A Discovery of Dragons Read online

  For Bill, with love

  The natural history of these islands is eminently curious, and well deserves attention.

  —CHARLES DARWIN,

  THE VOYAGE OF THE BEAGLE

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  A Note About the History

  Part One

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Part Two

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Part Three

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Part Four

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Part Five

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-One

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Chapter Forty-Six

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  Chapter Fifty

  Chapter Fifty-One

  Chapter Fifty-Two

  Chapter Fifty-Three

  Chapter Fifty-Four

  Part Six

  Chapter Fifty-Five

  Chapter Fifty-Six

  Chapter Fifty-Seven

  Chapter Fifty-Eight

  Chapter Fifty-Nine

  Part Seven

  Chapter Sixty

  Chapter Sixty-One

  Chapter Sixty-Two

  Chapter Sixty-Three

  Chapter Sixty-Four

  People and Places

  An Interview with Lindsay Galvin

  Timeline

  Reading List

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Copyright

  On December 27, 1831, Charles Darwin set off on his legendary voyage aboard HMS Beagle. After five years, he returned to England with new and revolutionary ideas about the wonderful creatures he had studied. These ideas formed the basis of one of the most famous scientific books ever written, On the Origin of Species.

  A cabin boy and fiddler named Syms Covington became Mr. Darwin’s assistant during the voyage. This is a story of what could have happened during their exploration of the Galapagos Islands, and might explain why the earliest explorers named this place the Enchanted Isles …

  Narborough Isld presents a more rough & horrid aspect than any other; the Lavas are generally naked as when first poured forth.

  —CHARLES DARWIN,

  THE VOYAGE OF THE BEAGLE

  September 1835

  Albemarle Island, Galapagos

  Mr. Darwin crouched in front of a giant tortoise, notebook in hand. His homemade magnifying eyeglass, which the sailors of the Beagle all made fun of, gave him the look of a studious buccaneer.

  “See how the shell is completely domed, Covington,” he said. “It means they can’t raise their necks at all.”

  “Reckon they don’t need to, sir,” I said, watching the tortoises chewing. “There’s a lot of grass growing here, so they’re always looking down at the ground anyhow.”

  Mr. Darwin’s eyebrows shot up and he grinned. “An interesting observation. Could the shell design force this behavior, or could it be the other way around?”

  I didn’t know the answer to that but felt my cheeks warm in the glow of his approval. When our voyage began four years ago, I was ship’s fiddler and cabin boy, but for the last two and a half years I’d been assisting Mr. Darwin, making use of my letters, like my da would have wanted. I liked to think I’d picked up some of his way of thinking too.

  “I wonder if it would be difficult to ride on such a shell,” I said idly, then kicked myself. That wasn’t the kind of thing Mr. Darwin wanted to hear from his assistant!

  “Well, ready yourself, then,” said Mr. Darwin, and to my surprise he clambered aboard one of the giant tortoises, perching on top of its shell. “What are you waiting for?”

  The ancient animal stretched out its long crusty neck and hissed at the unexpected weight, then took a ponderous step. Mr. Darwin just managed to catch his balance. His laugh rang out, much clearer and louder than his voice, and he slapped his thigh.

  This was more like it. The master might be awful clever and mostly serious, but he was only a young man himself, and I loved those rare moments he was game for a laugh. We’d been measuring tortoise shells all day and a break was more than welcome.

  I eyed up the tortoises and chose a smaller one that seemed to be fast asleep, its head tucked into its wrinkled neck like an acorn in its cap. I scrambled onto its back. It wasn’t as easy as Mr. Darwin made it look. My master was tall and sometimes stooped. He had a way of swinging his arms when he walked but wasn’t nearly as clumsy as he looked. My knees slipped on the mottled shell, but I finally managed to settle my behind in the center. When the tortoise started to move, I felt as though I was back on the Beagle sailing around the stormy waters of Cape Horn.

  Mr. Darwin’s tortoise was heading across the lava field, but mine stopped and dipped to munch some grass, nearly tipping me off.

  “You’ve chosen a donkey, Covington, but mine is a noble steed!” called Mr. Darwin.

  I laughed out loud as he waved his hat in the air. If only Da could see me now.

  A shadow darted over me and I looked up. Two magnificent frigate birds swooped on the air currents, massive black wings almost as sharply pointed as their beaks and tails. Their red throats flashed.

  Mr. Darwin stared upward too. “Looks like some weather coming in, Covington …”

  I could see it too. The sky was suddenly the color of a bruise and the air smelled of copper pennies.

  The young sir hopped down from the tortoise. “Did you pack the specimens well?” His voice was serious once more.

  “I did, sir,” I replied, and slithered down myself. My tortoise had tucked its head back in. I pulled up some grass, which it took from my offered hand with a beaky, toothless mouth. I liked the tortoises; there seemed to be a lot of thinking going on behind those old black eyes.

  “Make haste, then, boy. Let’s get them back to the barrels,” said Mr. Darwin.

