This Thing Of Darkness (14 page)

At three o’clock he rose and left the tent, knowing that the Indians would be gone. Sure enough, two mounds of round stones lay under the blankets on the beach. He stood there, staring at the piles of stones and the thrown-back blankets, his senses crackling like sheet-lightning, every nerve-end tingling. The end of his journey to salvation was near now. He could sense it. Gradually, he became aware of a presence behind him. It was Murray.

‘Mr Murray. Did I not order a watch to be posted over the prisoners?’

‘No ... you did not, sir.’

Neither man said a word. Finally, after a long interval, FitzRoy spoke: ‘We must return to the
Beagle.’

‘Aye aye sir.’

Murray was looking at him oddly, FitzRoy could see that. Did the man not understand? Could he not see God’s holy truth, staring him in the face?

 

The journey back passed in silence. The men at the oars were going through the motions now, rowing blindly and mechanically. Visibility was poor, and rain drove horizontally and ceaselessly into their backs and down their necks. It was a tired, sad and confused party that sighted the
Beagle
late on in the forenoon watch, a day after they had left it. Boatswain Sorrell came to the side, a look of woe on his face.

‘Mr Bos’n. What news of your prisoners?’

‘They are gone, sir. All except one, sir.’

‘Gone? Gone where? We are in the middle of the ocean!’

‘Gone over the side, sir. All three women and five of the children. Gone over the side like porpoises in the night, sir.’

FitzRoy grasped a manrope in each hand, and scaled the wooden battens on the
Beagle’
s heaving flank with uncommon agility. He hauled himself on to the deck and stood face to face with the quivering boatswain.

Lieutenant Kempe came across to intervene. ‘There was nothing anyone could do to stop them, sir.’

FitzRoy looked at Kempe, and realized that his eyesight had become crystal clear. He could see the skin on Kempe’s cheek, and the tiny lines on its surface in all their minute detail. All around him, the colours of the world were now so rich and deep that they seemed to resonate inside him.

‘Don’t you understand?’ said FitzRoy.

 

The inside of the cabin was dark and silent. A faint rattling and creaking indicated that the ship was still at anchor. FitzRoy stirred. The worst of the night’s terror had drained away now. Fear and dread had come in the dark, had choked him and mocked him, tugging his emotions this way and that, playing with him like a bird of prey with a mouse. But now they were gone, and shame and embarrassment flooded his mind, together with a terrible, crushing disappointment that the tiny glimpse he had been given, of something infinitely strange and wonderful, was now snatched away from him for ever. He opened half an eye, and the grimy skylight blurred into focus. He realized that a blanket had been laid over the outside, to keep his cabin dark. How long had he been lying there? How long had his madness lasted? The events of the previous days came flooding back now in all their hideous detail.
Dear Lord, what sickness possessed me? Please, God, what damage have I done?

There was a knock at the door, and Stokes came in with a bowl of soup. FitzRoy shifted in the fusty darkness, uncoiling his stiff limbs within the frame of his tiny cot. After a moment or two he tried to speak. ‘I have not been well.’

‘No, you haven’t.’

FitzRoy was glad that Stokes had abandoned the due military formalities for the moment.

‘How came I here?’

‘The coxswain and I fetched you. You was not right in yourself.’

‘How long have I been here?’

‘About thirty hours.’

‘Is everything under control?’

‘Everything is under control.’

‘What news of Seaman Elsmore?’

‘He will lose the sight of one eye, but he will not drop off the hooks. He is recovering of his wounds.’

‘And the whaleboat?’

‘We shall never see it again.’

What madness to think otherwise,
FitzRoy realized.

‘Am I better now?’

‘I can fetch the surgeon if you so wish, but I would reason from your questioning that, yes, you are better now.’

‘To whom do I owe apologies?’

‘You are the captain. You do not
owe
apologies to anyone. If you so prefer it, you might have conciliatory words with Mr Murray, Mr Kempe, the bos’n ...’

‘Thank you.’

