I surveyed my fiddle case. It had now dried and was all I had. If the instrument was completely ruined, I could at least use the case to catch rainwater. I stared up doubtfully at the blue sky. By nightfall, though I could hardly bear to think of this, I might have to use it as firewood.

Before I could change my mind, I flipped the catches and split the wax seals of the fiddle case. I hardly dared look. After protecting Scratch so carefully during nearly four years at sea, I was prepared to have my spirits knocked by his wreckage, but instead I broke into a grin that almost cracked my salty, sunburned face. The fiddle was in one piece! I ran my fingers over the felt inside the case. Only slightly damp. I lifted Scratch, smelled his musty, comforting old smell, and settled him between my chin and shoulder in his familiar nook. I drew out the bow, tightened the horsehair, and took a deep breath.

“Keep me company, Scratch,” I said.

Do you deserve it after all you’ve put me through?

I grinned and pulled the bow over the strings. It sounded … the same. The vibration of the strings started through my jaw and hands, then traveled to settle every muscle in my exhausted body. After a few notes that would have brought tears to Mr. Darwin’s eyes—and not in a good way—I managed to coax out a lively jig, one I often played to alert the sailors I was about to begin the evening’s entertainment.

“Don’t fret, Scratch, I’m a bit out of tune myself.”

The fiddle screeched an especially horrid note in reply.

I cautiously wound the pegs.

Mind your manners, young—

I tried the strings again. Almost in tune and not a single broken string. It felt like a miracle. I sat cross-legged and fiddled a jolly sea shanty in celebration, humming along.

For a minute or two I was so lost in the melody I could have been anywhere—at home with Da, busking on the streets of Bedford, in the officers’ cabin on the Beagle. When I opened my eyes, the green lizard from the previous night stood, head cocked to one side, in front of me.

I stopped playing my fiddle, mid-bar, and the lizard raised its snout and sniffed. A ruff of spiky scales raised at the back of its neck. I hadn’t seen those before, and when they stood on end they looked like a prickly headdress. One scale was missing, leaving a gap. Then the ruff lowered, and it turned away. I quickly played on, and when it flicked its head back round I almost smiled.

The green scales that covered the lizard’s body were large, more like those of an armadillo than any reptile I’d seen, and next to the cactuses it was quite camouflaged. Mr. Darwin would have called the shade Pistachio Green, from the book he liked to use, Werner’s Nomenclature of Colours—try getting your tongue around that title. But its large eyes were a shade of copper like nothing I’d seen in Werner’s book or anywhere else.