Mr Darwin's Shooter

by Roger McDonald

  On their days of sleeping ashore Covington woke first, yawned, stretched and broke wind. He gave his blanket a whiplash to free it of burrs and dust before folding it and getting down on his knees to spark the tinderbox for an early fire. There was something irredeemably melancholy about a fire before sunrise, making a puny orange sputter against the fading stars. Then it became the best thing there could be. Darwin always said so and covered his head for his minute more, only to find, after that momento of fading dreams, his Bedford-born vacciano crouching over him, gripping a pannikin of tea and asking if he wanted shaving water.

  ‘I can have it hot in a jiffy,’ was the promise that Covington always made.

  This was if they were near a river. (Otherwise they went dry, grew beards.) If they were near a town or coming to an estancia Covington searched around for a shining buckle where he could glimpse himself and apply his pomade, reeking of bay rum in the dewy morning like a Pall Mall rake. He always seemed to have recently broken his mirror and Darwin unwrapped his from its protective chamois and passed it over. Then Covington trimmed, with a pair of surgical scissors, his nascent moustachios, which were scrappy as a Chinaman’s and yet enviable in the youth because worn with such expectant bravado. Darwin tried not to think about the woman Covington was believed to have tupped on his bird-shooting forays. He could do without the unsettling and unreliable effect of any passion that might break out in himself. But in the margin of a letter to his dear friend Fox he was caught sketching a seal of Cupid trimming the sails of a vessel. Covington found it when he readied the post, and grinned as if he’d found the product of a girl.

  Gentry had to be pitied. They had so few advantages in respect of love. They could say they longed for a kiss from a bouncy wife in a vicarage garden. They couldn’t say she roared under me and clutched my back, and I shot my specimen to blazes.

  ‘What are we about, you ask?’ The gent looked at Covington thoughtfully, not impatiently for once, and said they were about creeping back in time. He said that good spadework carried them there, and Covington, liking ‘they’, the way the gent used it so inclusively, boasted: ‘Us Covingtons are bone-men going back a bit, you may swear on my pick.’

  It was the day Gent wrote in his notebook with the writing slanting across his knee (Covington always looked, when the day’s work was done, in case there was an estimation of him good or bad):

  My alteration in view of Geological nature of P. Alta is owing to more extended knowledge of country; it is principally instructive in showing that the bones necessarily were not coexistent with present shells, though old shells: they exist at M. Hermoso, pebbles from the beds of which occur in the gravel. Therefore such bones, if same as those at M. Hermoso, must be anterior to present shells. How much so, Quien Sabe?

  Nothing much there for a loyal retainer. Nor, as time went on, did Covington ever find his name written in the notes, though a quien sabe was something, having an echo of him, surely, and his perky Spanish. A speculation by the gent was sometimes followed with the phrase vide specimens, and as Covington was the source of the specimens it was acknowledgement of a kind. It was like a rock scratched with charcoal or engraved with a spike, the way sailors did wherever they went in the world. ‘Cobby was here.’ That kind of thing. He knew his time would come, as surely as he trusted in the completion of heaven.

  Covington used his pickaxe to loosen a jawbone in the cliff line. It was like a broken door. The creature had teeth knobblier than handles, suggesting a throat like a hallway and a stomach like a ballroom arch. It was turned to stone and embedded in soft rock. He took hold with all his strength and tugged remnants from the earth. Up came jawbone, thighbone, and at last the great skull of the monstrosity that so excited the gent he swore by his living bowels (which was most unlike him), declaring it to be a specimen of creation well off course. Indians they questioned reported no such animals ever roamed the spot, neither in memory nor legend. It was no African rhinoceros, either, as he’d thought at first.

  Covington spaded towards nightfall, and then worked the clunkering great nut free by lamplight and twirled the cranium above his head for all to admire until Gent raged at him be careful. It was to go to the Royal College of Surgeons in Lincoln’s Inn Fields and be put on display, a rarity and a freak, and Covington was fearsomely proud of that.

