The Great Eastern

by Howard Rodman

  Now Nemo’s curiosity turned to what was upon the waves rather than beneath them. Accordingly Nemo he quit the salon by its fore-ward hatch, climbed the eighteen wrought-iron steps that spiral’d up to wheelhouse. The omni-scope could, on bright days and when Nautilus was at shallow depth, project image onto ground glass, the image as sharp as real life, in the manner of a camera obscura. When Nautilus was at depth there be not sufficient illumination, but the omni-scope could still offer up a view of the above, via an ocular. Nemo put his right eye to the lens. Up there was the Great Eastern, and he needed to see her. To ascertain whether she would turn tail or instead— Do something else.

  If departing Foilhummerum with an unspooling cable had been Great Eastern‘s P to K’s 4th, severing said cable was Nautilus‘s P to K’s 4th response. At some point—and Nemo hoped it would be soon—Great Eastern would topple its own king, concede the loss, Nemo master of the board. But until Great Eastern scuttled her task and made her grand defeated turn, Nemo would maintain vigilance.

  Would this be a four-knights game? A Ruy Lopez (always Mr. Singh’s favorite, and hence, the Turk’s)? He watched intently as the cable, which had been paying out in a lazy catenary arc from the V of the ship’s stern, now reeled back in. Then began the gathering of the Great Eastern‘s escorts—they’d been substantially in her wake, but were now, with the lead ship stilled, catching up; and he could see, too, a smaller wake, that of a chaloupe, from one of the subsidiary wooden crafts to the larger iron one. Supplies, or a specific piece of kit that needed to be brought to Great Eastern? A specialist, called in for consultation?

  As Nemo’s eye adjusted to the vista, the dance of thoughts within his head fell into synchrony with the dance of severed cable. It rose, yes, as it was being hauled back in. But also undulated, a long slow sine, as beauteous in its own way as eel or sea-snake. The line became shorter, the oscillations more rapid as it was wound back to berth. Nemo was not a man prone to the wager, but he set store in experience, and he knew that each time previous that the cable had broke or been severed the cable-ship it had returned to port. And if so, Nautilus she would play in North Atlantic currents until she received that the cable scheme had been abandoned; and then set out for sunnier climes.

  Thus it was with more than a little curiosity that the Nautilus‘s captain did drink his elixir: steam, pressured up to nine atmospheres, forced through ground roasted coffee (as finely pulverized as it would be for the Turkish preparation). Nemo had spent long months experimenting with different varietals, different methods of extraction. He loved his Malabar but these raw beans came from Harar in the east of Ethiopia then brought by land to the straits where the Red Sea empties out into the Erythraean. He’d brought them aboard in their green state, stored them in the ballast hold, roasted them in small quantities. They kept well in the green state, but once roasted the oils did, in short order, become acrid.

  As he sipped he listened to Bach (on an organ to all other ears, save his own, silent: the toccata internal, played on the stop Vox Intus Vero). And all the while keeping eye affixed to ocular, awaiting the moment that the Great Eastern would make her slow, wide turn, from compass point WNE round to ESW, back to harbor, there to await the next chapter of her sad decline. When the Great Eastern had beat its retreat Nemo would summon Brunel to the salon, let him know that his old iron ship was no longer in jeopardy, that repatriation was at hand. And that the next port of call for him would be Home.

  Then again: if the Great Eastern‘s response to the severing were somehow different—not the expected B to N’s 5th but something more outré—Nemo would counter. With elegance, science, violence, until the final shāh māt.

  TWENTY-NINE

  NOW PONDER ME this, ye lads and mates. Yer calcium, why that would tell a tale, a tale of sea-creature from the vasty deep. But yer iron, she tell a different tale. All fish known and all fish ne’er seen, hath jaws and teeth of bone. Not iron. And yer cetacean mammal, that cetacean mammal hath jaws and teeth of bone. Not iron. And yer cephalopod, why he be deadly, yet that cephalopod have tentacles and suckers of squidly flesh. Not iron. What’s made of iron? Why yer G____ E______ be made of iron. Yer Isambard Railway Man’s railway be made of iron. Dost thou sense the thing-in-common? What unique property be held by all of these? There be a tell-tale word, and that word be made.

