Galapagos Regained (47 page)

Upon arriving in the Bahía de Cormoranes, the masquerade troupe agreed that, in light of the Eggwort disaster, the best plan would be for Ralph to pay Jonathan Stopsack a private visit, drawing him into a chummy conversation, Englishman to Englishman. And so, after dropping anchor and reefing the sails, Ralph instructed Ascumiche and Yitogua to row him across the bay and up the inland waterways to the Governor's hacienda.

The party returned at dusk. The news was heartening. Not only did aquatic iguanas thrive up and down the Indefatigable coast, not only did tortoises and terrestrial lizards abound in the swamps, but Stopsack had proved a rational and subtle member of the Anglican Communion, the kind of Christian who might very well be persuaded that Wilberforce's designs on the Encantadas turned on a dubious theology at best.

Early the next morning, Cuniche and Nitopari having brought her by longboat into Black Turtle Cove, a white-robed Chloe stepped onto the sugared sands, and shortly thereafter the rest of the troupe arrived in the cutter. Disembarking, Ralph directed Chloe's attention to Eugenio and Sancho, two swart and limber Mephistropolis prisoners, currently on furlough so they could function as Stopsack's servants. At the moment both Ecuadorians were engaged in harvesting sea snails for the Governor's dinner table.

Seizing the mooring lines, the Huancabambas dragged the longboat and the cutter through the surf to the estuary, whereupon Chloe and her fellow troupers scrambled aboard their respective launches. Anxious though she was to raise the curtain on the masquerade, she savored the upstream journey, which proceeded through a labyrinth of marshy channels bounded by mangrove glades. Dozens of devil-rays glided beneath the shallow waters like organic parasols. Egrets and herons waded along the banks, striking at the hapless fish congregating amidst the prop roots. On all sides green sea turtles lay embedded in the submarine sediments, occasionally poking their heads above the surface to draw a breath or cast a reverential eye on the sun.

In time the troupers reached the hacienda, a rambling affair set on stilts above a stagnant lagoon coated with algae, the rootless scum spreading everywhere like a film of grease on workhouse soup. Lashed to the dock was a double-masted schooner, the
Hippolyta,
flanked by assorted skiffs and
tolda
canoes. Long-billed mockingbirds and slim-beaked finches perched on the wharf railings, prospecting for bugs and grubs.

The first meeting between the Encantadas Salvation Brigade and the administrator of Her Majesty's Galápagos Protectorate occurred in his front parlor, a commodious space suffused with buttery sunlight sifted through mosquito-netted windows, the walls decorated with oil-painted views of rural England: a flowering hedge, a thatched-roof cottage, a mill with a waterwheel—affectionately observed but crudely rendered. According to the signatures on the canvases, the artist was none other than their host, Governor Stopsack, a gorbellied man with a doughy face, his surfeit of flesh constrained by a white linen suit, a watch chain slung in a golden grin between his waistcoat pockets.

Ralph introduced his companions as “Lady Omega and Bianca Quinn, bestower and beneficiary respectively of the most astounding miracle ever to occur in Peru,” then identified the Indians milling about on the veranda as “the objects of my anthropological investigations.”

The English visitors were treated to raw oysters, crake-liver canapés, and glasses of
pisco,
the succulent repast served by two more furloughed Mephistropolis prisoners, the youthful Pablo and the wizened Virgilio. To Chloe's dismay, the Governor neither welcomed the Huancabambas into the hacienda nor offered them any refreshment. When he invited his guests to spend the night, it went without saying that the proposal did not extend to anyone of an aboriginal cast of mind or skin.

Stopsack snapped his fingers, gaining the attention of both Mephistropolis inmates.
“Nuestros invitados tienen calor,”
he said, then turned to his guests. “I've ordered them to cool you off.” Throughout the ensuing conversation, the furloughed Ecuadorians operated a pair of palm-leaf fans, Pablo blessing Chloe and Solange with artificial breezes, Virgilio doing the same for Ralph and the Governor. “Tell me, Professor, what do you make of Orrin Eggwort?”

“At first blush, our Latter-Day Saint seems a harmless eccentric,” said Ralph. “Yet I can imagine his egotist's utopia expanding to a point where it threatens your own authority. If I had Lord Russell's ear, I would advise him to depose this petty autocrat.”