  The crew and even Capt smiled and made jokes of the cargoes of apparent rubbish brought aboard. But all of them knew that the taking of objects from earth, water and sky made a storehouse of treasure. The Spaniards had scoured the Americas for gold, whereas glory for England was in the naming. There were a few Frog Eaters gone ahead of them, one d’Orbigny was a particular foe, having had a three-year start. Gent was afraid d’Orbigny might get the cream of all good things. So they cracked on a pace. From birds to stones and bones and back to birds again, the mood was always the looking under of surfaces. Covington wasn’t one to think with his head so much, that was established between them, but he could think with his hands and amaze with his production. Self-willed he might be as John Phipps had once hurtfully accused, but look what transpired, he came to this work and excelled. An easygoing servant without much pride was not for this master, and Covington meant to be prodigious and more. He would be made and shaped all over if that was the need.

  The work ashore showed how far mighty golls, a solid trunk, and strong curiosity could take a young university man away from anyone’s conception of him. Was Darwin truly to be a curate in a country parish, as was said? Those days with the monster-bones were a kind of bullock-hauling, man-driving display, with great organisation and demand on show. Darwin matched Covington in labour and there was no second-guessing: it was the most perfect of times and pray they came again.

  ‘You are like my brothers,’ Covington told him, adjusting the bandanna handkerchief tied above his eyes to keep the sweat from stinging. ‘You moan and groan but you never tire.’

  ‘I congratulate you,’ rejoined Darwin, ‘on being like your brothers too, I daresay. But I am tired enough, and will sit making my notes while you feed me my matter.’

  1st the Tarsi and Metatarsi very perfect of a Cavia: 2nd the upper jaw & head of some very large animal, with 4 square hollow molars & the head greatly produced in front. Enormous Armadillo? 3d the lower jaw of some large animal: 4th some large molar teeth. Enormous Rodentia? 5th also some smaller teeth belonging to the same order: &c &c.

  ‘Covington!’

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘As you gather the bones up care must be taken not to confuse the tallies. They are mingled with marine shells.’

  ‘What say?’

  ‘I said … bones … mingled …’

  ‘I had my eye on that,’ said Covington, beginning to throw fresh shells away. ‘You took them from the water. It is how you wanted them.’

  ‘I do want them, can you hear me? But now they are mingled in the sacks.’

  Covington stood over a sack. ‘It will be an hour’s work to separate them all.’

  ‘I just want my friend to know, when they reach London, they are not the same …’

  ‘He would have to be blind …’

  ‘Very well. He would have to be blind. I shall make the point to him.’

  Covington whistled and knew he was on the side of good sense. Darwin might say that presumption was the foe of intelligence, but a donkey was not allowed sixty pounds per annum including expenses only to bray.

  They camped near the boneyard under their upturned boats listening to a ghostly wind and all wondering if any of the great animals that died there were still on the earth. Darwin brought out his books, Covington held the lamp for him, and he mumbled his suppositions of what the bones were.

  Next day John Phipps came with the cutter and Covington took him to see the finds. They caught a snake on the way, by standing on its back. Its tail was terminated by a hard oval point that vibrated like a box of Lucifers. While Covington pinned it down Phipps clutched it behind the neck with his thumb and forefinger.
Darwin thanked him and cut the snake open, and said it was equal in poison to the rattlesnake, and might have bitten him. Phipps laughed and said he put his trust in God. Phipps got excited about the bones, when all was explained, and said it was like doing business in great waters, or going down into the deep, was it not?—Covington winked at knowledge of this great text between them. ‘Like being in the heart of the sea and going down to the bottoms of the mountains,’ he replied. Covington was proud of Phipps as their bark’s best countryman bar none—fowler of strong repute, immaculate poacher and something odd to have aboard, his fierce dissenting minister at large who would never own to his truest calling except under the stars, but treasured it inwardly while he worked at being coxswain and maintop-captain.