FitzRoy swung his feet gingerly to the floor. Every muscle in his body ached as if it had been pummelled repeatedly. Stokes raised a hand in mild protest. ‘Do you not think it would be better to rest further? This kind of delusional fit ... the surgeon seemed to think you might need a considerable period of rest.’

‘No ... no thank you, Mr Stokes. I feel that the madness is now behind me. But thank you most humbly for your kindness.’

Feeling grubby and sticky-eyed, FitzRoy pushed past Stokes and opened his cabin door. A marine sentry stood to attention, his expressionless face speaking volumes. FitzRoy inched unsteadily up the companionway and out on to the maindeck. A hushed silence greeted his appearance. Crewmen seemed to give ground imperceptibly as he made his way forward to the cluster of officers gathered at the wheel. Kempe was there, and King, and Murray, and Boatswain Sorrell.

‘Mr Bos’n. It seems I owe you an apology.’

Sorrell bobbed unhappily. ‘Not a bit of it, sir, not a bit of it. You was just unwell, that’s all.’

‘Mr Murray.’

‘No trouble sir. As the bos’n said, sir. The south is tough on a man, sir.’

‘Mr Kempe.’

‘Please don’t mention it, sir.’ Kempe smiled his half-smile.

‘I understand, Mr Kempe, that you have been in control of the Beagle during my absence. I am much obliged. I owe you a vote of thanks.’

‘My privilege sir.’

‘She has handled well?’

‘She has handled well, sir.’ Kempe paused. Whether he was enjoying the moment or was disturbed by it, FitzRoy could not tell. But there was evidently something more. ‘Just one small matter to be resolved, sir.’

‘Yes, Mr Kempe?’

‘What are we to do with
her
, sir?’

Kempe gestured towards the binnacle box. There, playing happily with a makeshift rag doll, a wide, appealing smile on her face, sat the rotund figure of an eleven-year-old Indian girl.

‘How are you feeling?’ Surgeon Wilson leaned forward, narrowing the gap between them, shepherding as much sympathy and confidentiality as he could into the intervening space.

FitzRoy thought hard about the question. ‘This morning ... not very bad.’

‘Well, physically, Commander, I would say you are in extremely good keep.’

Indeed he was. FitzRoy’s physical strength had never been in doubt. But it was no sort of weapon against whatever had assailed him, first a year and a half ago in the Brazilian sunshine and now here in the Stygian south. The original attack, back in his flag officer days, had been allowed to slip unlamented into the past, dismissed as an isolated incident, a mere oddity. But the wheels of time had now crunched suddenly to a halt, as if paralysed by fear: not just the constricting, terrifying panic that had served as the climax to each of the two attacks, but a groundswell of dread in the pit of his stomach that he knew would remain with him as long as he lived. Something primeval lurked inside him, something that frightened him because he did not know if he could ever exert authority over it. He had travelled to Tierra del Fuego to chart the wilderness, to list it and catalogue it, that it might be tamed and civilized; to bring the primordial darkness under control. But what of the darkness inside him, which waxed and waned and flexed its strength seemingly at will? Was that to be tamed? And what of the good Lord? Would God be his beacon against the darkness? Or was God punishing him for his presumption? Was this perhaps some sort of test, an examination of his faith? Had the darkness indeed been created by the light? He wondered if this was how Captain Stokes had felt, alone and afraid at the
Beagle’
s helm, rendered small and puny in the face of the mute, prehistoric wilderness all around, the deep-tangled forest that threatened to envelop him and pull him down into its consuming maw.
Please help me. Please help me, God. If not for me then for the sake of my men.

‘And you say you had no warning of the attack?’

‘None. It took me quite by the lee.’

Wilson pursed his lips in a suitably diagnostic manner. A column of smoke from his pipe spiralled aristocratically towards the low ceiling of FitzRoy’s cabin. But despite the surgeon’s stiff-backed manner and the prematurely greying hair that lent an air of dignity to his prognostications, his rumpled and frayed uniform gave away the fact that he was anything but a medical expert at the top of his profession. This was a career naval surgeon going through the motions. FitzRoy did not hold out much hope of a cure. He felt, nonetheless, that he should ask the question that mattered most. ‘I wonder if my illness will not unfit me for my command.’

