Farthing swept down toward them again, but this time her claws stretched out, tensing, and she hovered briefly above their heads. She circled and dived, flexing her front claws again.

“What is she doing?” Emmie asked Pa.

“Wait here,” he said, “and stay bricky.”

Emmie didn’t like the sound of that but didn’t have time to argue. Pa ran back to the fumarole and hopped up onto the rim of it, catching his balance. She stared at him in disbelief as he raised both his arms and waved up at Farthing, who was now circling them.

The next time the dragon swept down, she came straight as an arrow, and Pa stood upright, both his hands in the air.

He couldn’t be planning to …

“Pa!”

Farthing swerved sideways and snatched him up, her giant claws wrapped around his middle. Emmie couldn’t take it in—Pa had lost his mind! She ran after them in the dragon’s shadow.

“No fear … I trust her with my … life …” Pa’s voice whipped away as he was swept into the sky. He waved, his other arm clutching a claw as long as his forearm.

Emmie covered her mouth as the dragon—Farthing—swept her own pa up and over the ocean and then circled back toward her. She took her eyes from them just long enough to find the eyeglass on top of Pa’s knapsack. She stared through it as they passed overhead, and Pa’s face came into focus, grinning like one of the town boys riding a go-cart down the hill. Beyond Farthing, in the distant blue, she caught another flash of gold.

Emmeline Covington counted one, two … seven more dragons, weaving and wheeling a glittering trail across the sky.

The People

Syms Covington

In this story, Syms Covington (Syms was short for Simon) is a fictional character based on a real person. Historians don’t know for sure when the real Syms was born, and it is likely he was a little older than he is in my story. But in the 1830s, boys as young as eight years old could sign on to a ship as cabin boy. Syms really did start as cabin boy and ship’s fiddler on HMS Beagle, and was promoted to Charles Darwin’s assistant around two years into the voyage. Syms returned with Darwin to London, and they worked together until he moved to Australia. They continued to write to each other, and although the writing is formal, as it was in Victorian times, it seems to me they had definitely become friends. Syms wrote a very brief journal during the Beagle voyage, but there was a gap in it during the journey around the Galapagos Islands, which I jumped upon. I had just the adventure to fill those pages.

Charles Darwin

Charles Darwin was only twenty-two when he set sail on the Beagle, so in this story he would be a young man of twenty-six, nothing like the bushy-bearded grandpa in the photos we are used to seeing. One of my favorite things about Darwin is that he ended up doing something very different with his life than was planned for him. He was supposed to be a doctor but didn’t like blood, then was supposed to be a vicar but wasn’t interested in that either, and hated exams. Darwin was full of curiosity and wonder, and from a very young age loved collecting animals. It was when he started following his dreams that wonderful things happened.