After the longest while I became aware of the captain’s hand on my shoulder. “You have had, M. Brunel, a day longer than the hours it contains, and experiences deeper than one can fathom. There is so much more that I would wish to show you—the mechanisms of the Neptune, its tanks and its ballasts, its propulsive systems in need of re-imagining. But these are better left for the morn.” He pressed a button and the arc was extinguished.
“I beg you as you rest to consider your situation with a level head as to the alternatives. Know that I will not return you to your former life—that life has ceased to exist; and even as we speak, your family has begun to reconcile itself to your absence from it.
“No, M. Brunel: you can be my honored guest as I travel the world in pursuit of my goals. But as honored as you would be, you would be chained to my itinerary. My hazards would become yours—for if the English, in pursuit of me, should bring me down, and the Neptune with it, you would not be spared. You will eat as we eat, venture as we venture— But you would be, if sans shackles, a prisoner.
“Yet there is another way, M. Brunel, have you the courage to see it. You can be my partner in imagination, in invention. The good merchants of Bristol, flush with money from the sale of human chattel, were happy to have you connect them to market; and the good burghers of London were happy that you created for them a less costly way of exporting their goods and of importing what they required from distant ports. All of what you have done, however well-wrought, was but labor for a set of masters: in this case, the wealthy merchant class of the United Kingdom. You know the disdain of the upper classes for those who work for them yet were not to their manner born. They appreciate nothing save the profit that your work will allow them to accrue.
“What I treasure is the work itself. The elegance of it, the science, at times, the violence—all these are characteristics treasured for themselves. And what I offer you is work in service not of commerce, or of empire, but in service of human possibility. I will even say it: human freedom. Right now the British Empire is clinging with its fingernails to its far-flung holdings. I saw with my own eyes the sepoy rebellion and I know both the savagery of empire and its fragility. I know that history is not on the side of that empire. It is with the larger march of time, and toward the fragility of empire, that I aim my craft.
“Unless I miss my mark, your eye can see the difference between works for hire and what the soul, freed of constraint, can accomplish.
“The perfection of a sub-marine vessel, to be sure, would be the first of our tasks. But it would be only the first. From there we are limited only by the reach and power of your dreams. Know that we will have the world as our canvas, and the loyalty of an army of craftsmen as good as any you would find in London.
“So in briefest form, these are your choices: to go mute and idle while we combat a savage empire, or to join with us. Your work has already made swifter, more rational, grander, and more efficient, the way that world performs its tasks. But the world has stayed the same. Now is your chance to change it.”
Another button and the ganged metal blades of the iris began to push in, narrowing the field of view until it was but a pinhole, then gone. Without my being aware of signal of summons, and without approaching sound, the second mate Feringheea now appeared.
“You will take Huzoor to his cabin,” said the captain. And with that the captain without so much as a fare-thee-well he walked off prow-ward while I was led aft. To my confines.
My sleep that night was anything but pacific. It was not so much the bedding, which was of a utilitarian quality—I have in my life slept in rougher surrounds, and am in general inclined to agree with Aristotle, that to conflate the good with pleasure is to prefer a life suitable for beasts. No, ‘twas the far more troubling sense that the track of my life had forked, had doubled. On the one track was the life known to the world: Isambard Kingdom Brunel suffered a stroke at age fifty-three and—died shortly thereafter due to the sequelae of that stroke. Was mourned by family friends and the larger community then laid to rest in Kensal Green, side-by side with his late father. On the other, the one onto which I was so abruptly and unreasonably diverted: Isambard Kingdom Brunel was imprisoned in a sub-marine vessel, subject to the whim and command of its captain, a murderous if well-educated julab-sahib whose diction and manners did not conceal the fact that he would stop at nothing to attain his goals. ‘Twas as if he had pitched himself against all notions of human progress save his own.
In my mind thoughts spun and churned ‘til all I could think upon was the moment when someone had pulled the switch lever—taking me off the one rail and shunting me onto the other.
And as I roiled I realized that there was yet a track the third! One in which I was neither buried on land nor incarcerated sub-sea—but one in which I lived on, worked on, for the rest of the century and even, with some fine luck, beyond. One in which I was there to see the transatlantic voyage of the Great Eastern; and there to see the construction of the Clifton Bridge; and there to see my children grow into adulthood. At once I was seized by the most violent and abstract feeling! That this life, the one in which I found myself, was the dream—and the one to which I had no access was the reality. A vertiginous spin, a topsy-turvy, a mal de mer of the soul.
How could I waken from this dream, from this nightmarish world, into my real life? Into the serenity of sun slanting through my own window—Duke Street, off Manchester Square, in my very own West London?
I have noticed, of late, that there is, in the realm of my dreams, another figure who looms. He was not in my dreams for the longest time, yet he is onstage here near-nightly. And that is my Father. How odd that he should choose to visit me now.
