This Thing Of Darkness (78 page)

They had gone on to Hobart, where Darwin had withdrawn a further fifty pounds, and then to King George’s Sound in south-western Australia, where they had witnessed an aboriginal
corrobery:
a meet of several hundred painted warriors drawn from two tribes, gathered to dance in contest against each other. The two battle-lines of performers had thrown themselves enthusiastically into terpsichorean imitations of emus and kangaroos, gleaming with sweat in the firelight, to be rewarded for their efforts with a mass handout of rice pudding doled up by the
Beagle’s
crew. Darwin, armed with a ladle, had been the principal server, and had assumed the gracious air of a nanny feeding her charges; although he professed the aboriginal warriors, whose nobility of bearing had been much admired by FitzRoy, to be among the very lowest of barbarians. The following day they had encountered real emus and kangaroos, bizarre strains of animal life so utterly different from any to be found elsewhere that Darwin had seriously begun to wonder whether there might not be two Creators.

May had seen the
Beagle
dock at Cape Town, where FitzRoy and Darwin had dined with the celebrated astronomer Sir John Herschel, who had travelled to southern Africa to witness the passage of Halley’s comet. A shy, diffident, highly intelligent man with soil-rimmed fingernails, Sir John had listened with interest to their stories of Augustus Earle, and the missionaries of Waimate. He had subsequently put them in touch with the editor of the
South African Christian Recorder
, who had commissioned a piece - authored jointly by FitzRoy and Darwin - in praise of the missionaries’ efforts in the South Pacific. Sir John had also given Darwin his newly published copy of
Volume 4
of Lyell, which promised to rid the voyage home of its threatened
ennui:
Darwin told himself he would eke out each and every one of its precious pages.

Cape Town brought further good news in the shape of letters from home, the first they had encountered in fifteen months. It was new mail: all the intervening correspondence seemed to have vanished into the ether, the sadly probable cause being that a mail packet, perhaps even two, had been lost at sea. There were a couple of letters for FitzRoy, one for Lieutenant Sulivan from Miss Young and, most thrilling of all, a brace of letters for Darwin from his sisters Catherine and Susan. Catherine reported that Professor Henslow had edited a number of Darwin’s letters together, to form a paper on the link between earthquakes and the uplift of the Andes, which he had read to the Cambridge Philosophical Society in November: it had, by all accounts, caused a sensation. Public demand had seen the paper printed as a booklet, and Darwin was the name on everyone’s tongue in polite society. Dr Darwin had been so proud that he had purchased a huge stack of copies, to be given away to friends and family. Although horrified at the thought of his dashed-off, misspelt prose being published without revision, the doctor’s son could hardly fail to be delighted at the news.

Susan reported, meanwhile, that further extracts from his letters had been published in the
Entomological Magazine
at the instigation of Professor Sedgwick, who had given a lecture to the Geological Society of London on the subject of Darwin’s findings in South America. No less a figure than Lyell himself had been in the chair, and had apparently been heard to remark: ‘How I long for the return of Darwin.’ Sedgwick had predicted that his former student would take a place among the leading scientific men should he return safely, while Samuel Butler had forecast that Darwin would surely have a great name among the naturalists of Europe. Darwin had read the letter with shaking hands. ‘Papa and we often cogitate over the fire what you will do when you return,’ his sister had written, ‘as I fear there are but small hopes of your still going into the Church - I think you must turn Professor at Cambridge. We are fond of reading your exploits aloud to Papa. He enjoys it extremely, except when the dangers you run make him shudder.’ Emboldened by the extraordinary vision of his father beaming with paternal pride, he had drawn a further thirty pounds on the doctor’s account, and had given his pet tortoise Harry an unusually huge meal by way of celebration.

