This Thing Of Darkness (59 page)

The weather, in truth, had been unusually kind of late. They had enjoyed a fine Christmas at Port Desire in southern Patagonia: FitzRoy had determined that the crew of the
Beagle
should take on the crew of the
Adventure
in an athletic contest similar to the ancient Olympic Games. There had been running, leaping and wrestling matches, although the brutal favourite was undoubtedly the old sailor’s game of Slinging the Monkey, in which some poor unfortunate was slung by his heels from a wooden tripod and swung from side to side, being beaten by all and sundry. The moment he managed to land a blow in return, he was permitted to swap places with the recipient. Darwin, as a landsman, had found it all rather barbaric, and had gone off shooting instead, procuring a two-hundred-pound guanaco for the Christmas roast. But he had to admit that FitzRoy’s methods worked. All the officers and men were in a state of cheery perspiration when he returned, just as the captain (with the aid of a few dubious statistical calculations) declared the Olympic Games an honourable draw, and handed out prizes all round.

Just how well FitzRoy handled his crew was thrown into sharp relief at their next port of call, the Bay of St Julian. Both Drake and Magellan had been forced to execute mutineers here, variously beheading or hanging, drawing and quartering their victims. The surrounding place names - Execution Island, the Isle of True Justice, Tomb Point - bore witness to a very different era of seafaring. Darwin explored a few miles inland, coming across the fossil remains of a huge unknown mammal and, atop a hill, a desiccated wooden cross left by Magellan’s expedition, shrivelled but intact after three centuries in the parched Patagonian air.

Thereafter the
Adventure
had turned east, Wickham and Co. gliding away to complete the Falklands survey under the expert tutelage of Low, the sealer; it was with considerable pride that FitzRoy had watched her go, her expensive transformation into lissom white swan now complete. By his side at the rail, breathing in his admiration of her sweeping, mellifluous passage, stood Coxswain Bennet. He had been earmarked as one of the
Adventure’s
contingent, but had begged his superior’s permission to remain aboard the
Beagle.
The potential fate of Jemmy Button and his fellows gnawed away in a dark corner of his imagination just as furiously as it did in FitzRoy’s own thoughts.

They had surveyed Wollaston Island and Cape Santa Inez on the way south, and the skipper had brought the suggestion of a tear to Hamond’s eye by naming an inlet ‘Thetis Bay’. They had scraped a submerged rock while working out of one uncharted harbour - a hair-raising moment, but fortunately the offending obstacle had not pierced the two inches of reinforced fir sheathing installed by FitzRoy at such enormous personal cost; the copper had been ripped from her false keel, but that was all.

Thereafter she had become the first full-sized ship to enter the Beagle Channel, squeezing in through the northern end of the Goree Roads behind Picton Island. The appearance of a brig in full sail had generated the same levels of native excitement as had their previous expedition in whaleboats: there were signal fires, frantic running men and a small flotilla of canoes trailing in their wake, smoke pluming behind them like so many tiny steamships. Some of the Indians waved their spears aggressively, but gestures that had felt threatening in an open boat seemed little more than pitiful when viewed from the heights of the
Beagle’s
heavily armed deck. Other natives sallied forth boldly to trade fresh fish and crabs in return for scraps of cloth.

‘Where are you going?’ was one shouted question that FitzRoy was able to decipher amid the chatter, from his rudimentary grasp of the Yamana language.

‘Woollya,’ he replied, pointing up the narrow channel between the cream-topped peaks.

‘Much fighting at Woollya — many deaths — many bad things happen,’ was the substance of the man’s ominous reply.

‘Tell me more,’ he entreated this messenger, but to no avail. Either his request was unintelligible, or there was no more to tell. The canoes peeled away before the
Beagle
got near Woollya, as if they could not bear to be present when she reached journey’s end; as if they were ashamed to share the decisive moment when FitzRoy and his crew finally learned the truth.

The breeze shooed them through the Murray Narrows - familiar territory now — and then died away, leaving them in a calm, hushed world beyond. A demure veil of mist rose up from the water, through which small dark islets loomed one by one, counting down the yards to their goal. Even though they could see little, it was safe to take the ship through, for Woollya Cove and the whole of Ponsonby Sound had been surveyed during their last visit; so FitzRoy let the
Beagle
drift in as far as she could, her canvas gently flapping. There, as they hove to off Woollya, the mists finally parted, reluctantly, guiltily, to reveal the three mission cottages.

