Galapagos Regained (27 page)

“I implore your forgiveness,” he pleaded after apprising her of the ruse.

“I am less offended by your masquerade than by your assumption that I'd failed to penetrate it.” Miss Bathurst's lips hovered between a smile and a smirk. “As for the originality of my idea—you are correct: it did not spring from my brain alone. But I shan't name my collaborator, lest you convey the information to Wilberforce, who would proceed to harry the scientist in question.”

“You should know that since leaving Belém I've come to see your irreverence in a new light,” said Malcolm. “I keep thinking of Percy Shelley's ‘Mont Blanc.' ‘The wilderness has a mysterious tongue which teaches awful doubt.'”

“The loss of Mr. Flaherty weighs on us all. I understand how his wretched death might lower your opinion of Providence.”

Much to his dismay, Malcolm realized that his curiosity concerning transmutation had become so intense that he wanted to read the thirty-five pages Miss Bathurst had composed several days before the
Equinox
went down. “If I'm doomed to lose my faith, I should like to get it over and done with,” he told her. “Might you grant me a few hours alone with your essay?”

“Though continually seeking converts to the Church of Awful Doubt, I fear you wish to scan my sketch for errors, the better to gainsay my presentation to the Oxford judges.”

“When I said I had recused myself, I meant it,” said Malcolm. “Never again shall I darken the door of Alastor Hall. Consider your situation as follows. To transfix the judges, you must practice your presentation on another intellect, and yet none aboard the
Rainha,
including that dilettante Dartworthy, is capable of sustaining such a conversation
—
with the possible exception of myself.”

This reasoning evidently struck a chord in Miss Bathurst, for the following morning, shortly after Malcolm had assumed his post in the prow, she appeared beside him and silently deposited the sandalwood box in his hands. He dared not study the pages just then, lest the price of his enlightenment be the
Rainha
's collision with a sandbar, but once his watch had ended he disappeared into his cabin and pored over “An Essay Concerning Descent with Modification.” Risking the annoyance of Dartworthy, Pritchard, and Miss Bathurst's cardsharp brother, he read many sentences aloud, the better to grasp their import, including the author's final ringing insistence that there was “grandeur in this view of life,” according to which perspective “endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been evolved.”

As an account of the origin of species, Miss Bathurst's transmutation sketch was lamentably bereft of implausibility. As an alternative to the Book of Genesis, it was woefully lacking in contrivance. True, an enemy of the theory might point to mankind's presumably divine attributes (speech, reason, the moral sense), but the essay insisted that those faculties were all prolifically prefigured in Nature. Too, there was the dilution problem—the question of why a desirable trait bequeathed to a creature by its mother was not canceled by a contrary trait from the father—though the author noted that the persistence of hemophilia from generation to generation argued against “treating simple blending as the essential mechanism of heredity.”

With a leaden heart Malcolm returned the essay to the sandalwood box, which now seemed to him a coffin, or more precisely a royal sarcophagus, the sweet-smelling cavity holding not only an apparent disproof of God but also His heavenly remains. For a full minute he contemplated the receptacle, then climbed into his hammock and blew out the candle. The sudden darkness startled Pritchard's capuchin, who issued a piercing
chee-chee-chee
.

Hush, jesting Bartholomew, thought Malcolm. Softly now, thou foolish monkey. Good night, my clownish little cousin.

*   *   *

As her journey aboard the
Rainha da Selva
progressed, Chloe found herself comparing her present environment with the only other river of her acquaintance. Whereas the Thames was simply another London thoroughfare (wetter than most but easily negotiated by bridge or skiff), the Rio Amazonas was a world unto itself, at times exhibiting the quietude of a sepulcher, at other times unleashing so loud a cacophony—bird squawks, monkey howls, the roars of jaguars and ocelots, the percussive glunks of Surinam toads—as to become a vast concert hall, inhabited by creatures of such rapturous beauty, from golden pierid butterflies to rainbow-colored macaws, scarlet hibiscus to purple orchids, they seemed émigrés from Eden. And always there was the awesome scale of the thing, three thousand miles from genesis to gulf, its tidal depths drawn (or so Gonçalves averred) from the snowy mountains and rushing rivers of six great nations—Ecuador, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, Bolivia, Brazil—their waters spilling ever downward, ever eastward, to form a phenomenon larger than the continent of Europe.

