The Signature of All Things

pyramid just outside the carriage house. Alma felt a quiver of panic when she saw her life’s essentials reduced to such a minimal pile. How could she survive with so little? What would she do without her library? Without her herbarium? How would it feel to wait sometimes six months for news of family, or of science? What if the ship should sink, and all these essentials be lost? She felt a sudden sympathy for all the intrepid young men the Whittakers had sent out on collecting expeditions in the past—for the fear and uncertainty they must have felt, even as they purported to be confident. Some of those young men had never been heard from again.
    In her preparations and packing, Alma made certain to give herself every appearance of a botaniste voyageuse, but the truth was, she was not going to Tahiti to search for plants. Her actual motive could be found in one item, buried at the bottom of one of the larger boxes: Ambrose’s leather valise, buckled securely, and filled with the drawings of the nude Tahitian boy. She intended to look for that boy (whom she had come to refer to in her mind as The Boy) and she was certain that she could find him. She intended to search for The Boy across the entire island of Tahiti if necessary, searching for him almost botanically , as though he were a rare orchid specimen.She would recognize him as soon as she saw him, she plainly knew. She would know that face till the end of her days. Ambrose had been a brilliant artist, after all, and the features were so vividly depicted. It was as if Ambrose had left her a map, and now she was following it.
    She did not know what she would do with The Boy once she had found him. But she would find him.
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    A lma took the train to Boston, spent three nights in an inexpensive harbor hotel (redolent of gin, tobacco, and the sweat of former guests) and then embarked from there. Her ship was the Elliot —a 120-foot whaler, broad and sturdy as an old mare—heading to the Marquesas Islands for the dozenth time since she had been built. The captain had agreed, for a handsome fee, to sail 850 miles out of his way and deliver Alma to Tahiti.
    The captain was a Mr. Terrence, out of Nantucket. He was a sailor much admired by Dick Yancey, who had secured Alma her place on his vessel. Mr. Terrence was as hard as a captain should be, Yancey promised, and he enforced better discipline in his men than most. Terrence was known more for being daring than careful (he was famous for raising his canvases in a storm, rather than subtracting them, in the hopes of gaining speed from the gales), but he was a religious man and a sober one, who strove for a high moral tone at sea. Dick Yancey trusted him and had sailed with him many times. Dick Yancey, who was always in a hurry, preferred captains who sailed fast and fearlessly, and Terrence was just such a type.
    Alma had never before been on a ship. Or, rather, she had been on many ships, when she used to go with her father down to the docks of Philadelphia to inspect arriving cargo, but she had never sailed on a ship before. When the Elliot pulled out of its slip, she stood on the deck with her heart drumming as though to burst from her chest. She watched as the last of the dock’s piles were ahead of her, and then—with breathtaking swiftness—were suddenly behind her. Then they were flying across the great Boston harbor, with smaller fishing boats bobbing in their wake. By the close of the afternoon, Alma was on the open ocean for the first time in her life.
    “I will pay you every service in my power to make you comfortable on this voyage,” Captain Terrence had sworn to Alma when first she boarded. She appreciated his solicitousness, but it soon became clear there was notmuch that would be comfortable about this journey. Her berth, right next to the captain’s stateroom, was small and dark, and reeked of sewage. The drinking water smelled of a pond. The ship was carrying a cargo of mules to New Orleans, and the animals were unrelenting in their complaints. The food was both unpleasant and binding (turnips and salt biscuits for breakfast; dried beef and onions for dinner) and the weather was, at best, an uncertain affair. For the first three weeks of the journey she did not once see the sun. Immediately, the Elliot encountered gales that broke crockery and knocked sailors about at a most remarkable rate. She sometimes had to tie herself to the captain’s table in order to eat her dried beef and onions