Cape Town should have been the
Beagle’s
last stop, but FitzRoy had infuriated his impatient, ambitious young charge by recrossing the Atlantic, to recheck his longitudinal observations off the Brazilian coast. The diversion had at least afforded Darwin the chance of one final walk in the rainforest: it was a sentimental affair, as he knew in his heart that he would never - could never — leave Britain’s shores again. Each of the brilliant and luxuriant sights that swam now before his sated eyes would fade, he knew, like a tale heard in childhood, the living flesh falling from his memories until only the skeleton of bald scientific fact remained, all those morsels of vibrant beauty reduced to a cold, inexorable agglomeration of statistics with which he would build a career. Ultimately, it was not something he regretted, for his career promised to be the most beautiful creation of all. And, as he reminded himself, his first glimpse of home would surely be better than the united kingdoms of all the glorious tropics.

The undulating months that passed, slow and tiresome, on the rising and falling Atlantic, were spent ordering and organizing the fruits of the voyage. Darwin discovered that he possessed no fewer than 1529 specimens preserved in spirits, and 3907 labelled skins, bones and other dried specimens. Covington was put to cataloguing each one by class, in his large, round, painstaking hand. The other officers had their collections to organize too, even though all had generously donated their most impressive specimens to the philosopher. Then there were the live animals on board: a Brazilian coatimundi, several Patagonian wild dogs, a Falklands fox and, of course, Darwin’s giant tortoise. FitzRoy was tied up with the main business of the voyage, the editing and production of charts and sailing directions. He had dispatched more than a hundred maps to the Admiralty already: by the time he finished the men of the
Beagle
would have produced a staggering 202 charts and plans, a task that would require a minimum of two years’ hard toil in London for him to complete.

There remained, of course, the matter of the book that FitzRoy and Darwin were due to write. The two men had been getting on extremely well of late, persuaded by their labours away from confrontation and into their private corners, but both knew that a deal had to be struck regarding the more contentious areas of the exercise. What would it say about the flood? What would it say about the creation and the extinction of species? About the very origins of life itself? By unspoken consent, they left the discussion until the last possible moment. Finally, on the day of their projected arrival, FitzRoy approached the subject over dinner, via a circuitous route. ‘I fear I have been too busy to look at Lyell. Is there anything in his new volume that I should be aware of?’

‘He is most interesting concerning the origins of life. He feels that life itself — its boundaries, its rules if you like — are all enshrined in natural laws laid down by God, laws which God Himself is bound to observe.’

‘God might
feel
bound to observe His own laws, but He could hardly be
required
to do so. It sounds as if our friend Lyell is fudging the distinction between the laws of nature and the laws of God.’

‘Is there a distinction?’

‘I should think so. The laws of God, as laid down in the scriptures, are commands — rules composed by the divine legislator, which man disregards at his peril. The laws. of nature, like the laws of physics, are not strictly laws. They are unwavering natural occurrences observed by man.

‘Whether they are true laws or not, the laws of nature are nonetheless immutable - for instance, the law of gravity cannot be altered.’

‘Indeed. They are observations of fact that cannot be obeyed or disobeyed or altered by those subject to them. In my book, however, a law is a rule, which we as rational beings have the choice to obey or to disobey. It is the God-given power of rational thought that makes all the difference, that makes our relationship to God in His heaven superior to our relationship with nature’s earthly power.’

‘But, FitzRoy, is it truly logical to suggest that the universe is subject to the laws of nature, whereas mankind alone is subject to the higher law of God? Is thought, which in biological terms is a physical function of the organ of the brain, truly more wonderful than gravity, which is a physical property of matter?’

‘Of course it is. It is the very property by which God distinguishes us from the animal kingdom.’

‘But animals can think.’

‘Not rationally. That is why I take such issue with transmutation and its propagandists. It is a damnable reduction of beauty and intelligence, of strength and purpose, of honour and aspiration. It reduces mankind to a casual aggregation of inert matter. Furthermore, I do not believe such a process can exist, for it is surely impossible, by virtue of those immutable laws of nature you speak about.’

‘And yet you believe that men can transmute into angels.’

Both men smiled at this.

‘Here, my dear Philos, you have gone beyond the boundaries of nature and into God’s heavenly realm. The legislator need hardly legislate in His own kingdom.’

