Galapagos Regained (23 page)

Mr. Dartworthy untied the rope. The doomed
Equinox
lurched drastically to larboard, as if the longboat had been supporting the brig and not the other way around. Chloe and Solange bailed furiously, laboring to rid the launch of rain from the heavens and brine from the swells.

“Pull!” cried Runciter. “Put your backs into it! Pull, or we're all dead!”

Gasping and grunting, the four rowers worked their oars, stroke upon stroke, and within twenty minutes the longboat was a hundred yards clear of the wreck.

“My fair philosopher, I fear you've lost the contest!” exclaimed Mr. Dartworthy.

“Not until somebody else has won it!” screamed Chloe.

Frantically she removed another bucket of water—and another, and still another. Pausing, she endured a fit of coughing, then fixed on the foundering brig. Like some fissured and forsaken Atlantis, abandoned by her every patron deity, the
Equinox
made a clockwise revolution, then spun a second time, a third, a fourth, until finally she shuddered stem to stern, shivered plank to plank, admitted the sea to her bowels, and vanished.

But the Shelley Prize did not go down with the ship, or so Chloe now required herself to believe. The animal pens and birdcages were headed for the bottom of the ocean, but the treasure still lay in Oxford, waiting to be borne away on the backs of ancient tortoises and venerable iguanas. The Transmutationist Club would triumph yet. She would win the world's applause. It was a simple matter of being shrewder than King Cecrops, more resourceful than Lord Poseidon, and as wise as Lady Athena.

 

BOOK TWO

THE WHITE RADIANCE OF ETERNITY

 

6

Recounting a Journey up the Amazon River, Featuring Lush Panoramas, Voracious Piranhas, and a Sun That Rises Even As It Sets

Throughout that interminable first night in the storm-tossed longboat, the
Equinox
castaways suffered largely in silence, mutely enduring their multiple tribulations, from soggy biscuits to salt-caked clothing, aching muscles to sickening waves, squalls of rain to spasms of dread. Whenever a castaway spoke, it was only to speculate about the fate of the men they'd left behind on the foundering brig. Presumably all forty-two sailors had escaped in the jolly boats, but when the rain finally subsided and the sun rose, disclosing a smooth and benevolent sea, the expected flotilla was nowhere to be seen.

Exchanging not a word, Mr. Dartworthy and Mr. Pritchard erected the mast and hoisted the sail, thus setting the launch on a rapid westerly course and making the oarsmen's task less burdensome. In time the collective mood shifted, and everyone began to chatter. Reminiscing promiscuously, the castaways talked of cozy taverns, convivial brothels, sainted mothers, favorite uncles, lost loves, found dogs, and Christmases past (excluding the 25th of December, 1849, the date on which the hurricane struck), even as they pointedly avoided the subject of death by thirst and exposure. Fearful that this wanton nostalgia would ultimately prove destructive of morale, Chloe introduced a new subject, remarking on how at the last minute everyone had salvaged an item of personal significance. Mr. Pritchard, not surprisingly, had rescued his pet monkey. Mr. Flaherty had secured three bottles of rum in his breeches. Captain Runciter had seized his sextant, Mr. Chadwick his Bible, Algernon his playing cards, Solange her glass pendant. But the choice that most impressed Chloe was Mr. Dartworthy's decision to retain his translation of
The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám
.

“I've not forgotten our appointment with your poet,” she said to the first officer, setting her palm atop the manuscript. “You're going to sit in a Brazilian cantina drinking Madeira whilst I declaim his verses.”

“It was our planned afternoon in Fortaleza that inspired me to select these quatrains over my cigars,” Mr. Dartworthy replied.

“Might I ask what
you
salvaged, Miss Bathurst?” inquired Mr. Chadwick. “Besides your Panama hat, I mean.”

Chloe flourished the sandalwood box. “I grabbed my latest effort to put my species theory into words”—she fingered the twine that bound the hat to her head, determining that the knot held firm—“including nuances that occurred to me during the voyage. Thirty-five pages worth ten thousand pounds.”