  The casks of wine would preserve the specimens we’d collected until we landed at a port where they would be sent all the way back to Mr. Darwin’s colleagues in Cambridge.

  A fat spot of rain hit my arm and a gust of wind nearly separated me from my hat. The weather changed rapidly in this part of the world—we always had to be ready for it, and Mr. Darwin’s blue-gray eyes looked dark beneath his frown. I shouldered our knapsacks and stowed the logbook in my satchel. Mr. Darwin’s eyeglass had been discarded on a boulder, and I slipped it inside my fiddle case, then thumbed some
wax around the seals to keep out the water. I’d brought my fiddle as an experiment to see the effect of music on wildlife, but there’d been no time to play in the end. Mr. Darwin wasn’t partial to the old instrument; he called it Scratch and the name stuck.

  The spatters of warm rain turned into a downpour, and we hurried across the black lava plain toward the shore where the rowboat waited.

  “Watch your step here, Syms,” said Mr. Darwin, and I nodded. Beneath the lava plain were tunnels, which had once been underground rivers of molten lava, and there were dangerous holes near the surface.

  Mr. Darwin said these islands looked like the infernal regions—which to the likes of you and me means hell. The five volcanoes of Albemarle lined up behind us, and ahead, purple-gray clouds the shape of cauliflower had piled behind the silhouette of the Beagle, which was anchored out at sea.

  One of the sailors, Robbins, met us at the shore in a bit of a lather, which wasn’t like him at all. “You’ve seen the storm, then, sir?”

  Mr. Darwin nodded. “Let’s get back to the ship. All haste.”

  Robbins took Mr. Darwin’s equipment and made giant strides through the bright green seaweed that covered the black rocks. We tramped straight into the sea, wading out to the rowboat, which was held steady in the surf by the other seaman, Tanner. I helped my master in first, then scrambled in myself. It had been minutes since our tortoise ride, but the Beagle was now near invisible through the rain, and the sea was dark and spiked. Robbins pushed off from the shore and waded through the surf, then leaped in behind us.

  “Hold tight, lad. Mr. Darwin.”

  The two men began to row, muscles cording at their necks, as the swell of the sea rose and rain pelted us like stones thrown by a furious beast.

  Lightning split the dark clouds above us, and thunder shook my bones. From the first lurch of the rowboat, Mr. Darwin’s face turned the color of ship’s porridge, as it always did in any sort of swell. But as we pitched and rolled our way toward the Beagle, it was Robbins’s stony face that scared me. He and Tanner were rowing with all their strength, but the waves were rising, the wind sharper than the bosun’s whip, and it was hard to say if we were any closer to the ship.

  I bailed rainwater from the bottom of the boat, but it poured in almost as fast as I could throw it out. I slid Scratch round to my back, glad I had sealed the case with wax. Each wave was a galloping hillock of water for us to climb and it seemed impossible we were still afloat, but the sailors rowed on and I tried to tell myself that it was harder to sink a boat than it looked.

  Mr. Darwin’s linen shirt was plastered to his skin, his face as white as the foaming waves. He reached out to me, then scrambled across the bench and threw himself to the side of the boat to void his guts. He clung to the edge, his back heaving, and I moved over to help—but just as I did, we climbed a mountain of a wave and the master pitched forward, his hands slipping. Before I even had time to call out, he flipped over … into the sea.

  “Man overboard!” Robbins yelled.

  I snatched up the rope curled in the bottom of the rowboat, coiling it round my hand. Then another shout as I threw the other end of the rope behind me.

  I leaped into the raging sea after my master.

  The waves hauled me under and then threw me up, gasping, and I realized too late that I was a fool because I’d likely not be able to save myself, let alone Mr. Darwin.

  “Robbins!” I yelled. “Robbins!” I felt the fiddle case rise at my back, still strapped tight across my chest. Everything was a blur of gray and white—was this the end?—then the line pulled taut in my hand. I collected my senses and kicked hard, trying to make out the silhouette of Robbins and the boat. And there … Mr. Darwin’s white shirt!

  He wasn’t lost, not yet. We had a chance. I must not let go.

  Both our lives depended upon it.

  I struck out with my free hand. Mr. Darwin spotted me and floundered in my direction, tossed on the chop and foam like a cork, until by some force of luck the swell clashed us into each other. I clung to him fiercely with my legs, and we were dragged under. We whirled and tumbled underwater before being flung to the surface again. By some miracle we were still together.

  “Hold on to the rope, sir!” I shouted. He didn’t seem to hear me. His eyes were almost closed, and he hadn’t so much as coughed since the last ducking. I held us both to the rope with one hand and slapped his waxy cheek, hard.

  “The rope, sir! Mr. Darwin!”

  His eyes opened, but they were wide and glazed. I couldn’t hold on to him for much longer.