Indifferent though the Amazon basin might be to the prosperity of mortals, for the
Rainha
's company the place soon proved nutritious beyond measure, a vast tureen filled with an inexhaustible soup. As the unofficial cook aboard the side-wheeler, Mr. Pritchard was forever supplementing their food stores with the river's bounty, using the galley's corroded iron stove to prepare clams, eels, snails, and a succulent sort of manatee called a cowfish. If the Albion Transmutationist Club was ultimately bested by the Mayfair Diluvian League, it would not be because the freethinkers were less well fed than the ark hunters—though sometimes Chloe longed for a lump of butter on her clams or a dollop of jam on her cassava bread.

As she pursued her new vocation as a
bicho da seda,
she occasionally pondered Fanny Mendrick's suggestion that, having been dismissed from her theatrical employment, she should consider the vocation of seamstress. At the time this notion had seemed ridiculous, and yet a seamstress was what she'd become. Just as Homer's Penelope had wrought and unraveled a perpetual tapestry, so did Chloe and Solange regularly mend the fragile curtains using silk filaments threaded through steel needles, thus securing the weather deck against marauding vermin. Each invader favored a particular time of day, the wasps sallying forth in the morning, the sand-flies and piums in the afternoon, the mosquitoes in the evening, the vampire bats at night. Chloe took satisfaction in knowing that, beyond their affection for hideous lizards, she and the master of Down House now shared a connection to the vermicular world: Darwin the student of earthworms, intrigued by their sensoria (or lack thereof), she the aficionado of silkworms, grateful to them for saving herself and her companions from innumerable stingers, fangs, and proboscises.

At first Mr. Flaherty's grisly demise occasioned in Chloe sharp pangs of remorse: were it not for her quest, he would still be alive—but then Mr. Chadwick reminded her that the drunkard had joined the adventure of his own free and greedy will, “knowing that a journey to Galápagos might entail lethal hazards.” Even so, she could not fully extricate her conscience from the situation, and she resolved that if her club claimed the prize in the end, she would give part of her share to the wretch's surviving relations.

As the listless days slogged by, Chloe came to feel she'd made a mistake in lending the transmutation sketch to Mr. Chadwick. At the time her decision had felt like a rational response to his argument that, once he'd internalized the pages, his brain might become a whetstone on which to hone her forthcoming Oxford presentation. But now she imagined the vicar recapitulating her own mischievous act, secretly copying the essay word for word. Upon reaching Manáos, he would post the transcription to Wilberforce, so that when she finally appeared before the judges, lizards and tortoises in train, a cabal of scientifically inclined clerics would be lying in wait, ready to put the ax to the Tree of Life. Thus, her first words when Mr. Chadwick materialized in her quarters, sandalwood box in hand, were not “Has transmutationism acquired a convert?” but rather “May I assume that, as an honorable Christian, you forbore to pen a duplicate?”

“Your suspicions, I shall admit, are not groundless,” he replied. “A man who would pose as a ship's chaplain, when in fact he's an agent of the Oxford Diocese, is scarcely the soul of probity. And yet I swear that, whilst in possession of your essay, I was not led into temptation.”

“Then I must ask what sense, if any, you made of it,” said Chloe.

“You will be gratified to learn that I now consider myself a votary of the theory of natural selection.”

“Gratified indeed, and enchanted by the irony. Until this moment, I'd admired your decision to recuse yourself from the contest. ‘There's a man of integrity,' I said. But now that you accept my theory, I must ask you to accompany me as I return to Belém and book passage to England. Upon taking Wilberforce's place at Alastor Hall, you will cast your vote with the freethinking judges.”

“Impossible,” said the vicar.

“Oh?”

“To begin with, by now Wilberforce regards himself as a fixture on the bench. He will not relinquish his seat to anyone—certainly not to my befuddled self. What's more, when I said I was a votary, I did not mean that I find in natural selection a disproof of God. Your Tree of Life allows for, and perhaps even demands, the Divine Clockmaker of Mr. Locke's Deism.”

“An entity that lies about as far from the God of Christendom as does Ganymede from Gravesend.”

“I disagree,” said Mr. Chadwick, weakly: trapped in his own Deistic thicket, Chloe decided—though she would admit that her knowledge of Locke's philosophy was limited to her understanding (following upon a footnote in the transmutation sketch) that Shelley thought it an untenable alternative to atheism.

