Mr Darwin's Shooter by Roger McDonald Read Free Book Online Page A

wrestled him down.
    â€˜The name is MacCracken. You are under my care.’
    â€˜Don Sia Di ?’ Covington said, or so the name sounded to MacCracken’s ears.
    â€˜David D. MacCracken is the name. Just as I said.’
    Covington wearied MacCracken with repetition of his‘Don’, which Covington had barked since coming out of the influence of ether, that majestical liquid with a dizzy-making odour with which the new-made surgeon had stilled Covington’s struggles—and sometimes, for the interest of it, had enhanced his own senses and coloured his dreams by taking a sniff.
    Finally MacCracken shouted against Covington’s ear and his meaning won through. ‘I am your doctor! You are ill! Be satisfied!’—and Covington sank back in his pillows, making a dry chomping sound and rubbing his battered nose with the back of his hand, giving MacCracken the benefit of a gentle smile, which the younger man witnessed then for the first time, and it warmed his liking.
    â€˜You’re an American,’ said Covington.
    â€˜You thought I was someone else?’ mimed MacCracken.
    â€˜Aye.’
    â€˜A Spaniard?’ snorted MacCracken, snapping his fingers, clicking his heels, doing a fair tarantella in charade.
    In time MacCracken would learn that the man Covington called him in his delirium was also nondescriptly brown-haired, also big-nosed, also obliging of manner, also absolutely unremarkable-seeming and doubting his first-chosen trade, and aged but thirty years the last time Covington saw him. No Spaniard, either, but a well-born Englishman, and around six feet tall and so inclined to stoop a little in his relation to others. His name was Charles Darwin but MacCracken was far from knowing that, and would have thought it unlikely even if told, Darwin being famous for his Beagle’s Voyage , which MacCracken had read at the age of twelve, holding it somewhat responsible for nurturing a whim, that bore fruition, for science and travel.
    â€˜I am sorry to give you this trouble,’ Covington said, coming round in a cold sweat.
    â€˜Not at all,’ responded his saviour.
    Under wiry eyebrows and a clifflike foreheadCovington’s eyes followed MacCracken everywhere as he cleaned his instruments. Covington was a powerful presence in the dim light, the planes of his cheekbones and jaw offering a fine portrait. MacCracken was interested in his head. Lumpy, he would say. But interesting.
    â€˜Your hatmaker,’ he supposed, ‘finds his fortune in you, Mr Covington?’
    That head’s resemblance to a loaf of bread, where yeast pushed the crust in various stern directions, had often been remarked upon with Covington. His ears hung a little pendulously in his age. MacCracken, with a flippancy to his nature, muttered whatever he liked while in Covington’s company, never expecting a reply unless he bothered with shouting. Covington’s hair was thinning and black and, ‘I daresay dyed, old fellow?’ said MacCracken, testing the emptiness of the air.
    â€˜Blustery weather,’ Covington replied.
    Covington’s facial purpling came from old scars. MacCracken used his magnifying glass. He deduced they were powder burns but Covington said nothing. Facial scarring was not the only mark on him. There were welts on his shoulders, embedded like sea-slugs, purple and slack. He guessed that Covington had once been severely flogged, and from turns of phrase Covington used (‘deaf as a mainmast’ and ‘sparm fish’ for whale), divined in Covington’s distant past a ship, though whether a merchant ship, a convict ship, or a man-of-war he could not tell.
    â€˜What ship? What navy? What crimes? What cruelties?’
    Covington gave no answer.

It was the nineteenth of February by MacCracken’s diary, and Covington had been with him twenty days.
    â€˜I am weak,’ Covington rolled his eyes around. ‘Will you care for me,