Chapter 4: Galápagos Islands – Encounters

Another feature in these isles is their emphatic uninhabitableness…Man and wolf alike disown them. Little but reptile life is here found: tortoises, lizards, immense spiders, snakes, and that strangest anomaly of outlandish nature, the iguana. No voice, no low, no howl is heard; the chief sound of life here is a hiss… In many places the coast is rock-bound, or, more properly, clinker-bound; tumbled masses of blackish or greenish stuff like the dross of an iron furnace, forming dark clefts and caves here and there, into which a ceaseless sea pours a fury of foam, overhanging them with a swirl of gray, haggard mist, amidst which sail screaming flights of unearthly birds heightening the dismal din. However calm the sea without, there is no rest for these swells and those rocks; they lash and are lashed, even when the outer ocean is most at peace with itself. On the oppressive, clouded days, such as are peculiar to this part of the watery Equator, the dark, vitrified masses, many of which raise themselves among white whirlpools and breakers in detached and perilous places off the shore, present a most Plutonian sight. In no world but a fallen one could such lands exist.

—Herman Melville, The Encantadas

Chapter 4. Galápagos Island Encounters
Galápagos Islands, June 1844—July 1845.

Overview
The Quiddity will put in at Hood Island, Charles Island, and finally Albemarle Island, at each place cutting wood and hunting for tortoises. If Rachel Ward is in the game, she’ll give birth to her son at “Asilo de la Paz,” the penal colony on Charles Island. At Albemarle Island, the “Lowell Expedition” will explore Montgomery Lowell’s infamous cave, making a discovery that completely rewrites history!

Navigation
Eventually this entire section will be available as one integrated PDF. But until then, it will be placed piecemeal on the site once encounter at a time. To make navigation easier, each encounter occupies a separate Web page, and each link opens a new tab. A small navigation bar at the end of each encounter lets you move backward, forward, or return to this “Chapter 4: Galápagos Islands” Table of Contents.

Chapter 4, Galápagos Islands: Background & History

Chapter 4, Galápagos Islands: Encounters/TOC [You are here]

Galápagos Islands
1. Approaching the Galápagos
2. Hood Island
3. Charles Island (Isla Floreana)
4. Asilo de la Paz/Rachel Gives Birth
5. Sailing to Albemarle and Narborough
6. The Eruption
7. Bank’s Cove
8. Tarnmoor’s Lagoon
9. The Lowell Expedition
10. The Lowell Expedition: Day 1
11. The Lowell Expedition: Day 2
12. The Lowell Expedition: Day 3
13. Attack of the Calibans
14. Approaching Lowell’s Cave
15. Lowell’s Cave
16. Temple Passage
17. Y’ha-n’thal: The Temple of the Deep Ones
18. The Gate
19. Thal’n’lai
20. The Starry Island
21. The Cloven Pine
22. Contact and Communion
23. Turning the Tables
24. Return to the Quiddity
25. Departing the Enchanted Isles

White Leviathan, Chapter 4—Galápagos Islands
[Back to Chapter 4: Background | White Leviathan TOC | Forward to Encounter 1, Approaching the Galápagos]

Author: A. Buell Ruch
Last Modified: 27 December 2023
Email: quail (at) shipwrecklibrary (dot) com
White Leviathan PDF: [TBD]