  Things of iron were ne’er born, no: they were wrought. Thus here we were gazing into the fiery maw of Isambard’s ship’s boiler. Peering rapt and painful into what ungodly light. Staring fixedly at the end of a grand copper snake that yer Ahab had with his magnificent harpoon arm thrust into that light. And seeing in the flames that danced from cable’s edge a light and golden flame: gold, here meaning iron. And iron meaning, removed from the world of the natural and thrust hard into the realm of the made-by-man, yer cause, yer motive. Yer intent. No, the cable did not snap. Something, someone wanted the cable snapped. And so: snapped it. With shears of iron.

  Mechanical beast. Pneumatical sledge. Steely automaton. What devil’s concatenation of hard, shiny, malleable, fusible, ductile metal— Of gear, clockwork, escapement— Of slow-turning wheel and pinion rod— Of riveted skin and ridged metallic jaw— Ahab, he imagined all manner of infernal machine, and in his imagination he saw a sub-marine railway, the triumph of the engineer o’er the seaman, gleaming iron rails stretching from the one continent to t’other, and upon those rails a dark and ferrous train, belching white steam black smoke into the dark northern seas, thick plumes rising up through viscous dark toward yer moon or sun above. A ferrous train dispatching all in its path, tossing each and every obstacle up and away with the ease of cowcatcher dispatching cow. First a rumble, then a roar— Then the Cyclopean headlamp piercing lower ocean depths, fixing ye in its beam, ‘til ye were torn beneath its wheel, as inexorable as the dream gone bad.

  Yer Ahab he saw that ferrous train in the eye of his mind, saw it in massive and terrible detail, bearing down on him, and no way of stopping its forward push nor of stepping aside from the rail-ordained path. Yet even as that headlamp caught his gaze, Ahab he returned it and stared into the maw: man versus machine so far beneath the surface of the sea that the waves were as cirrus clouds in a distant night sky. And he refused, yer captain did, to yield! He would meet it full on, and we shall see who be the more stalwart. For Ahab hath what no machine doth possess, which be this one thing: the intellect, which no iron engine e’er could match. Confronted with the connaissance of iron, Ahab did not flail and weep, no he did not. Instead: he thought. And as with many Ahabean thoughts, the thought took the form of a question, and the question it was this: What made of iron lies so far beneath the sea? Why a piece of iron wrought on land and brought down low! And what might it be, and how had it been brought so low?

  At one instant Ahab, he did not know; and in the instant next, he knew. Said iron was a sharpened spear, wrought in New Bedford by Thad Samuelson, ironmonger. Bound with coiled hemp to a length of round-turned teak by yer Ahab himself. A harpoon! A lance from the past! A harpoon hurled, ye may recall, swift and accurate by yer Ahab, into the maw of Leviathan, and lodged there like an iron tooth! Lodged in that jaw long after hemp and wood hath rotted away!

  And so when Leviathan encountered Mr. Field’s cable, paying out from the stern of yer G____ E______, swaying slow and sinuous beneath Atlantic North— Why Leviathan he see that cable and Leviathan he think, this be eel! This be coelacanth! Morsel for the maw! And so without regard for the this or for the that yer Leviathan swam toward— And when the eel be within reach, raised his lower jaw, clamping down, clamping down. And the piece of jaw what hit the eel first, why that would be the most protruding tooth: in this case, by history now we know, the tooth of iron! The harpoon tooth! The ferrous dentition that near-killed Leviathan, but was now fully part of him!

  And so the pale gold what Ahab saw in the terrible furnace was the gleam of American iron, of Thaddeus Samuelson, of Ahab, of a story from long ago come back to haunt.

  The myst
ery posed and solved!

  ‘Twas, for Ahab, great and grand relief. But also: old and awful fear. And swift upon the heels of that fear: a command. What Ahab had given soul and leg to do, first time round, must now be done again, and with finality. ‘Til one or both were dead.