When I was in the flush of life, having rounded thirty but not yet reached forty, I did experience a moment, one of those life’s moments that occurs in an instant and then is never gone. I had been performing a magical feat for the amusement of my children involving a half-sovereign coin, which was meant to disappear from my closed fist, then re-appear behind their ears, or perhaps, even more remarkably, in their pockets. I will not here record the mechanism of this sleight. Let it suffice to say that in the course of this performance I found myself inhaling one of the half-sovereigns which immediately lodged itself in my windpipe. My cries for help were hoarse, inarticulate, desperate. I feared for my life, feared even more that I would expire in front of my family! And all for legerdemain!!!
Professional help was summoned and our rancid local physician slid a pair of narrow forceps down my trachea. Needless to say the discomfort provoked by the coin was only amplified by the attempt to dislodge it. I could breathe but only with wild effort, and the awful wheeze of air circulating round the coin quickly scared my children back to their chambers, whence they peeked through the curtains down at the awful events unfolding on the garden.
My father then came round and suggested that I be turned upside down. To this end he—and his neighbors, who now were gathered round him—affixed me with coarse sisal rope to a wooden upright. So: up-right was soon up-wronged with my boots in the air, toes pointed to the heavens, head depending low to the ground. I coughed sans cesse for long minutes and then, even as the pain, the lack of oxygen, the vertiginous rush of blood to the inverted head, were about to o’ercome me, the half-sovereign tumbled out. Dropping quietly to the grass, as if it had gone for an adventure but had now tired of it. I was up-righted and then slapped, far too heartily, in congratulation.
That afternoon was always and subsequently referred to as the time that my life was almost brought to stop, yet re-started by the swift intervention and mechanical cunning of Brunel père. I always felt that interpretation to be far too coarse. (I had some agency in this, as did the coin.) But looking back I do not know why it is now, only now, I realize that in two different sets of circumstance, separated by a wide span of years, my life was stopped, and started up again, while bound with rope to wooden plank. What to make of this?
ELEVEN
I AM NOT sure how long I have just slept—perhaps four hours, most certainly fewer than eight. My dreams were expansive, of lakes and trees and woodland paths and music, beautiful music everywhere. But when I awoke I found myself in the same small metal room, the air malodorous, rank, and foul. This is the mausoleum in which I have been interred.
I’d here had the intention to set down in these pages other memories from the distant land of childhood. But I today at breakfast learned news that disturbs the soul and that takes precedence over other tasks. Put in its most simple form: our captain is taking us east, not west; north, not south. Which is to say that since we have left London we have been heading not down the channel to the Celtic Sea and beyond, but rather up the channel, to the North Sea (where we are at this moment), and then the Norwegian. Have we changed our destination? We have not. Our captain has succumbed to an idée fixe: that the best route from northern Europe to the South Pacific runs not round the Cape but o’er the Pole.
Were travel by sea as simple and direct as stretching a length of twine over a globe ‘twould make sense. But ‘tis not. The route polar is encrusted with ice: it demands a vessel capable of diving beneath. Neither the Neptune, nor anything yet constructed by man, has that capacity. Let me, then, make best use of my delimited time, a few days at most, before our icy captain consigns us to our frozen grave.
* * *
—
DUSK IS FALLING quickly. It is just after seven p.m., and the month is October. On our portside now, the Faroe Islands. To our starboard soon will be Tromsø, then Murmansk as we continue heading north. Then the Barents Sea, which upon encountering we shall dive under.
By my simple calculations, the Neptune‘s hull—assuming it was fashioned of plates as thick as those of the Great Eastern, and assuming, too, similar care and skill used in the welds and rivets—will withstand pressures as deep as thirty feet. From what I know of polar ice, one must dive some fifty feet or more to find one’s way below it. If I can ascertain as much, working from imprecise figures, then surely the captain knows this too and with greater certainty.
I endeavor to keep myself awake—what use to apportion hours to sleep when there may be so few of them left to me?—by all manner of device, such as pressing fingernails into palms, &c.
* * *
—
WE ARE SURROUNDED by water colder than water, the pressure down here keeping it liquid when anywhere else it would be ice. Before we went below the Neptune did navigate by stars, yet there be no stars here, only walls of ice on either side and a vault of ice above. Should the walls of ice converge all shall die as if never were, yet that possibility does not for our captain seem to hold terror. Others among the Crew—from what I am able to understand of their language, and from one or two remarks directed discreetly toward me—are of different mind.
One of the captain’s men—Mr. V. K. Singh, a small, rotund, mutton-chopped man who had been to the captain a tutor since childhood—came earlier to speak with me. His English is quite good, if spoken in that odd and grating singsong endemic to the dusky race. Sotto voce he let me know that he, too, sees the captain’s itinerary as one that can only lead to extinction. He is of the opinion that the only voice to which the captain might pay heed is mine. He, and his comrades, who have been with the captain through campaigns unimaginable e’en before they put to sea, will petition him to speak with me.
I am moved and find it in no small ways odd that one of my gaolers would now want to work in concert. Captor and captive together. It is not without precedent that the nearness of death does encourage alliances otherwise unlikely.
Our captain has since yesterday afternoon been ensconced in his study behind locked bulkhead, manipulating air: ten fingers, three manuals, thirty-two stops. It is a piece by Bach, after Vivaldi, in the key of A-minor.