Each was a blackened, burnt-out ruin. The little white picket fence was thrown down. The neat lawn was weed-strewn and overgrown. This was not the mission but its skeleton, soundless, lifeless, picked clean of every scrap of re-useable material. Not a single teacup, not even a fragment of a teacup, remained. The place was utterly deserted. Not a living soul stirred. Only their own heartbeats could be heard.

In silence, they put the boats down, FitzRoy steeling himself as best he could. Nobody said a word. The splash of the oars, as they beat against the protesting waters, sounded a deafening tattoo within the misty confines of the bay. The scrunch of gravel as they ran into the beach was positively ear-splitting. As they stepped ashore it began to rain, great freezing dollops of it, lashing at their backs and spattering contemptuously against the splintered, carbonized planking of the three huts. There were, at least, no dead bodies. There was nothing. The secret cellar of Matthews’s old cottage was thrown open, the black pit below an empty hole denuded of its former treasures. Silently, discreetly, the missionary mouthed a prayer of thanks for his own deliverance.

FitzRoy knelt in the vegetable garden, which had obviously been left entirely to its own devices since the previous year’s trampling-down. There, nestling amid the disordered wet grass, lay a clutch of entirely healthy turnips and potatoes, which had pushed their way optimistically to the surface.

‘You see?’ he said, staring bleakly up at Sulivan and Bennet, the rain streaming off his face. ‘It could have worked. It
would
have worked.’

Grief and defiance were mingled on his face. Bennet did not dare reply.

‘You did everything you could. There was nothing more you could have done,’ Sulivan reassured him.

‘That’s utter rubbish and you know it,’ replied FitzRoy savagely. He looked back at the pathetically hopeful row of vegetables. ‘Have these dug up and fed to the men. We might as well try to salvage something from this whole sorry mess.’

 

In the gloom of the afternoon, when the rain had washed away the mists, only to replace them with a wake of haggard, sorrowful clouds, FitzRoy sat alone in his cabin, running the events of the previous four years back and forth in his mind. What could he have done differently? What
sbould
he have done differently? Was there any point in crucifying himself? He looked across at the seat where Edward Hellyer had once sat, gazing up at him in awe and admiration. Yes, there was every point in doing so.

An urgent knock at the door interrupted his reverie. It was Bennet.

‘Sir - a canoe. I’m sorry to interrupt, sir, but - there’s a canoe.’

‘Thank you, Mr Bennet. I shall be up presently.’

He tried not to let his heart thump. It was probably nothing - probably just a passing native family.
Compose yourself. You are in command, remember. It is time that you justified the Admiralty’s faith in you, and that of your officers and men.
He smoothed down his uniform and stepped on to the deck.

To the naked eye, the canoe was just a dark, approaching blot far out in the sound, distinguishable from the surrounding islets only by its gently rocking motion. He took the spyglass proffered by Sulivan. It was an unusual vessel, smaller than the average native canoe, remarkable both for the ragged flag flying from its prow, and for the absence of any sacred fire amidships. There were only two souls aboard. The first was a slender young woman paddling the craft, who - FitzRoy thought - conformed more to the Western ideal of beauty than to the burly, well-fed look that appealed to most Fuegian men. The other occupant was a man, naked and wretchedly thin, with long, disordered hair. FitzRoy felt that he did not recognize either individual, but it was hard to be sure, for as he raised the spyglass to his eye the man hurriedly concealed his face behind his hand in shame. For a moment he thought these two gestures unconnected, but then he remembered the Fuegians’ extraordinary powers of eyesight. Even with the naked eye, the man could probably see the ship better than he could discern anything in the canoe through the blurry-edged lens of the ‘bring ‘em-near’, as Jemmy had liked to refer to his spyglass. As FitzRoy continued to squint into the eyepiece, the Fuegian turned his back, apparently to avoid being recognized, and dipped his free hand over the side, before bringing it up to his face.
He’s washing himself,
realized FitzRoy.
He’s cleaning his face.
Finally, having completed his ablutions, the passenger brought his gaunt face slowly into view. He lifted one hand to his forehead, looked directly at FitzRoy, and touched the peak of an imaginary cap in naval salute. It was Jemmy Button.

