The Signature of All Things

anyone.”

Chapter Two
    S o Henry did not dangle on the gallows at Tyburn, in the end, nor did his father lose his position at Kew. The Whittakers were miraculously reprieved, and Henry was merely exiled, sent away to sea, dispatched by Sir Joseph Banks, to discover what the world would make of him.
    It was 1776, and Captain Cook was about to embark on his third voyage around the world. Banks was not joining this expedition. Simply put, he had not been invited. He had not been invited on the second voyage, either, which had rankled him. Banks’s extravagance and attention-seeking had soured Captain Cook to him, and, shamefully, he had been replaced. Cook would be traveling now with a humbler botanist, somebody more easily controlled—a man named Mr. David Nelson, who was a timid, competent gardener from Kew. But Banks wanted a hand in this journey somehow, and he very badly wanted to keep an eye on Nelson’s botanical collecting. He didn’t like the idea of any important scientific work being done behind his back. So he arranged to send Henry on the expedition as one of Nelson’s hands, with instructions that the boy watch everything, learn everything, remember everything, and later report everything back to Banks. What better use of Henry Whittaker than to implant him as an informer?
    Moreover, exiling Henry to sea was a good strategy for keeping the boy away from Kew Gardens for a few years, while allowing a safe distance inwhich one could determine exactly what sort of person this Henry might become. Three years on a ship would offer ample opportunity for the boy’s true temperament to emerge. If they ended up hanging Henry on the yardarm as a thief, murderer, or mutineer . . . well, that would be Cook’s problem, wouldn’t it, not Banks’s. Alternatively, the boy might prove himself at something, and then Banks could have him for the future, after the expedition had kicked some of the wildness out of him.
    Banks introduced Henry to Mr. Nelson as such: “Nelson, I would like you to meet your new right hand, Mr. Henry Whittaker, of the Richmond Whittakers. He is a useful little fingerstink, and I trust you will find—when it comes to plants—that he knowed it all beforehand.”
    Later, privately, Banks gave Henry some last advice before he dispatched the boy to sea: “Every day that you are aboard, son, defend your health with vigorous exercise. Listen to Mr. Nelson—he is dull, but he knows more about plants than you ever will. You shall be at the mercy of the older sailors, but you must never complain about them, or things will go badly for you. Stay away from whores, if you don’t want to acquire the French disease. There will be two ships sailing, but you’ll be on the Resolution , with Cook himself. Never put yourself in his way. Never speak to him. And if you do speak to him, which you must never do, certainly do not speak to him in the manner in which you have sometimes spoken to me. He will not find it as diverting as do I. We are not similar, Cook and I. The man is a perfect dragon for protocol. Be invisible to him, and you will be happier for it. Lastly, I should tell you that aboard the Resolution ,as with all His Majesty’s ships, you shall find yourself living amongst an odd cabal of both rogues and gentlemen. Be clever, Henry. Model yourself upon the gentlemen.”
    Henry’s deliberately expressionless face made it impossible for anyone to read him, so Banks could not have realized how strikingly this final admonition was received. To Henry’s ear, Banks had just suggested something quite extraordinary—the possibility of Henry’s someday becoming a gentleman. More than a possibility, even, it may have sounded like a command, and a most welcome command at that: Go forth in the world, Henry, and learn how to become a gentleman. And in the hard, lonely years that Henry was about to spend at sea, perhaps this casual utterance of Banks’s would grow only greater in his mind. Perhaps it would be all he ever thoughtabout. Perhaps over time Henry Whittaker—that ambitious and striving boy, so fraught with the instinct for advancement—would come to remember it as having been a promise.
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    H enry sailed from England in July of 1776. The stated objectives of Cook’s third expedition were twofold. The first was to sail to Tahiti, to return Sir Joseph Banks’s pet—the man named Omai—to his homeland. Omai had grown tired of court life and now longed to return home. He had