  When Phipps was around the gent took care to explain himself with exceptional patience, valuing the antiquated, beard-stroking, nodding, analogy-loving man who slipped him questions. ‘Why doth the fire fasten upon the candlewick?’ was a favourite to consider. ‘Why doth the pelican pierce her own breast with her bill?’

  Continuing their camp they talked into the next night too. You could hear the gent’s brain cog-turning in the silence. He peopled the plain with horned and armour-plated creatures all snuffling along and, in the case of the giant armadillo, rupturing the earth with the force of an eighteen-pounder in its claws. It was easy to imagine the thunder of feet coming through gusts of wind, and when Covington asked, ‘Was there men like them too? Say giants before there was us?’ he got thoughtful silence for his reply. No giants before, was the true answer, for thus it was that the Bible said, that man was placed on the earth and all creatures assembled around him for his use. But giants somewhere was a possibility, for who knew all the mysteries of God’s creation? They had not seen any in Tierra del Fuego but the natives spoke of them. Wasn’t it what this voyage was for, to do some unravelling? When they sailed into the Pacific, which would be soon, what would they find there? It would be a long haul before they saw England again, they were all suddenly thinking, and to break the lonely mood MacCurdy’s voice from the dark was heard snorting: ‘There shall be giants again if you ever have young ’uns, Cobby, our man,’ and even at such a hint Covington had no thought that he could have started a child with Mrs FitzGerald, nor remembered it was through a strange uncertainty of himself in relation to his gent that he had mingled into his passion a sense of rivalry, so that there was, if you fancied it, a kind of marriage afoot between one and the other.

  John Phipps stayed the night ashore, arranging a folded coat for his pillow as so often in the past. Covington stretched beside him and Gent surprised them at their devotions, joining them at their Lord’s prayer and bidding them good sleep.

  Then they were all gathered back to the bark. She sailed, and Covington slipped away from a life on the land into a dimension of sea-living that wasn’t like his old shipboard life at all—nor anything else he had known—for it was part comfort, part privilege, part a clerk’s assiduous organisation. It was also part exile—his deafness making him an island. It was all summated in the words ‘gentleman’s gentleman’, a strange vanity to have in those parts.

  To Port Desire they sailed where the officers ransacked an Indian grave, looking for antiquarian remains. To Port St Julian, then, where they went out with the guns and shot salt-water-drinking guanacos and stumbled on an old brick-built Spanish oven. Nearby were the remains of a small wooden cross that was three hundred years old. Magellan had been there and executed some murderers, it was said, as also had Drake, doing his punishments and calling the island ‘true justice’.

  To the Straits of Magellan. To Port Famine, within a wet circle of latitude, where Covington sat in the poop cabin listening to rain crash down, making lists and waxing fat on good supplies. Plum jam, fresh bread, three spoons of sugar in his coffee and then a sneaked fourth. A good puff on his briarwood pipe whenever he wanted. A warmth in his trowser-region too when his mind ran over Mrs FitzGerald, the details always violently present to his imagination. Out on the deck, faint cries of the survey-makers as they read depths, and the monkey-chatter disagreements of the midshipmen over their algebra. Faint was the word— only hearable if uttered close to Covington’s ear; his left ear by preference, being slightly better than the right, being a little bit farther removed from exploding shot-powder.

  On to Tierra del Fuego they sailed, and its maze of waterways, where they had previously sailed in wild storms, but now came into a calm.

  ‘What a great useless animal a ship is,’ said Darwin, ‘without wind.’ The sails hung heavy as wet washing.

  ‘One sugar,’ said Covington, mis-hearing absolutely. ‘I had. And a half.’

  They had a ration of it going, an absurd restriction. Covington always made out through confessing to a slight indulgence that stuffing himself excessively was quite beyond him. It was a servant’s trick. On occasion it meant he could be blind steaming drunk while Darwin believed him abstemious to the limit of a single glass, perhaps two if pressed. He bent his head to his copying. Entrance of creek, dark blue sandy clay much stratified dipping to NNW or N by W at about 6°. So much on all this! The feeling of the past reaching out from behind and looming over the present like a shadowy wave. It was a restless deep inquiry they were on. There were times when it came with understanding and times when it came confused. There was no time when it came godless.