The conversation now veered towards a more urgent topic: how to keep the longboat from becoming their collective coffin. Algernon proposed turning around and sailing to St. Paul's Rocks, where they could survive on gannets and crabs till a rescue ship appeared. (Were not the known virtues of that archipelago preferable to the hostile Indians and horrendous insects of the Brazilian coast? Had not Miss Kirsop survived on St. Paul's Rocks for over a month, and had she not been saved?) Although Chloe found merit in Algernon's argument, Mr. Dartworthy was quick to reject it, insisting that they would “do far better running from heathen cannibals than fighting over the last edible crab on Miss Kirsop's little islands.”

Mr. Pritchard suggested that whatever their destination they should dismantle the mast, bisect it with Miss Bathurst's bayonet, and convert each half into an oar, “thereby increasing our rowing power by one-third.” Mr. Dartworthy called the idea “ingenious in its own way” but declared that the launch would reach its goal more efficiently if they left the rigging in place.

Mr. Flaherty spoke up next, recommending that they exploit the happy fact of a priest in their midst. If the Reverend Mr. Chadwick were now to hear an honest confession from everyone, God might elect to blow them to Fortaleza. The vicar replied that the Almighty was not to be petitioned in so crude a fashion, “though it is appropriate for us to turn our hearts towards Heaven,” then led the castaways in the Lord's Prayer, a recitation to which Chloe willingly lent her voice, whilst Mr. Dartworthy and Solange maintained a conspicuous silence, as befitted a village atheist and a she-devil's disciple.

“Having talked to God, ye will now listen to me,” said Runciter. “Just as I was master of the
Equinox,
so am I now lord of this launch. What manner of man is your captain? Well, he's evidently incompetent, having steered his ship directly into a hurricane. He's likewise something of a coward, having abandoned that same ship when honor demanded he go down with it. He must furthermore answer to the charge of greed, as he has not forsaken our original mission. For all this, know ye that in the weeks to come my every word will be taken for a law and my every caprice for a canon, and any man who mutinies will wish he'd drowned in the gale.”

“Begging your pardon, sir,” said Mr. Flaherty, “but am I to understand we're still chasing after the prize?”

“That is my meaning,” said Runciter.

“Spoken like the competent, brave, and philanthropic leader you are,” said Chloe.

“Whoever opposes this plan risks the wrath of the Covent Garden Antichrist,” Solange added.

“You speak out of turn, strumpet,” said Flaherty.

“I'm a
courtesan
.”

“I don't mean to dampen our hopes,” said Pritchard, “but according to the Admiralty's maps, the fattest part of the South American continent lies between here and Galápagos.”

“Then we shall cross the fattest part of the South American continent,” Chloe insisted.

“The Amazon River will get us most of the way there,” added Runciter.

“It flows in the wrong direction,” noted Mr. Dartworthy.

“Then we shall paddle against the current,” said Chloe.

“And after the Amazon come the Andes,” said Pritchard.

“If a man can climb a mast, he can climb a mountain, and so can a woman,” said Chloe.

“And after we reach the Encantadas, how do we get the menagerie back to England?” asked Mr. Dartworthy.

“We'll think of something,” said Chloe.

“My she-devil always thinks of something,” said Solange.

“With all due respect, Captain, do you not grasp the meaning of our misfortunes?” asked an exasperated Mr. Chadwick, tapping his foot against a bailing bucket. “Will you not allow that God sent the storm to warn us off this impertinent quest?”

“We appreciate your knowledge of the Almighty's motives, but today we shall confine the conversation to matters of naked avarice,” Runciter replied. “By my reckoning our company has been reduced by three-quarters, which means everyone's share in the treasure has increased. Mr. Pritchard, for example, now stands to gain five hundred pounds.”

“My captain practices an amiable arithmetic,” said the second officer. “Do you hear that, Bartholomew?” he told his monkey. “We're rich!”

“Whereas Mr. Flaherty will walk away with four hundred,” said Runciter.

“Let us toast our wise leader,” said the third officer, brandishing one of his rum bottles. With the sole and unsurprising exception of the vicar, the company retrieved their various water receptacles. A half-dozen arms reached towards Flaherty, who awarded each
Equinox
survivor a splash of spirits. “To Captain Runciter!”

“Captain Runciter!” echoed Chloe.

“Captain Runciter!” chorused Solange, Algernon, Pritchard, and Mr. Dartworthy.

“To myself!” cackled the former master of the lost
Equinox.

