher than the whaleboats of the previous voyage, had filled with water and disintegrated as surely as if it had been made from pasteboard; but its new improved davits clung stubbornly to the
Beagle
, refusing to let go, the wreckage of the whaleboat threatening to drag its mother ship down into the lightless depths.

The port side of the deck was trapped several feet under, labouring under a colossal weight of water that could not escape, Sulivan realized, because of the sealed gunports. Through a faceful of blinding spray he saw FitzRoy, Bennet and a terrified Hamond at the lee quarter, helped by three ratings, hacking at the tangled whaleboat davits with hatchets; but at the bulwark there was only Carpenter May, up to his waist in water, struggling vainly with his handspike to free one of the secured gunports beneath the surface. Sulivan splashed frantically across the deck to May, seized the handspike, plunged into the frozen darkness, located the gunport, and with one burly heave, burst it wide open. Immediately, water surged out through the newly opened escape route, and slowly, very slowly, the
Beagle
began to right herself.

A fourth wave now, all of them knew, and they were dead men. Now, with the gunport open and the wreckage of the whaleboat cut adrift, all eyes looked to windward, screwed up against the blinding sleet, searching for the fourth and final instalment, the wave that would bring about their end. But it did not come. For twenty, thirty, forty seconds they waited, as the
Beagle
rose agonizingly back towards an even keel, staring into the maelstrom. But the fourth wave did not come.

 

‘What would Captain Beaufort have called that, then? A force fifteen?’ Sulivan was breezy and light-headed with relief. Driven almost back to Cape Horn by the storm, they had run in behind False Cape Horn and sought refuge in the Goree Roads. There they had dropped anchor in forty-seven fathoms, friendly sparks flashing from the windlass as the chain hurtled round it, to rest and lick their wounds.

‘I made a terrible mistake. You saved all our lives. After all the modifications I made to the
Beagle
, I thought ... Well, the simple fact is, I was too proud.’

‘Hang it, sir, that’s tosh and you know it. You cannot blame yourself every time we run through a bad blow. It was the modifications that saved us. The old Beagle would have been crushed to matchwood. Yet not a spar was lost, nor a single man for that matter.’

‘I should never have ordered the gunports secured. You were right and I was wrong.’

‘The man has not been born, sir, who never makes a mistake,’ responded Sulivan. ‘All of us make mistakes, all the time. It is how one reacts to one’s mistakes that is the measure of a man.’

‘Put like that, Mr Sulivan, I suppose it does sound better,’ conceded FitzRoy.

‘That’s more like it, sir. Now, shouldn’t you be sitting here with charts and diagrams, trying to discover the measure of that storm?’

‘There is no need. I have its measure already. You forget, I have had twenty-four days to think upon it.’

‘And?’

‘And the globe spins eastward. So does water, at a greater velocity - although with many a back-eddy. The atmosphere, which is almost free of obstacles, spins yet faster still. It too has back-eddies of wind, which articulate storm-breeding counter-spirals near the poles - together with a steady-flowing undertow at the equator - that’s the trade winds. All the elements are pluming forward to the east, all of them by-products of the pull that affects the earth. You see? The weather may appear unpredictable, Mr Sulivan, but it is not. Its effects are complicated, but its core principle, as laid down by God, is blindingly simple. And if we understand the mechanical principle behind it, there is no reason to doubt that, one day, we shall be able to foretell the weather.’

FitzRoy had become increasingly animated as he warmed to his pet enthusiasm, the cares of leadership slipping visibly from his shoulders; Sulivan regretted that Darwin chose that very moment to march in and interrupt the captain’s monologue.

‘Good morning, Philos. I trust this lovely calm morning finds you well?’

Darwin stood and stared at FitzRoy as if he were quite mad to ask such a question, after all that they had endured. But having held the pose for a moment he relaxed suddenly, and shook his head in bemused wonderment.

‘It’s my own fault, I suppose, for agreeing to spend several years cooped up in your little cock-boat. All my papers and specimens are ruined —
all
of them - and not a few of my books. Luckily volume two of Lyell is unscathed, for I have not yet commenced it, as is my copy of
Persuasion
, for all that it is worth.’

FitzRoy roared with laughter. ‘All of those unique specimens lost, and the means to interpret them, but you still have your Jane Austen! Why, we will turn you into a gossiping fishwife yet! Pray tell, Philos, why on earth you have such frivolities in your possession.’

‘My sister Caroline packed it for me. It seems my family think you to be quite the Captain Wentworth, for some reason. And I suppose, after yesterday, that they are right.’

‘Oh, but we have Mr Sulivan to thank for yesterday’s heroics.’

‘Not a bit of it!’ protested Sulivan. ‘But see here, Philos - I have brought you a present.’ He leaned down under the table and produced a carefully wrapped box. ‘Something else that survived yesterday’s tribulations.’