“And if
I
had Lord Russell's ear, I would advise him to hire
you
as my lieutenant,” said Stopsack, “for you are obviously an astute judge of men and their vanities.”

“I appreciate your flattery, sir, but my present career satisfies me.”

From his pained face and enervated posture Chloe surmised that the Governor was not a happy man, a theory corroborated by his next remark.

“The dismal truth is that for me this whole blasted archipelago is a prison—not just Mephistropolis.” Elaborating, Stopsack complained that he was expected to heed not only the caprices of Whitehall but also the whims of Quito, the Encantadas being at once a British mandate and an Ecuadorian possession. “President Ascásubi's minions, confound them, are forever mailing me complaints through the Colnett barrel. ‘Señor Stopsack, when will you send us fifty pounds of succulent sally-lightfoot crabs?' ‘Señor Stopsack, when will you clean out the pirate lairs on the northern isles?' ‘You must grow more
orchilla
moss, Señor Stopsack, so that Ecuador will eclipse Peru in vegetable-dye production.' As for the whaling masters who show up every fortnight or so—they're even worse. ‘Have you no fresh fruit, Señor?' ‘Can you row a wench or two out to my ship?' ‘When will you increase the tortoise-meat quotas?'” He gestured towards his paintings of pastoral England. “Lord, what I wouldn't give to see Shropshire again.”

“If the tortoises were literate, they would write paeans to Jonathan Stopsack,” said Ralph. “You have preserved them from extinction.”

“If I'm to believe Bishop Wilberforce's dispatches,” said the Governor in measured tones, “those tortoises trace to the Devil and should be exterminated.”

“Though an able priest, Wilberforce does not speak for the Almighty,” said Ralph. “There is one amongst us, however, for whom the divine will is an open book.” He gestured towards Chloe. “Behold the woman whom the Hebrew river-folk regard as a holy messenger. You won't be surprised to hear that Eggwort failed utterly to apprehend her intimacy with our Creator.”

At a signal from their prophet, Cuniche and the other Indians filed into the parlor. The masquerade commenced immediately. Slumped in his wicker chair, the Governor greeted each successive fabrication (the seafaring Hebrew clan, the preserved Genesis ark, the ministry of Lady Omega, the healing of Bianca Quinn, the Almighty's anger over the impending slaughter) with an expression as blank as an unmarked grave, and yet his occasional interjections—“fascinating,” “extraordinary,” “remarkable”—suggested that he was finding the narrative compelling. Once again the Serugites garbled their speeches, Cuniche declaring, “Lady Omega turned the Tower of Babel into a jolly rod of many colors,” Nitopari asserting, “Lot's wife crucified the ram in the thicket,” but these infelicities caused Stopsack no obvious distress.

“Like our Galápagos seaweed, your stories are not easily digested.” The Governor's gaze traveled from Chloe to Ralph to Solange and back again. “Perhaps Noah's ark has come to Galápagos, bearing an English mystic”—his tone was at once deferential and sardonic—“plus emissaries from an Israelite tribe. It's difficult to say. Perhaps Madam Prophet cured Miss Quinn's paralysis. I have formed no opinion as yet. But I do know this. I shan't allow Hallowborn to harm a single bird nor beast ere he hears this strange chronicle.”

“You are a wise man,” said Ralph.

“I am a prudent man,” said Stopsack. “For it's conceivable that, thanks to Hallowborn, Her Majesty's Galápagos Protectorate is about to witness the worst mischief yet wrought by Her Majesty's One True Church—and if Her Majesty's Encantadas Governor managed to avert said mischief, then Her Majesty's Bountiful Largesse might very well descend on the administrator in question. And now you must excuse me whilst I attend to my gubernatorial duties. Feel free to tour the estate. As my Ecuadorian overlords say,
Mi casa est su casa.
”

*   *   *

It turned out that Jonathan Stopsack's gubernatorial duties consisted largely in getting Pablo and Virgilio to perform his gubernatorial duties for him. He ordered the furloughed Ecuadorians to collect his mail, assess the status of the James Isle
orchilla
crop, repair the Puerto Villamil dock on Albemarle Isle, and remind a whaling master recently arrived on Narborough that he was permitted to catch but ten tortoises.