  Ahab he can be the quietest of men, when he is stepping behind ye three paces, unheard, until he loops his hands round yer neck. When justice is on his side he will mete out his vengeance, and that he will do swift and direct. A messenger from the future when yer future is all spent.

  But he can also be a man of peace yer Ahab can. When the ship runs steady, and the hands on deck all acquit themselves with diligence and honor, and the holy stoners sing of holystoning and the haulers sing of hauling, and all have accepted Ahab’s morning fix and all work in fine concord to moving the ship in the direction Ahab himself hath determined, and the serene unblinking sun doth shine down on the pacific seas, and the sun slideth down behind them if they are sailing east, or in front if they are sailing west, and the sky goeth salmon at the rim, then red, presaging clear night ahead and the prospect of a morning not unlike the morning previous: why then Ahab be an ocean of contentment, an ivory-legged apostle of calm.

  So before ye jump to yer conclusion, the simple and base conclusion, that Ahab he was in it for the Great White— Before ye think that of all the wild plumage of human emotion, the sole ambition belonging to Ahab were the one quill marked “vengeance”— Before ye think that Ahab were in it only fer Ahab— Consider two things if ye might:

  The first thing, that be the word of Ahab. He were hired, and paid, to escort Captain Anderson’s iron beast from Foilhummerum to Heart’s Content, to keep it safe from harm. So in fixing on the Leviathan, was not Ahab simply honoring his word, and the conditions of his employ?

  And there be the second thing that Ahab he doth beg ye, lads, to take into yer fine consideration. What doth Ahab hold high, above the roil of self? What doth he place before him, and above him, with every waking thought, and equally in dream? Why the life and livelihood of those under his command! Ahab, he be but one man (though a grand man, to be sure). But what be the life of one man, compared to the many lives of the crew entire? So many paths, so many histories— Each as variegated as Ahab’s own. He thought now, Ahab he did, of Langhorne, his chanteyman. How could he allow Langhorne to fall into harm’s way? And if Leviathan, will-he nill-he, were to harm his chanteyman, and had Ahab not done all in his power to prevent it, well then could Ahab sleep? Ye all know the answer: no, he could not sleep. He would not rest. He would wander the surface of the seas for an eternity, racked with remorse, mind occupied to fullness with thoughts of that other world receding from his grasp like jetsam thrown into the wake, that other world where Ahab was brave and Langhorne he lived on.

  So before ye think that Ahab only wanted what Ahab wanted, without regard for the honor of his word, or his obligation toward those in his fine care— Before ye do, consider yer thoughts. And gaze, lads and mates, not upon yer captain, but the other way, inward, toward the depths of yer own souls should ye have ‘em.

  And so yer Ahab sayeth, to all those aboard the Valparaiso, be they sheet men or rope men or carpenters or swabbers, be they boatsteerers or stewards or cooks or coopers or chanteyman, be they rats in the hold or maggots in the meat: look in, look in. And question not the spots upon Ahab’s soul, but upon yer own.

  THIRTY

  YET E’EN AS Ahab gazed into the fiery furnace, and there saw the tell-tale flames, Captain Anderson he gazed into Ahab’s face, and there saw the flames interior.

  At that moment, in the boiler-hold, though no words were in that place exchanged, we all of us, save the stokers and fire-men bent upon their ceaseless and wretched task, we all the rest of us exited the hold, going back out the way we’d come in, and pulling the cable with us, which unseen and accommodating hands re-wound on the large capstan, that by the time we reached the stern-hold the cable were all snug, and wound up tight on its bobbin.

  Then Captain Anderson did nod his chin, and at that Ahab followed him. It were just the two, as all else waited, and the two—the captain of this awful iron tub and the captain of the awful wooden Valparaiso—went fore again, Anderson in the lead, forward to the foc’sle, then down, into the salon, the chairs that were once excellent now frayed, and the papered walls, in Zuber murals depicting Hindoos and Éléphants, torn and marked by time. Where the gilded elect once had dined and danced, where then the commerce of nations and not a few butts of Madeira had crossed the seven seas, was now but grand abandoned space, the celebration having ceased or, more simply, having moved on. Into this hollowed hallowed hall was yer Ahab now granted admission.