Carefully she secured the sandalwood box beneath her mattress, then imagined a question that would prove pleasurable in the asking, for it incorporated the name of the person she most fancied. “By the by, Reverend, as our
homem da proa,
aren't you supposed to be relieving Ralph Dartworthy right now?”

“How well apprised you are of our village atheist's schedule.”

“Mr. Dartworthy's exact location is always of great interest to me.”

As Chloe and the vicar left her stifling quarters and ascended the companionway to the weather deck, Mr. Chadwick resumed his disquisition. “Mr. Locke's clockmaker may not be the God of Christendom, but we're still speaking of a divine agency. When you and your collaborator imagine life ‘being originally breathed into one or a few forms,' you are postulating an Unmoved Mover and placing that entity at the beginning of time.”

“I wasn't present at the beginning of time, and neither were you,” she replied, inhaling the mucilaginous air. “I only know that if Genesis is a fable, if Adam was an ape, and if new species may appear
sans
a supernatural mechanism, then we have fatally wounded theism in all its flavors.”

“I think not,” said Mr. Chadwick.

Chloe and the vicar parted the curtains and proceeded to the foredeck. Mr. Dartworthy sat on a cask of salted fish, alternately surveying the treacherous river and inspecting himself in a small, round mirror. “Tell me your opinion, Miss Bathurst,” he said, rising. “I'm inclined to let my beard come in, thus sparing myself the chore of shaving each morning, but I'm loath to acquire too shaggy a mien.”

“A jaw so handsome as yours should be exposed to the world,” said Chloe.

“It's settled then. I shall live by the razor, taking care not to die by it.”

Now Mr. Chadwick officially assumed the four o'clock watch, and for an indeterminate interval Chloe and her companions leaned on the rail as the
Rainha
plowed through the onrushing current, chasing the westering sun. At length the vault of Heaven turned the bright vermilion of a Chatham Isle flycatcher, whilst the clouds became the luscious purple of ripe plums.

“We have breached the bourne of a marvelous realm,” said Chloe, taking the mirror from Mr. Dartworthy and holding it up to catch the celestial spectacle. “Here in enchanted Amazonia the sun sets”—she gestured towards the reflection—“even as it rises.”

“I am reminded of that splendid May morning when Voltaire, having awakened before dawn, climbed a hill near Ferney accompanied by a visitor,” said Mr. Dartworthy. “Reaching the summit, the great philosopher was overcome by the beauty of the sunrise. He removed his hat, knelt down, and cried, ‘I believe in you, powerful God—I believe!' And then, scrambling to his feet, he told his visitor, ‘As for Monsieur the Son and Madame his mother, that is a different story.'”

“An amusing anecdote,
n'est-ce pas,
Mr. Chadwick?” said Chloe.

“Amusing,” the vicar replied phlegmatically. “Obviously you and Mr. Dartworthy are determined to receive me into the Church of Awful Doubt. But even if the entire British Empire ends up subscribing to your irreverent religion, I shouldn't be surprised if God has the last laugh.”

“But first He must acquire a sense of humor, a faculty on display in neither the Old Testament nor the New,” noted Mr. Dartworthy.

The vicar responded not as Chloe had expected, by sneering at the village atheist, but rather with a self-deprecating sigh. “Even as we speak,” he said, “Voltaire stands before God's throne, cajoling Him into cracking a smile.”

“Voltaire as Heaven's jester—what a delicious idea,” said Mr. Dartworthy.

“As to whether Monsieur the Son and Madame his mother are also present in the palace,” said Mr. Chadwick in a doleful voice, “I cannot begin to say.”

 

7

Addressing a Vexing Question: Is Malaria Best Viewed as a Punishment for Improvidence or a Portal to Infinity?

The instant he saw the albatross snared in the rigging of the
Antares,
the Reverend Simon Hallowborn knew that he must be the one to free the bird, not Bosun McGowry, Midshipman Moffet, or Quartermaster Foyle, all of whom had volunteered for the task. Fearing for Simon's life, Captain Garrity had tried to dissuade him from climbing the mizzenmast, even though everyone on board agreed that this albatross, like all albatrosses, was a favorable omen—a reputation tracing to the species's utility as both a harbinger of dry land and an index of strong winds—and thus required immediate rescue. To allow an albatross to die was to invite a curse upon your ship.