Evolution's Captain by Peter Nichols Page A

They pulled hard against a rising wind through thelong twilight, heading deep into Courtenay Sound, a star-shaped bay of many fjordlike arms surrounded by high snowy hills. Four hours later, too dark to go on, they beached the boat for the night and made camp.
    The two Fuegians seemed, to FitzRoy’s eyes, quite at ease, so he decided not to “secure our guides as prisoners” for the night but let them sleep near the fire while the man on watch kept an eye on them. But in the predawn dark, they slipped away into the bushes, naturally taking with them the two tarpaulin coats they had been given to sleep under.
    With daylight, the Englishmen rowed back along shore looking for their runaways. They returned to the “boat stealers’ family” camp where they had taken the second hostage the day before. Again the Fuegians took to the woods as they approached. The Englishmen landed and destroyed the natives’ canoes—to prevent news of their search for the stolen whaleboat traveling beyond the immediate area, FitzRoy wrote, but this act reeks of vengeful frustration.
    For the next few days they rowed and sailed as best they could around the protected arms of Courtenay Sound while a strong gale blew from the south. They found nothing. FitzRoy decided to return once more to the “boat stealers’ family” camp, but this time to take them by surprise and capture as many hostages as possible for the return of the stolen whaleboat.
    The Fuegians had quite sensibly gone. But scouting from a hill the Englishmen spotted them: they’d moved their camp to another cove. The attack was planned for the following day.
    Not knowing if the family’s absent men had returned, FitzRoy armed each of his ten sailors and marines with a pistol or musket, a cutlass, and a length of rope to secure a prisoner. When morning came, they crept through the bushes toward the cove. They had nearly surrounded the camp when the Fuegians’ dogs smelled them and began barking. The Englishmen rushed the camp.
    At first the Indians began to run away, but hearing us shout on both sides, some tried to hide themselves by squatting under the banks of a stream…. The foremost of our party, Elsmore…in jumping across this stream, slipped, and fell in just where two men and a woman were concealed: they instantly attacked him, trying to hold him down and beat out his brains with stones; and before any one could assist him, he had received several severe blows, and one eye was almost destroyed by a dangerous stroke near the temple. Mr Murray, seeing the man’s danger, fired at one of the Fuegians, who staggered back and let Elsmore escape; but immediately recovering himself, picked up stones from the bed of the stream…and threw them from each hand with astonishing force and precision. His first stone struck the master with much force, broke a powder-horn hung round his neck, and nearly knocked him backwards, and two others were thrown so truly at the heads of those nearest him, that they barely saved themselves by dropping down. All this passed in a few seconds, so quick was he with each hand; but, poor fellow, it was his last struggle; unfortunately he was mortally wounded, and, throwing one more stone, he fell against the bank and expired.
    After some struggling, and a few hard blows, those who tried to secrete themselves were taken, but several who ran away along the beach escaped. So strong and stout were the females, that I, for one, had no idea that it was a woman whose arms I and my coxswain endeavoured to pinion, until I heard some one say so. The oldest woman of the tribe was so powerful that two of the strongest men of our party could scarcely pull her out from under the bank of the stream.
    The Englishmen had bagged eleven prisoners—two men, three women, six children—among them the young man taken from the camp several days earlier. And when the dead, defiant, furiously stone-throwing