Evolution's Captain by Peter Nichols

back.
    The very first place we went to, a small island about two miles distant, convinced us still more decidedly of the fate of our lost boat, and gave us hope of retrieving her: for near a lately used wigwam, we found her mast, part of which had been cut off with an axe that was in the boat.
    After finding the first signs of the stolen boat, they pulled and sailed (the whaleboats had short collapsible masts and sails to be used when the wind allowed) northeast, into a large bay dotted with many islands. Toward dusk, they drew level with a canoe being paddled by two Fuegians, a man and a woman. They indicated to the Englishmen, by signs, that they’d seen several boats heading into the northern part of the bay. “This raised our hopes, and we pushed on,” FitzRoy wrote.
    He may well have been angered by the theft of his boat, but he was clearly not disposed to think too badly of Fuegians in general.
    The woman…was the best looking I have seen among the Fuegians, and really well-featured: her voice was pleasing, and her manner neither so suspicious nor timid as that of the rest. Though young she was uncommonly fat, and did justice to a diet of limpets and muscles. Both she and her husband were perfectly naked.
    After two days of fruitless searching, they came across a native family in two canoes near the head of the bay, thirty miles east-northeast of Cape Desolation. Something in these Fuegians’ attitude prompted the Englishmen to search their canoes, which they had not done to the paddling naked couple. In one of the canoes they found the lost whaleboat’s leadline.
    We immediately took the man who had it into our boat, making him comprehend that he must show us where the people were, from whom he got it. He understood our meaning well enough.
    This was all FitzRoy wrote about his first taking of a hostage. For him it was an act that required no justification. It was a quick, practical decision, a tactic born of the necessity of the situation, but it was a signal moment of change in FitzRoy’s relationship with the Fuegians.
    It was probably accomplished by implicit rather than actualforce. The native canoe was being held alongside the much larger whaleboat while the sailors searched it. At a word from FitzRoy, two or three uniformed Royal Marines would have risen and, with a leg in each boat, “helped” the Fuegian who “had” the leadline into the whaleboat. With signs, FitzRoy would have indicated what he wanted, and the Fuegian “understood our meaning well enough.” Then the Englishmen, with their captive, pulled away from the canoes.
    The Fuegian led them to a cove containing a camp with wigwams and two more canoes on the beach, a third being built. At the sight of the Englishmen, the Fuegians ran into the nearby bushes with as many of their belongings as they could carry, then returned, empty-handed and naked, and huddled together on the beach.
    FitzRoy’s men found more of the missing boat’s gear—a shredded piece of sail, an oar that had been broken in two (the shaft hacked into a seal club, the blade used as a paddle), and the boat’s axe and toolbag. FitzRoy was convinced he had found the group responsible for the theft. Apart from an old man and a boy aged about seventeen, there were only women in the camp. Their men, he reasoned, were away in the whaleboat on a seal hunt.
    He took a second captive, who may or may not have joined the Englishmen as cheerfully as FitzRoy described.
    The women understood what we wanted, and made eager signs to explain to us where our boat was gone. I did not like to injure them and only took away our own gear, and the young man, who came very readily, to show us where our boat was, and, with the man who had brought us to the place, squatted down in the boat apparently much pleased with some clothes and red caps, which were given to them.
    With their two hostages providing directions, the Englishmen rowed away.