Darwinia

Camp at Bodensee. Diggs at his fire. Sullivan, Betts, Hemphill at their tents. Meadow green with a small leafy spreading plant like turquoise clover. High overcast, cool gusty wind.

Postscriptum. Or perhaps I should stop pretending these notes are “postscripts” admit that they are letters to Caroline. Caroline, I hope you see them one day soon.

Journey largely uneventful since Gillvany’s tragic death, though that event hangs over us like a cloud. Finch in particular has grown sullen uncommunicative. I think he blames himself. He writes relentlessly in his notebook, says little.

We made our camp in the meadows Erasmus described. Have seen herds of wild fur snakes in great profusion, moving over the land like cloud shadows on a sunny day. Ever-resourceful, Tom Compton has even stalked and killed one, so we dine on snake meat — greasy steaks that taste like wildfowl, but a refreshing change after tinned rations. Our boats are securely stowed well up a beach, under tarps and beneath an outcropping of mossy granite, effectively hidden from all but the most exhaustive search. Though who do we suppose will find them in this empty land?

We await the arrival of Erasmus with our pack snakes and supplies. Tom Compton insists we could have had any number of animals free of charge — they are (often quite literally!) all around us — but Erasmus’s beasts are trained to pack and bridle and have already relieved us of the need to ferry all our kit by boat.

This assumes Erasmus will show up as promised.

We all know each other very well by now — all our quirks idiosyncrasies, which are legion — and I have even had several rewarding conversations with Tom Compton, who has shown me more respect since the near wreck of the Perspicacity. In his eyes I am still the pampered Easterner who makes a soft living with a photo-box (as he calls it), but I have shown enough initiative to impress him.

Certainly he has had a hard enough life to justify his skepticism. Born in San Francisco an impoverished mixed-breed, by his own account the descendant of slaves, Indians, failed goldminers — he managed to teach himself to read and found employment in the Merchant Marine, eventually made his way to Jeffersonville, a rough town with uses for his rough talents and tolerance for his rough manners.

I know you would find him crude, Caroline, but he is a fundamentally good man useful in a crisis. I’m glad of his company.