‘My goodness, no. This kind of morbid depression of the spirits is not unheard-of here in the south. Why, only last week one of the crew thought he had seen the devil. It turned out to be a horned owl. I have been a surgeon since ten years, and if I had a guinea for every time a man found himself in the dismals I’d be a rich man. No, Commander, we’ll soon have you right as a trivet.’ Wilson held his pipe at what he hoped was a reassuring angle to his teeth.

He hasn’t got a clue how to deal with this, any more than I have
. ‘Well, Mr Wilson, I’ve dipped into my phrenology manual and tried a little self-examination in the mirror, but it’s an infernally difficult and delicate business.’

The surgeon digested this information with a condescending smile. ‘Ah, yes. They do say craniology is all the rage in London. I’ve never been a bumpologist myself. Bone up on this or that, and before one knows it, some other technique is in fashion. You know, I prefer to rely on more tried and tested prescriptions. My recommendation, Commander, is that you drink a glass of hot wine well qualified with brandy and spice twice a day, once upon waking and once before sleeping. Then I’d like you to take a Seidlitz powder with calomel after every meal. In due course, I think you’ll find the purgative effect will rid you of all the impurities that have accumulated in your blood vessels during the course of the voyage.’

‘Will that be all, sir?’

‘Yes, thank you, Mr Wilson. You oblige me with your kindness. I am most grateful to enjoy the benefits of your medical wisdom.’

Wilson ushered himself out. FitzRoy stood for a moment by the skylight, pensively. Then, in a moment of decision, he took the purgative powders and the companion phial of liquid that Wilson had left behind and emptied them into the icy shallows of the wash-hand basin.

 

The immense perpendicular tower of rock, named York Minster by Captain Cook for its uncanny resemblance to the celebrated cathedral, loomed threateningly over the port bow. Eight hundred feet high, jet black and guarded by lesser spires, it reared out of the sea, devouring all the dismal daylight it could and reflecting nothing back by return. FitzRoy took care to stand the
Beagle
well out to sea, despite the invitingly calm look of the waters at the base of the tower. Experience had taught him to avoid ‘williwaws’, the sudden hurricane squalls that could rush over the edge of a precipice, carrying with them a dense flurry of spray, leaves and dirt. Before one had time to react, a ship could be over on her beam ends, in the middle of a previously placid harbour. In fact they had lost their best bower anchor in yet another gale in Adventure Passage, the ship pitching bows under; but this storm had been accurately foretold by the barometer, so they had shortened sail by degrees in the face of its advance. The topmasts and yards had been struck well before the worst of the weather had hit, and there had been no further damage. The quietly ingenious carpenter, May, had even moulded a replacement anchor, in a home-made forge below decks. Subsequently, upon finding a large shipwreck spar thrown up on the shoreline, the carpenter had demanded to be left on a beach in Christmas Sound with a party of sailors, where he intended to construct a replacement whaleboat too - the local beechwood apparently leaving much to be desired as a boat-building material. FitzRoy could only marvel at the man’s craftsmanship and utility.

Standing now on the raised poop, the captain scrutinized the torn, choppy sea in their path. About a hundred yards dead ahead, there sat a solitary Indian canoe, seemingly impervious to the waves that tossed it up and down, to all intents and purposes waiting calmly for the Beagle to run it down. He could just make out the occupants as they rose and fell, by turns visible and invisible behind the grey ridges of seawater. Was this to be a sequel to the episode of the stolen whaleboat? Or had the eighty miles of close-worked sailing they had put in since Desolate Bay taken them into another part of the Fuegian nation, where news of their running battles with the Indians had yet to percolate?

Any sense of relief that FitzRoy might have entertained at the prospect of putting that episode behind him were promptly punctured by the sound of a childish giggle at his feet. There, smiling coyly up at him, was the little round Fuegian girl, an ever-present reminder of his aberration. Her face was freshly scrubbed, her hair had been cleaned and tied in two neat bunches, and she wore a rather fetching patchwork dress, which had been fashioned by one of the seamen from rags found at the bottom of the slops basket.