Many years ago, centuries perhaps, masses of ice met, abutted, pressed together, slid beneath other, subduction. Over time the great walls of ice thrust downward, and it is these walls that guide our Neptune but also do confine her. A labyrinth without minotaur, but also without escape.
* * *
—
WHAT WAS SURMISED and what did occur were one and the same. Mr. Singh and I were told that the captain would receive us. Accordingly we approached the forward hatchway. At Mr. Singh’s knock: “You may enter, Mr. Singh. And you may bring your M. Brunel with you.” The fugue that had flowed mellifluous and thick now quieted. No longer the rush and roar of full raging sea, but a threnody written and sung by one lone heart. We entered. The captain had his back to us and neither turned nor ceased to play.
“We are on a path of doom, sir,” said Mr. Singh. “And most assuredly will die. The course you have set for us is a course of madness, leading only to the grave.”
Mr. Singh indicated that I should speak, and I did so.
“Allow me, Captain, to talk of physical limits. The hull is, I am told, three-quarters of an inch at its thinnest. We are aided by the pressure of interior air, which is now 1.5 times that of surface. But already there is seepage at the welds and it is only a matter of time before the exhaust pipes become inlets and water fouls the engine.”
I awaited the captain’s attention. Did not receive it. “Should we not turn around the water inside, and water without, will attain equilibrium.”
Mr. Singh then took up where I had left off: “The crew are loyal and will follow a sailor from hemisphere to hemisphere. But they will not follow a madman. Should you not relent, they will take control of Neptune, guide her back to safe harbor.”
The captain responded only in A-minor.
“I report only what I see and hear without embellishment of any sort,” said Mr. Singh. “The crew are as one, poised on a fulcrum with the sharpest of edge. When I say crew, I mean all.”
Now the music stopped. Now the fingers lifted from the keyboard. Now the captain’s round, threaded seat performed half a revolution. His back had been toward his audience. Now he faced us.
“We cannot go back. Neither will we.” There was a drop of water, then another. The water accumulated at the ceiling’s top seams, gathered, then, as weight overtook tension, dropped. The captain noticed this, as did all, but if we felt alarm, and more than a small sense of urgency, the captain it seemed did not. “Behind us is the past,” he continued, his tone unwavering. “Behind us is death. In front of us? Merely the future.”
With that he lifted from its setting the voice receptor that led, via crenellated metal tube, down to the engine room. “Steady as she goes. Maintain three-quarter speed ahead.” Abruptly he rose, quitting the salon by the forward door, disappearing through the passage that led to his private quarters, thence, by narrow stair, to the wheelhouse.
Mr. Singh turned to me. “Let us pray,” he said. “You to your god, me to mine.” I stood there for a long moment, collecting the thoughts. If I were to have but minutes before the curtain descended, how would I wish to spend those moments? Immersed in what thoughts? What actions? I repaired to my room to set down this account.
If these words survive me, and you come to read them, please do not judge me harshly. And if by some miraculous and uncanny stroke of fortune I should outlive them—know that the larger part of me would wish not to.
TWELVE
SOMETHING I HAVE known since birth, a lesson taught neither by amahs at Orchha nor by my dons at Cambridge: when the world spins, there is always one small, still point about which all else revolves. It is of use to know this.
The contemplation of sailing beneath the Pole induces chaos within our mentation. But there is a still point: the center of the earth. The molten core, an inferno beyond imagining. Magma travels up from that core, and even after a journey of some 1,300 leagues, retains sufficient heat to erupt and bury cities. Think only of Pompeii. Of Atlantis.
The lower we descend, the closer we approach that core. Counter to intuition but not counter to science, there will come a point in our descent where the sea—which had, ‘til that
point, gotten colder—becomes warmer. The temperature at which impassible ice becomes, perforce, navigable water.
Accordingly, I commanded that Neptune make a descent to the depth of six atmospheres. And at that depth, there is nothing but water, liquid water, from here to the Bering Sea. The capable M. Brunel, who was not present at Neptune‘s construction, but who possesses perhaps the world’s keenest mind with respect to naval architecture, calculated that our hull would not withstand six atmospheres, and made his calculations known to me. He concluded his analysis by maintaining, with some clarity and force, that at any greater depth than the one we were maintaining at present, this craft will break.
I proposed, by way of response, that we compensate by increasing the air pressure within. He countered that “the Almighty,” as he referred to his deity, built our lungs for one atmosphere, not for six. That capillaries bleed out at any pressure more than three. He also dispatiated upon the difficulties, once pressurized, of returning to surface. His argument: in the decompression any gas in the bloodstream becomes a bubble, as if the blood itself were boiling. That bubble makes its way to the brain which it then proceeds, in simple and predictable fashion, to destroy. He gave examples from his experience during the construction of the Rotherhithe Tunnel.
I did hear, of course, what M. Brunel had to say. But there is a still point within me that knows what he does not.
To wit: like many dreams, the dream of a submersible preceded the dreamer. It floated on tides of aether the way we now float in sea. When the gods think of us—bipedal, earthbound, mortal—they take pity. So they fashion for us a pair of dreams. The one is of flight, into the air, as if we were hawks or ravens. The other is of submersion, beneath the waves, as if we were whales or dolphins.
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