The Darwin Conspiracy by John Darnton Read Free Book Online Page A

through successive stages, each with its own distinctive flora and fauna.”
    “Ha!” yelled FitzRoy, clapping the table with an open palm. “As I suspected, you do not subscribe to the belief in Mr. Paley’s Watch-maker.”
    “To the contrary, my good sir. I’ve read Natural Theology on three occasions. I do believe in the Watch-maker. It’s merely the newness of the watch that I find open to question. You see, I do have a fondness for the longitudinal effects of age.”
    FitzRoy leapt up and paced around the office.
    “Old the world is, indeed,” he said. “Seeing that it was created on twenty-fourth October 4004 B.C. And we shall find ample evidence of the Great Deluge.”
    “No doubt.”
    “Well,” FitzRoy blurted, “you’re a man after my own heart. Stand up for what you believe but remain true to the Holy Word—heh. We’ll have lots to talk about in our tiny cabin, Whig and Tory, locked in intellectual combat on the high seas. Ha!”
    And that’s how the offer was made.
    On the way to the door, FitzRoy asked Charles if it was true, as he had heard from Henslow, that he had once put a beetle in his mouth. It was. Charles recounted the story of how, as a student, he’d lifted a rock and found two exotic beetles and scooped them up, one in each hand.
    Then a third appeared, and he put one in his mouth so that he could grab that one also, only to have his mouth seize up from pain—the poor insect had secreted an acrid fluid.
    “By Jove, I could not eat for days,” he said, as FitzRoy’s laughter echoed from the walls.
    “Ha!” said the Captain. “You can’t try that with bugs in the tropics.
    They’ll put you in their mouths.”
    The joviality prompted Charles to ask a question in turn.
    “Tell me, good sir. I had the impression—or perhaps it was my imagination—that you were inordinately taken by my nose. Was that the case?”
    “It certainly was,” came the reply. “I’m a phrenologist, you know, and I abide by physiognomy, which explains my interest in your proboscis. And I must say, it does not speak well for you. It took me a while to realize that it was misleading me—you are indeed trustworthy.”
    The next day they met again, for lunch at FitzRoy’s club on Pall Mall, and again the Captain made a powerful impression on Charles. At times, it seemed, their roles had switched—now it was FitzRoy who was fearful he would back out. At one point, sipping brandy before the fire, he leaned over to touch Charles on the arm and said: “Now your friends will tell you a sea captain is the greatest brute on the face of creation. I do not know how to help you in this case, except by hoping you will give me a trial.”
    “A trial! By Jove, a thousand trials,” said Charles enthusiastically.
    “Let us hope that necessity does not materialize.”
    FitzRoy drifted for a moment on some dark thought and then added:
    “Shall you bear being told during some dinner or other that I want the cabin for myself, when I want to be alone?”
    Charles hastened to reassure him.
    “Most certainly,” he said.
    “If we treat each other this way, I hope we shall suit. If not, probably we should wish each other at the Devil.”
    FitzRoy did not hold back in describing the rigors of the voyage—the cramped quarters, the tasteless food, the rough seas, the perilous storms around Cape Horn, and the dangers of overland exploration in South America. But with each new peril, as FitzRoy seemed to intuit, Charles felt more and more convinced that the Beagle was his destiny.
    At one point, the Captain dropped his voice and confided that he had a personal stake in the expedition. He had acquired three savages during his previous trip to Tierra del Fuego—he had taken them as hostages for a stolen whaleboat—and now he was going to bring them back to establish a Christian outpost on the storm-wracked coast of their origin.
    “Have you not heard of this venture?”
    “In truth, sir, I have,” replied