Emmie was surprised when the sailors left early the next morning. The men said they would fish in the waters around this and the other Galapagos islands and come back the next day. She hadn’t actually thought that she and Pa would be left on the island, alone. She skipped to keep up with Pa’s fast pace as he cut a straight line toward the center of the island. He was quiet, his eyes pinned to the volcano.

Pa had been a bit odd this morning when she’d asked again about what could have made the canvas billow out that way. He’d just replied that he didn’t know. Every half an hour he stopped to scan the sky with his eyeglass, and on more than one occasion she saw him reading the old crumpled letter from Mr. Darwin that he always kept in his breast pocket. It was the one thing he’d always kept secret.

The sun rose in the sky and passed overhead, and finally Pa stopped and scanned the entire sky. Then he flicked back his hat and used his neckerchief to wipe the sweat from his brow.

“It’s like I can feel them,” he said as if to himself.

“The lizards? Farthing?” asked Emmie.

He didn’t reply.

They finally stopped to eat, resting their backs against a fumarole that rose like a black jagged chimney to Emmie’s waist.

She pointed at a small bird, pecking at a yellow flower on one of the prickly pear cactuses.

“Pa! Isn’t that one of Mr. Darwin’s finches? The one with the big beak that you drew for him?”

“Hmm yes. The common cactus finch.”

Emmie frowned. She’d expected Pa to tell her again about the day he found it, explain the bird had a different beak because it ate different food, and that the birds with the right beaks would breed to produce more birds the same. He’d quote Mr. Darwin’s remarkable book On the Origin of Species, which had arrived in the post last year, which had a whole shelf to itself in the parlor back home, and Emmie wouldn’t interrupt, even though she might have heard this exact part many times before. Emmie suddenly realized that Pa must have started planning this trip just after he received the book everyone was making so much fuss about back in England. The Big Idea Mr. Darwin had worked on for so long had made Pa’s former master such a famous man. Pa said Mr. Darwin was scared of what people might think of his theory; he joked that he knew the feeling, because his master hadn’t thought much of his own ideas … about dragons.

But Pa was quiet now, chewing slowly, thoughtful. Emmie bolted the cold potatoes, fish, and prickly pear, washed it down with water, then slid her tin whistle out of the pocket in her breeches. She played a lively jig Pa had taught her, one from when he was fiddler on the Beagle.