Or, rather, it was Jemmy Button’s shadow: a pale wisp of the sleek, well-fed, well-groomed boy they had left behind. As the canoe drew closer, FitzRoy finally had a proper view of the Fuegian’s squalid condition. His hair was unkempt, greasy and matted, his eyes red-rimmed from the effects of woodsmoke, his modesty covered by a wretched scrap of Walthamstow blanket slung about his hips. His skin was stretched taut across the concentric rungs of his ribs. So complete and grievous was the change that FitzRoy feared he might weep.

‘My dear FitzRoy, you are crying,’ said Darwin, who had materialized at his side, and he realized that in fact he had already let his emotions show. The philosopher put a consoling hand on his shoulder.

‘Forgive me, Darwin ... it seems I am disposed to play the woman’s part today.’

‘My dear man,’ murmured his friend, ‘poor Jemmy’s appearance would be enough to move hardier souls than sailors.’

FitzRoy pulled himself together with an effort, and called for his steward. ‘Fuller.’

‘Sir.’

‘Would you set the table for six, please? Mr Button is returned to the ship, and I should like to invite him and his companion to take supper with me. Would you also extend the invitation to Mr Bennet, Mr Bynoe, and to Mr Darwin, of course.’

‘Aye aye sir.’

Jemmy’s canoe was made fast alongside, and a peculiar little pantomime was enacted between the two Fuegians. Jemmy politely motioned for his companion to go ahead and scale the battens, saying to her in English, with a little bow, ‘After you, Mrs Button.’

A scared look passed fleetingly across the woman’s face as she responded, ‘No, after
you,
Mr Button.’

‘Please, Mrs Button, after
you.
Ladies first is proper.’

‘Please, after
you,
Mr Button.’ And then, after a frightened pause, ‘Mrs Button no want go on ship.’

Jemmy put his arms tenderly about his wife and stroked her hair. ‘Jemmy not be long. You wait here, Mrs Button.’ Clutching a bundle wrapped with the remaining portion of blanket in the crook of one arm, he clambered aboard more nimbly than any of the crew had ever seen him move before.

‘Jemmy, thank God you’re alive.’

‘Capp‘en Fitz’oy. I knew you will come back. I say to Mrs Button, Capp‘en Fitz’oy will not forget Jemmy, he will come back. She no believe you will come, Capp‘en Fitz’oy, but I say to her, Capp‘en Fitz’oy is English gen‘leman, his word is his bond. He will come back for Jemmy Button.’

‘You are married, Jemmy. My hearty congratulations.’

‘Congratulations, Jemmy old son,’ added a husky-voiced Bennet.

‘Well done, Jemmy,’ from Bynoe. ‘She’s a fine catch.’

‘Thank you, my confidential friend. Jemmy is not proper married, like in church, but Jemmy remember words, say them again, so to be married in sight of God.’

‘Your wife ... she speaks English.’

‘English Jemmy’s language, not Yamana. English
good
language. Jemmy teach Mrs Button English. Capp‘en Fitz’oy always say Jemmy is English gen‘leman.’

As he uttered these last words, Jemmy’s voice tailed off, and he looked down at his naked, emaciated frame. The others instinctively followed his gaze.

‘Mr Bennet?’ asked FitzRoy. ‘Perhaps you would take Jemmy below and find him a suit of clothes. The best we have to offer.’

‘It would be a pleasure, sir.’

 

Half an hour later, a fully clothed, scrubbed and shod Jemmy Button sat down to supper with FitzRoy, Darwin, Bennet and Bynoe, while Sulivan took command of the watch on deck. Despite being wooed with presents of handkerchiefs, blankets and a gold-laced cap that one kind crew member had purchased in Rio for his own wife, nothing would induce Mrs Button to leave her station in the bobbing canoe alongside. She sat alone and frightened as darkness fell; hers was an empty place at dinner. Fuller fetched plates of fish and crabmeat, followed by fresh-boiled turnips and potatoes. Jemmy held up his outer knife and fork and grinned at Bennet. ‘With each course, you move in to the next two pieces of cutlery.’ He repeated Bennet’s own words back to him, even the inflections exact after four years.

‘You remembered,’ said Bennet. ‘Sharp as a tack.’

Jemmy grinned again, this time with pride and pleasure at his accomplishment.

‘So, Jemmy.’ FitzRoy broached the obvious subject as gently as he could. ‘If it’s not too ... painful, perhaps you could tell us what became of the mission.’