  The roaming and adventuring in South America were coming to an end; there was only Chile left; and then the Galapagos Islands. On the beach a succession of thin strata dipping at 15° to W by S—conglomerate quartz and jasper pebbles—with shells—vide specimens. Covington’s fingers scrabbled into the bowl and took another chunk of Jamaican molasses-brown that Capt’s steward, Harry Fuller, had left for him. It was you scratch my back and I’ll tickle yours between the two of them. Covington had so much sweetness in his coffee now that it made a syrup. He felt a bit sad. What was he mooning about? Mrs FitzGerald?

  There was a comfortable mooning in that. He would like to be with her again but he did not wish it always. He would rather be where he was. On the coast about 12 feet high, and in the conglom. teeth and thigh bone. But then in a flush of anger he put pen to paper, and asked her—if she were free—would she be his wife?

  There was a commotion on deck. It came to Covington through vibration and the long absence of others in the cabin. He went out to look. The rain had stopped. The surface of the sea was as silver as the back of a fish. Whales were passing and men were everywhere watching. It was not unusual but these were leaping from the water, every part of their body came into the air, and when they slapped down the tail made a noise like a ship’s gun. Even Covington heard it. It was one of his last great sounds before all went inwards.

  Spermaceti, he was to copy later. Also observations of the people who ran to the shore and paddled about in their flimsy canoes—their formerly civilised Fuegians who were absorbed back into savagery. One full-aged woman bedaubed with white paint and quite naked, the rain and spray dripping from her body, their red skins filthy and greasy, their hair entangled, their voices discordant, their gesticulation violent and without any dignity. What branch of creation did they come from? For what purpose were they created thus? Viewing such men, one can hardly make oneself believe that they are fellow creatures placed in the same world. So wrote Darwin, who was in Covington’s care—Cobby with one eye open, his head resting on his arms, sentinel of the mess-table while an iron pot sang on the stove, always ready to spring alert when tapped on the shoulder (the bark being used to it now, when he didn’t respond to shouting). There were days when nothing happened, when the gent ‘staid on board,’ when ‘there was nothing to be done,’ when the vessel ‘remained stationary,’ and the gent ‘not being quite well’ lay in a darkened bunk with Assam tea poultices on his eyeballs while Covington fetched steamed towels and potions for headaches and cramps. Problems poured into Darwin’s brain and solutions withered at the rate of seeds, each one inscribed by the little curl o
f a question mark done in lampblack ink. Covington had charge of the notes and read them with all the understanding of a fly seeing a pinpoint of light in a dark room and dimly buzzing. How to explain part of the structure of that Decapod? It is so very anomalous and the animal being pelagic is a beautiful structure for holding to light floating objects. Quere if a serpentine rock be not the produce of volcanic baking of a chloritic slate?

  There came further wonders surpassing imagination before their voyage was done—an earthquake in Chile dissolving the solid perfection of matter, turning forest and hillslope into substance reliable as water; God showing infinite humour, stranding seashells and a line of old beachfront high in the Andean mountains. What did they signify, these shells, if not this?—That the world rose high in perfect mockery of the Flood, as was philosophised between Gent and Capt?

  John Phipps had a reply for ’em, if they might listen, an answer from which he never varied, that was good enough for brother Cobby: those beaches meant a playfulness in the mind of the Creator, a great teasing and tricksiness to test man’s easy diversion from the Right Way. God rested on the Sabbath in perfect accord with the purpose of Creation, which was to attract praise for his deeds. And was there any contradiction to this in the way Darwin sent their specimens back by available ship to London? Not at all. The great ones of London turned them over in their hands and decided what they were—mirrors held to God’s glory, mysteries of providence. The careful description and placement of material on lists connecting one to the other was elaborate praise. Collecting and praise arched together. They made the rainbow.