The Darwin Conspiracy Read Online Free PDF Page A

happy to have the honour of accepting” the proposal. Later, hugging his uncle goodbye in the courtyard, he asked him how he had  “worked the miracle.”
    “Not at all difficult,” replied Jos, clearly pleased. “I merely mentioned that given your interests, this particular voyage was bound to enhance your career. Of all the means for a young man to pull ahead of the pack, it is by far the surest.”
    Charles dined that night with his father and Erasmus, who was on a rare trip home. In the foyer, his brother grabbed his hand and patted him on both shoulders, congratulating him on “milking the cow”—the favorite of his many expressions for extracting money from the parsi-monious master of the house. At dinner, conversation was strained and light, for all the world as if nothing momentous had occurred. Their father was unusually taciturn. Charles made only one reference to the impending voyage.
    “I shall be deuced clever to spend more than my allowance whilst on the Beagle, ” he ventured.
    His father relinquished a half smile.
    “But they tell me you are very clever,” he replied.
    Afterward, Charles threw some belongings in a bag, shook his father’s hand gravely, hugged Erasmus, and after several hours’ sleep set off at 3 a.m. on the express stage to Cambridge, where he took a room at the Red Lion Hotel.
    The next morning Henslow was surprised to see him but also, he  admitted, not a little envious. Staring at the carpet, his mentor confessed that he himself had considered taking up the offer, but was quickly dissuaded by the look of horror on his wife’s face. He could not subject her, as he put it, to “premature widowhood.”
    Mrs. Henslow served them crumpets and the two men chatted animatedly. Charles’s enthusiasm was contagious and Henslow went to the study to fetch a book of maps. Just then a messenger rang the porter’s bell and handed him a note.
    Henslow tore it open, read it, and blanched. He sat down, theatrically, with one hand across his forehead.
    “Come, come,” said Charles. “What is it?”
    “It’s from Captain FitzRoy. He says that he is most grateful for my efforts to assist him in his search for a companion on the Beagle and he hopes that I have not gone to great trouble, for he no longer requires one. It seems he has given away the position to a friend.”
    Charles could not bring himself to speak.

CHAPTER 3

    Over the ensuing days on the island, they fell into a routine, dividing up the chores and the fieldwork. Hugh had to admit sharing the burden made things easier. They took turns cooking—Nigel, it turned out, was good at it, inventive with sauces—and doing the communal laundry.
    When it fell to Hugh on the second day, he carted the small bundle of clothes down to the mat, drenching them in salt water without deter-gent and rinsing them out in a plastic basin of fresh water. To his amusement he found himself washing two pairs of white panties, thin and small with a narrow cotton isthmus for a crotch, and when he spread the clothes out to dry, he put them on the highest rock. Their whiteness gleamed in the sun.
    The project went faster, too. They rotated in teams of two—one to capture and measure the birds, the other to record the entries. Beth was good at handling the finches; her calmness seemed to attract them.
    They stayed unruffled in her hand and some remained there even when she opened her fingers, standing on her palm and shifting their weight back and forth to keep their balance. Nigel began calling her “Saint Francesca.”
    On the fourth day they went swimming, diving off the welcome mat.
    Beth draped her halter over the rocks. Hugh tried not to stare at her breasts, but she seemed totally unselfconscious. She ignored Nigel’s ribald comments.
    Most of the time Hugh wore only shorts and hiking boots, and his body was lithe and golden. Nigel wore Bermuda shorts and a thin white
    T-shirt that rapidly soaked in his sweat and showed a paunch of pink