Summary

This chapter begins with an early morning, very angry conversation between Mr. Stonecrop and Reverend Buckminster, overheard by Turner, in which Mr. Stonecrop reacts badly to a story in the local newspaper about the Tripp family’s hardships on their boat. Mr. Stonecrop tells Reverend Buckminster to use his connections in government to hurry the community’s plans to empty Malaga Island so the new hotels in Phippsburg can be built. He then hurries off, and Reverend Buckminster seems to think he has no choice but to do as he’s asked. Meanwhile, he gives Turner a new assignment for home school: to read and summarize “The Origin of Species” by Charles Darwin which he (Reverend Buckminster) says is the sort of book that can cause “fire” in people. Turner starts reading it, and immediately starts feeling an “emotional” fire inside him.

That fire...