‘But, FitzRoy, is it not possible that some kind of transmutation can exist
within
God’s law, and
within
the laws of nature? Does the idea of transmutation not frighten you merely becuase it would seem on the face of it to remove the need for God — when in fact that need not be a condition of its existence?’

‘I am not frightened by transmutation - I am intellectually, morally and aesthetically repelled by it. Nature is not a progression. No creature is any more or less perfect than its fellows in the eyes of the Lord. Every creature is adapted to the condition and locality for which it is designed. You saw that in the Galapagos. If there has indeed been progress in nature for countless aeons, as you suggest, explain then the persistence of supposedly lower organisms, the primitive, the immobile, the microscopic creatures, all of which have remained completely unchanged since the dawn of time. Furthermore, why are fossilized sharks, crocodiles, tortoises, snakes, bats, frogs and so forth identical to their living brethren? Why have
they
not progressed?’

‘If every species has a fixed lifespan, like an individual, then perhaps a transmuted species is the offspring of another, the Lord’s way of giving birth to a new family of living creatures?’

‘You still believe that entire species vanished from the globe by commonly expiring all at once? That there was no catastrophe? No flood?’

‘The geological record, FitzRoy ... I mean, where did all that water come from?’

‘Perhaps the ice at the poles melted and the sea level rose? Who is to say that the earth’s temperature has always been constant? Or perhaps there were immense tidal waves? Who is to say that the movement of heavenly bodies has always been constant?’

‘But the science of geology now calls the Old Testament story into question. The earth is hundreds of millions of years old, not merely a few thousand!’

‘Geology is a young branch of science, which has yet to undergo the trial of experience. I am convinced that in due course it will contribute its share of nourishment and vigour to that tree which springs from an immortal root. If the earth is indeed several hundred million years old, tell me, where has all the excess sodium chloride gone?’

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘Every year salts pour into the ocean. Yet apparently they have been doing so for hundreds of millions of years without altering its salinity. By now the sea should be a saturated solution, all life within it choked. Yet the fish in the ocean, and the fossil fish that once thrived within it, are identical.’

‘I do not know about the salt, but the sea creatures uplifted high into the Andes did not get there in six thousand years, I assure you. The geological record is unequivocal.’

‘Every major geologist believes in the flood. Buckland, Conybeare, Silliman in the United States — ’

‘They are all clergymen. Of course they believe in the flood.’

‘So are you. Or, at least, a clergyman in training.’

‘Not any more. I shall be a geologist, perhaps, or a naturalist, or both. But I cannot take up holy orders, FitzRoy. I cannot do it.’

‘I am saddened to hear so. Why ever not?’

‘I simply can no longer believe in the miracles of the scriptures. No sane man could believe in miracles! The more I know of the fixed laws of nature that pertain on this earth, the more incredible do such miracles become.’

‘And the miracle of creation?’

‘I believe God created all things - but I do not know how. Maybe some random principle applies . . .’

‘Consider a butterfly, Philos. It grows from a caterpillar via an amorphous soup, a mere liquid that fills its chrysalis. The organizing principle of that transformation is external to the material substances involved. Do you not see? There is a pattern to the universe, an order. It is the same with the weather: weather patterns are not random, although they appear so to the untrained eye. We should be trying to deduce the patterns of God’s ordered universe, not attempting to decry their very existence!’

Both men sat perfectly still, facing each other, not saying a word. It was a grim silence at first, then their expressions melted into wry smiles. The moment had arrived.

‘And now, my friend,’ said FitzRoy, ‘I must prepare to have the disposal and arranging of your journal, to mingle it with my own, without offending you.’

‘I am perfectly willing, of course,’ replied Darwin carefully, ‘but my conclusions must remain my own.’

‘Of course. If you wish discreetly to dispute the flood, then you must do so, even if I should find it regrettable. You would not be the first. The same goes for the age of the earth, the extinction of species and other such matters. And I believe that your work on the subject of geological uplift, and the formation of coral atolls, constitutes a major contribution to our nation’s scientific knowledge.’