  “Charles Darwin!” I yelled in his face with all my strength. The master seemed to awaken then, spluttering out water, and his eyes sprang to life and met mine. He reached out and I snatched his hand and wrapped his stiff fingers around the rope, then his other hand next to it. I jerked hard and Robbins tugged back, then we were being hauled one way, but the sea was sucking at us the other, trying to keep us for itself. But we were moving. All we had to do was hold on and we’d make it.

  The next whitecap battered me sideways and one of my hands was torn from the rope. Mr. Darwin’s feet crashed into my shoulder and then my other hand was slipping, slipping, and even when I gritted my teeth and crushed my fist tight, I couldn’t keep hold. The sea wrenched the line from my hand, and I was tumbled deep.

  I spun until my lungs burned, in an airless world of churning froth, and when I finally surfaced, gasping, neither Mr. Darwin, the rope, the rowboat, nor the Beagle were anywhere in sight.

  The rain was like Noah’s flood all over again; the sky matched the brutal slate gray of the sea and flickered as though the clouds were giant flints clashing against one another. I was sure every new swell would be the one to finish me off as I tumbled underwater over and over, unable to tell up from down. Memories flashed … taking me back where my mind hadn’t been in years … to the day after they buried young Kitty Jenkins, who’d drowned in the Old River Bedford. Da had made me go down to the pond with him.

  Brown water in my eyes, in my mouth, sucking me down. I flailed, panicked, sinking, hearing nothing but the roar of the bubbles until Da’s voice cut through, muffled and distant.

  “Kick, Syms! Kick hard!”

  I booted the water with all my might and burst free, coughing and sobbing. Strong hands grasped both of my upper arms.

  “Now you can swim, boy. And that’s what you do—you swim, and you never give up.”

  I smashed through the surface, heaving in coughing breaths, and hoped my da was looking down and feeling awful pleased that his son had legs that knew how to kick back.

  How I wished I could catch a glimpse of the rowboat—for all I knew, it had been overturned and all on board lost … No. I didn’t even know if Mr. Darwin could swim, but many of the sailors could not. I had to trust, I had to believe, that my master had kept hold of the rope, that Robbins had hauled him in.

  Over and over, I made it back to the surface like a bleeding boxer who didn’t know when to quit. At last, at long last, the waters began to churn from below as well as above, and I felt jagged rocks beneath me. I fought to stay upright in the bubbling foam and could just see land ahead of me. Through my blurry salt-stung eyes, it seemed no more than a great looming lump of black rock, but it might have been heaven itself I was that pleased to see it.

  I hauled myself up onto the rocks, out of the hungry sea, then scuffed my knees and hands as I dodged iguanas—the sea lizards that sprawled over the rocks on every Galapagos island like wet rags on washday. One lifted its head and snorted out water from the nostrils in its craggy snub face, but the others gave me barely a glance. The Beagle’s commander, Captain Fitzroy, had called them “imps of darkness,” but they weren’t in the least impish in their nature.

  I finally stood tall, battered by rain and trembling all over, and let myself believe I’d survived. I was scraped and bleeding, but the cuts weren’t deep. My legs were wobbly, but I could walk. I had only one boot but nearly all my senses. I
had lost my master, my ship, and even my fiddle, but I was alive.

  Where was I?

  The iguanas told me this was still the Galapagos at least. Ahead was one almighty summit, a bigger volcano than any I’d seen. Some of the islands had thick forests covering the higher ground, but the plains of black volcanic rock leading up to this one sprouted greenery as sparse as the feathers on a vulture’s head. I hadn’t been here before, I felt sure of it.

  I crouched, hugging my knees, and tried to think. We’d been on the west coast of Albemarle this morning, but with the gusts of the storm I had no way of knowing which direction I’d been washed. I tried to picture the map of the archipelago, but my mind was whirling. I could have hit one of the other shores of Albemarle or been washed up on another island entirely. This place seemed by far the most wild and godforsaken of the Galapagos Islands we had visited, and the driving rain was making it even less welcoming.

  The relief I’d felt at being washed ashore was fading fast.

  I crouched on the black rocks, shivering—with fear and shock as much as cold—until my teeth chattered.

  I pictured Mr. Darwin’s face when I last saw him—pale as a ghost, gripping the rope, terror widening his eyes. If only I’d gotten to him before he fell overboard … I should have seen it coming. Even if my master was hauled back and the rowboat made it—could the Beagle itself have been wrecked in the storm?

  What if my master were to lose his life so young and only partway through his voyage? All his observations and measurements, all his ideas lost …

  I put my hand to my chest and waited for my thumping heart to slow. Letting my thoughts run this way would do no good at all. When my da was teaching me the fiddle, he’d say, “If you hit a bad note, son, breathe. Walk that breath all the way upstairs to the attic, then right the way back down to the cellar. Not too fast, mind, step by step. Breathe, and pretend like it’s the best performance of your life. You keep right on playing and stay bricky.”

  That had always been our word, mine and Da’s. Bricky meant brave but it was more than that, it was about … spirit. My da looked for the good in life and never dwelled on the bad.