Whilst Pablo and Virgilio rushed off to accomplish these tasks, the masquerade troupers returned to the wharf and, descending to the lagoon, strolled along the shore. In time they came upon a flock of Floreana flamingos sweeping their bills through the water to catch crustaceans and aquatic insects. With their graceful legs and skirts of pink plumage, the birds struck Chloe as ballerinas by other means—and, like ballerinas, they worked hard for their living: in his journal Mr. Darwin had recorded that a Floreana flamingo might spend twelve hours a day feeding itself.

The English adventurers agreed that, owing to their heartfelt performance, Stopsack should now be counted a provisional (perhaps even a permanent) friend of the Encantadas Salvation Brigade. Against Chloe's expectations, two Indians now joined the discussion, having evidently acquired a smattering of English during their tutorials in Chief Nenkiwi's council lodge.

“I create a mistake—so sorry,” moaned Cuniche. “I should have said, ‘Lady Omega has forbidden Lot's wife to eat the Tower of Babel.'”

“That's quite all right,” said Chloe.

“I, too, make a blunder,” added Nitopari. “I should have said, ‘The ram in the thicket has forbidden the foreskins of men to be crucified.'”

“How much more times we do this, Miss Bathurst?” asked Cuniche. “We are bored to be Jews. Want to be Huancabambas again.”

“One additional performance, and we can all go home.”

Chloe was about to reiterate her promise when a
tolda
canoe appeared on the lagoon, paddled by a gasping, groaning Eugenio. In a stentorian voice he announced that a brigantine had blown into the Bahía de Cormoranes. His shouts brought Stopsack dashing onto the veranda.

“
Se llama el H.M.S.
Antares
!
” cried Eugenio.
“Precisamente la nave qua hemos estado esperando!”

A great tumult ensued, the flamingos ascending in a flurry of flapping wings as the English adventurers, the Huancabambas, and the Governor scrambled into the launches and cast off. The Indians took charge of the oars. Furiously the longboat and the cutter plowed through the mangrove glades to the beach, where Sancho was still hunting sea snails, oblivious to the recent arrival of an angel of death from Oxford.

The
Antares
lay at anchor, her Union Jack snapping in the wind, not fifty yards from the
Covenant
. As Chloe and Ralph passed Stopsack's spyglass back and forth, the brig discharged a half-dozen longboats crammed with men shackled to one another—a treacherous arrangement that prompted Chloe to imagine a mass of connected convicts falling into the bay and disappearing like chunks of bait strung along a crabbing line. But no such catastrophe occurred, and within twenty minutes the prisoners had reached the shore, accompanied by several officers and most of the
Antares
's crew.

Leaping over the prow of the lead launch, a large and florid man wearing the dress blues of a British naval captain marched up to Ralph. “Is that your peculiar vessel out there?”

“I am Professor Edward Cabot of King's College, Cambridge,” said Ralph. “The craft in question is the great fauna carrier
Covenant,
lately out of Puerto Etén, originally out of Mount Ararat. In recent weeks it has indeed been my privilege to command her.”

“Ararat?” said Captain Garrity—for that was surely his identity. “You mean where the ark came to rest?”

“The
Covenant
is well and truly the handiwork of that divinely inspired shipwright, Noah,” said Ralph.

“We'll see about that,” said Garrity, scowling strenuously.

Four white-jacketed sailors unloaded a pair of mahogany sea chests and set them on the sand, flinging back the lids to reveal a jumble of steel machetes and wire garrotes. Whilst the implements glistened in the equatorial sun, a cleric in a black cassock jumped free of his launch and approached the Governor. What most intrigued Chloe about the Reverend Mr. Hallowborn was the congruity between his physiognomy and the mental image she'd formed many months earlier. She'd pictured her
bête noire
as a cadaverous marionette, and it was precisely such a figure who now presented himself, his fingers curled and sharp like dockers' hooks, his skeleton wrapped in the pallid flesh of an incompetent vampire, his brow marred by an ellipsis of round scars.

“Governor Stopsack?” the rector inquired.

“At your service, Reverend. I expected you rather sooner.”

“Doldrums, mercurial winds, the vicissitudes of the Horn.” Hallowborn cast a suspicious eye on Chloe and Solange. “Have I the pleasure, Governor, of beholding your wife and sister?”

“Miss Quinn is an aerialist, crippled in a fall but recently restored to health,” Stopsack explained. “Lady Omega is a mystic prophet, presently intent on being a thorn in your side.”