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saved as a replacement for the Beagle’s main topmast. “With reluctance this fine spar…was condemned to the teeth of the saw; but I felt certain that the boat Mr May would produce from it, would be valuable in any part of the world, and that for our voyage it was indispensable.”
    FitzRoy dispatched Murray in the cutter to survey the coast, channels, and islands to the west—back toward the area they had searched for their stolen whaleboat. He sent with him two of the three children remaining aboard the Beagle , to be left with any Fuegians he found.
    The third, who was about eight years old, was still with us: she seemed to be so happy and healthy, that I determined to detain her as a hostage for the stolen boat, and to try to teach her English.
    The Beagle ’s crew, in a nod to the wicker-like craft built by Murray and his men that had first brought them news of the stolen whaleboat, had taken to calling this child Fuegia Basket.

6
    F itzRoy’s instructions from the British Admiralty contained no provisions about capturing or killing foreign nationals. He sailed a warship across a lawless world and what he did was up to him. His code of behavior was that of an English gentleman, which carried with it the assumption of moral, intellectual, and religious superiority. This gave him, he felt, the unquestioned right to attempt to retrieve his stolen property as he saw fit, to stop, question, capture, and even kill natives in the course of his inquiries, if this seemed necessary. He tried not to kill, he behaved as decently as he thought fit, but kidnapping people didn’t faze him. He took to it without hesitation.
    The acquisition of Fuegia Basket marked a turning point. It was by then surely clear to him that hostage-taking was unlikely to produce the ransom of his missing whaleboat. Fuegian mothers, pretending to lead the crew toward their missing boat, had run away, effectively abandoning their children held aboard the Beagle , rather than complying with the Englishmen’s demands. No entreaty had come for Fuegia Basket, child of the “boat stealers’ family.” She was unclaimed property.
    Clothed in seaman’s garb, the little girl had the run of the ship. Eight years old (young enough to lie below the sexual radar of most of the Beagle ’s crew), small, easily amused, no doubtamusing, she had become, according to FitzRoy, “a pet on the lower deck.” From his earliest descriptions of her, FitzRoy was keenly aware of her as a personality; he saw the child rather than her use as a bargaining commodity. He was charmed by her. He wanted to keep her.
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    As carpenter May worked ashore in March Harbour on the new whaleboat, FitzRoy and Murray tried to turn their attention once more to surveying, but Fuegians again got in the way. A group of them in a canoe approached the ship on March 3 wanting to come aboard. Impatient with the nuisance they represented, wary of their pilfering with May’s carpentry shop set up on shore, FitzRoy sent Mr. Wilson, the mate, in one of the boats to chase them away, to fire pistol shots over their heads.
    But almost immediately, his curiosity about the Fuegians, by now deepened nearly to obsession, made him change his mind. He set out himself in another boat. In his published journals, FitzRoy would later write: “Reflecting…that by getting one of these natives on board, there would be a chance of his learning enough English to be an interpreter, and that by this means we might recover our lost boat…I went after them, and hauling their canoe alongside of my boat, told a young man to come into it; he did so, quite unconcernedly, and sat down, apparently contented and at his ease.” The rest of the Fuegians “paddled out of the harbour as fast as they could.”
    Back aboard the Beagle , the young man was christened York Minster, after the dominating topographical feature of the neighborhood. He was cleaned