‘What is it?’

‘The start of your new collection.’

Darwin unwrapped the packing and levered off the lid to reveal a sweetly glowing nasturtium flower - except that it was twice the size of any nasturtium he had ever seen before.

‘It is a
Tropaeolum
. I discovered it in the Brazils. A
Tropaeolum majus,
I suppose, if its Peruvian cousin were to become the
minus.’

‘But, Sulivan, this is your very own specimen - I cannot possibly accept it as a gift!’

‘You can, Philos, and you will. Thy need is greater than mine.’

‘It is remarkable - wonderful! My dear fellow!’

‘Mind you keep the little chap warm, now. I wedge him behind the galley stove at night, and stand him beneath the skylight by day.’

‘You are too kind. I am overwhelmed.’

There was a knock at the door.

‘Bless me,’ murmured FitzRoy. ‘The place is become like Regent Circus this morning. Come!’

FitzRoy’s steward opened the door, and the three men could see the burly figure of York Minster silhouetted behind him.

‘Er ... Mr Minster, sir,’ said the steward, unsure exactly as to how one might introduce such a ‘gentleman’.

‘Do come in, York, if you can find room.’

The Fuegian moved forward, as impassive as ever, although FitzRoy thought he detected a shade of contempt at the sight of three grown men sitting round a flower.

‘I am sorry that we have failed to reach your homeland, York,’ FitzRoy went on. ‘Perhaps it was a mistake to try the direct route. But rest assured, I will get you there, either via the Magellan Straits and the Cockburn Channel, or by following the Beagle Channel westward to the sea. Here, let me show you a map.’

‘York wishes not to go home.’

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘York wishes not to go home. York and Fuegia will live at Woollya with Jemmy, and Mister Matthews.’

‘But the Woollya people are not of your tribe, York. That might be extremely dangerous, both for you and for her.’

‘York wishes not to go home. York and Fuegia will live at Woollya with Jemmy, and Mister Matthews.’

There was silence in the little cabin. FitzRoy stared at York. Was he afraid of any further sailing? Would Matthews’s mission represent a link to the world he was leaving behind? Or did he have some deeper plan? The Fuegian’s face gave nothing away.

‘Very well, York,’ he said. ‘So be it.’

 

They found the eastern entrance to the Beagle Channel easily enough, to the north of the Goree Roads, concealed behind Picton Island. There were thirty-three in the party, divided between the remaining three whaleboats: FitzRoy, Darwin, Bennet, Hamond, Bynoe, the Reverend Mr Matthews, the three Fuegians, and twenty-four sailors and marines. Sulivan had been left in command of the
Beagle
. Towed behind them was the yawl, into which had been loaded all the tools and implements needed to build the mission, together with the fabulous assortment of goods donated by the Church Missionary Society.

The early reaches of the channel were not as arrow-straight as the central section where they had discovered Jemmy, nor were the forested sides as vertiginous. There were settlements along the shore, where the arrival of three boatloads of pale-skinned human beings caused nothing less than a seismic shock. As they tacked slowly up the channel into the prevailing westerlies - the yawl being so overloaded that only sailpower could drag it forward - they saw panic-stricken, gasping men running at speed along the shore to spread news of their arrival. The runners were naked, their hair matted with clay and their faces decorated with white spots, and they ran so fast that blood poured from their noses and foam gurgled from their panting mouths. Canoes began to follow their progress at a distance, each marked by its distinctive plume of blue smoke.

‘How incredible,’ breathed Darwin, ‘to go where man has never yet been.’

York sat back in the lead whaleboat, laughing immoderately. ‘They are big monkeys. Fools! Ha ha ha!’

‘These people are not my friends,’ said Jemmy, his face a mask of shame. ‘My friends are different. My friends are very good and clean.’

Fuegia, by contrast, was terrified, and after her first glimpse of the running men would not look again.

She has seen what she truly is
, reflected Darwin.

The little girl buried her face in York’s lap, her eyes screwed shut - which was a problem, as she had now become so fat that the sailors ideally wanted to shift her position to windward with each tack.

‘Big monkeys! Fools!’ shouted York, his taunts filling the echoing sound.

FitzRoy stared at Matthews, sitting vacantly in the stern, the breeze ruffling the down on his upper lip.
In many ways he is the fulcrum of all this activity. Yet he shows no emotion. There is no reluctance, no hesitation, but also no enthusiasm, no energy of character.

Was Matthews steeling himself with quiet stoicism, sitting there in blank-faced silence, or was he just an unqualified teenage catechist, quaking on the inside? FitzRoy attempted the usually unrewarding task of making conversation with him.

‘Mr Matthews, how are you looking forward to such a great challenge, which may very well become your life’s work?’

‘I fully intend that the natives shall receive all instruction in the principles of Christianity, sir, and in the simpler acts of civilised life.’