Seven tin cups connected beneath the equatorial sun, a cadence so spirited it suggested a telegrapher clicking out jubilant news, though by Chloe's lights the toast's true recipient was she herself. On numerous occasions throughout history, men had sworn fealty to unruly women—to Boadicea and Jeanne d'Arc and even Pirate Anne Bonney. Whether they knew it or not, the longboat's company was now pledged to escort her up the Amazon, over the mountains, and across the sea to Galápagos. They had vowed to help her uproot the Tree of Life and bear it back to Oxford. They had even promised to follow her as she marched through the gates of Perdition, strode into the Devil's palace, and inquired of His Satanic Majesty whether Hell had need of a queen.

*   *   *

When at long last their ordeal ended, five days after the
Equinox
went down, the hungry, thirsty, and exhausted castaways having blown into the Baía de Marajó and received succor from a passing band of priests
en route
to their mission outside Curuçá, Chloe was quick to appreciate the incongruity of her situation. Her irony bone sang like a glass chalice. A half-dozen black-robed Jesuits had bestowed the finest quality of Catholic charity on a bedraggled bunch of English adventurers—and yet those same castaways sought to humble the whole of Christianity, including its famous Papist form. Over the course of her career Chloe had enacted many roles, some sympathetic, others villainous, but this was the first time she'd played a wolf in sheep's clothing.

“I eat their bread, I drink their wine, and I feel like a hypocrite,” she said, sipping red crianza.

She was sitting between her devoted disciple and prodigal brother in a mosquito-netted cloister adjacent to a crumbling sandstone church with twin bell towers, the three explorers having retreated to the sheltered arcade to escape the burning eye of the tropical sun and the avid mouths of sand-flies and fire-ants. It was the tenth day of their sojourn amongst the Jesuits. Compared with the blind malice of the sea, the Missão do Sagrado Coração seemed to Chloe a paradise on Earth, and with each tolling of the bells she thanked Solange's sibyls of coincidence for bringing her to so serene a sanctuary. True, the wine was sour, the heat stifling, and the insects voracious, but these hardships were as milk and honey compared to the grueling labor and intolerable privations of life in a longboat.

“And yet, for whatever reasons, I don't
mind
feeling like a hypocrite,” she added.

“An irony within an irony,” said Algernon, lifting a goblet to his lips.

“The Covent Garden Antichrist does not trouble herself with mundane regrets,” said Solange.

Now Mr. Chadwick appeared in the cloister, straightaway adding a sardonic note to the conversation. “How impressive that Miss Kirsop knows more about our antichrist than does our antichrist herself.”

“Poker, anyone?” inquired Algernon, shuffling his cards.

A flurry of frowns greeted this suggestion. Chloe suspected that her brother would have better luck convening a game amongst the nautical members of their fellowship, but earlier in the week Captain Runciter and his officers had gone by mule cart to Belém-do-Pará, their aim being to scour the beaches for
Equinox
refugees and, no less importantly, persuade some packet-steamer skipper that, instead of hiring unreliable aborigines or disgruntled half-breed
caboclos
frontiersmen to serve on his next voyage upriver, he should instead engage a company of English shipwreck survivors. Before his departure, Runciter had told Chloe and Solange that he intended to represent them as “Claude Bathurst” and “Solomon Kirsop,” eight able-bodied seamen being a more marketable commodity than six plus two women. Given her loosely fitting pirate blouse, Chloe reasoned, not to mention her talent for affecting a tenor voice (two assets her disciple likewise possessed), the deception should prove simple to sustain.

“May I speak frankly, Miss Bathurst?” asked Mr. Chadwick.

“When have you ever employed any other idiom?”

The vicar gestured past the gauzy mosquito curtain towards a flagstone plaza bustling with Indians, all of them belonging to the Tupinambá tribe, a sturdy people with tawny skin and cropped black hair suggesting scholar's caps. Whether these aborigines had sequestered themselves in Sagrado Coração voluntarily or through clerical coercion Chloe could not say, but they certainly seemed happy enough. Dressed in cinnamon-colored shifts, they laughed and sang as they rethatched the roof of the church, repaired the priests' fleet of canopied
tolda
canoes, and tended the goats and peccaries in the livestock pens. Even as the mission Indians labored beneath the relentless sun, their children sported on the plaza, trundling hoops, bouncing balls off the walls (rubber was apparently as abundant in Amazonia as vermin), and firing toy arrows at straw targets, all the while sucking on skewered fruits as if they were lollipops.