Mr. Darwin's Shooter
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As a boy, Syms Covington was watched over by the beckoning image of Christian, John Bunyan's pilgrim, in the stained-glass window of his Bedford chapel - and at thirteen he left home and went to sea with the evangelical sailor John Phipps. Aboard the HMS Beagle, he entered Darwin's service, an energetic and precocious fifteen-year-old. In the course of their voyages together over the next seven years, he shot and collected hundreds of specimens for his "gent, " specimens that became fundamental to the formulation of Darwin's theory of evolution. Now a crusty, near-deaf man of middle age, Covington has settled in Australia and is awaiting the arrival of the first copy of The Origin of Species. Beset by guilt over participating in a work that will shake the human worldview to its foundations, he nonetheless wonders what part of himself might be reflected in Darwin's oeuvre. Mr. Darwins' Shooter captures its time with rare skill, evoking an unforgettable - but forgotten - man at a watershed moment in history.
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