  Yer Captains Ahab and Anderson, we sat down now in that ruined salon, and in that gold and tattered space we were there joined by Mr. Field, whom Ahab had first met in New York, in Mr. Field’s apartments off Gramercy Park, and who was now Ahab’s employer. As if anyone could Ahab employ! But Anderson, sad to say, was an owner’s man, and his crew they knew it, and they disrespected him on account of it. Now a sailor who will “show willing,” that sailor is of value, for he will not slack, and he will not moan, and he will do the task assigned, and not quit ‘til either it is done, or he is.

  But a captain who will “show willing,” that is another story. For if he doeth what be asked by the owner, and pays not attention to those beneath, why they will wait until he is equidistant from port and home, then there will be maggots in his coffee, bugs in his crib, alum in his biscuits, ‘til his shit run warm and thin down the back of his legs, and him trying to keep the dignity of command, while all around him the stench.

  So the three of us we sat, and Mr. Field to Captain Anderson did say, “Report.” And Anderson, who knew enough to know what he did not know, did in turn gesture to yer Ahab (and in this, if nothing else, did show a fine intelligence).

  Thus freed to speak yer Ahab did tell his employer what Ahab hath already disclosed to ye, anent the nature of the shear, the colors of the flames. And yer Ahab, possessed of native wit and acumen, and with a lifetime of experience in dealing with the owner class, yer Ahab, rather than belabor the point, he left it to Mr. Field to draw the conclusions.

  “So you tell me, Captain, that some metal monster lives beneath the sea, with crafted pair of claws, and intent malign toward my enterprise?”

  “Ahab presents what Ahab saw, Mr. Field, and extracts no meaning from it. But if ye ask, Mr. Field, and with respect, the opinion Ahab holds is this: that a metal monster would seem to be the least likely of explications for what were done to yer cable.”

  “Are you telling me, Captain, that though the jaws or claws bore ferrous signature, there was no human agency behind today’s setback?”

  “I can only say, Mr. Field, with William of Occam, that the simpler explication be the more likely.”

  “And can you tell me, Captain, what you believe to be that simpler explication?”

  Here Ahab he paused, as if full of reflection. And spoke slowly, as if the thoughts were formed in the mouth, conclusions emerging only at the instant of need. “I would propose, Mr. Field, that the iron were the remnant of an old harpoon, lodged fast within the jaw of yer sea creature.”

  The elephants they did from the wallpaper stare down at us.

  “And yer sea-creature, Ahab he knows it better than any man on earth. It was the self-same Leviathan what took Ahab’s leg. ‘Twas the self-same Leviathan that, upon second encounter, near unto took yer Ahab’s life. Did take it, if ye place your faith in the popular press. Now the fates have brought us together for the third and final time. For yer Ahab he will kill the beast, kill it and slay it, kill it and slay it ‘til it float lifeless upon the surface of the sea. And then yer cable will be safe, for then and ever more, and the cables you lay on other seas, they will be safe, long after we have all of us been dispatched to heaven.”

  Mr. Field lit a wood-and-sulphur match, held the flame to the maw of his pipe, circled it round tha
t the tobacco be evenly lit. Took a long and reflective pull. Exhaled smoke. Then shook his head.

  “I have built grand consortiums, have held them together, and when they fell, have built them up again. It takes skill, as you would know, to bear the weight of command. Skill and fortitude. Some might say: resolve.”

  “Aye, sir,” said the craven Anderson, who knew not how to do other than to agree.

  Mr. Field went on. “I have earned that resolve by trusting in my mind, and trusting in my gut, and mediating, between the two, at times casting caution to the winds, and at other times hanging back.

  “To move now, from the general to the specific at hand: you tell me, Mr. Ahab, that the flames danced gold. But this I did not see myself, and the event was too fleeting to allow for corroboration. And even if we shall cede that there were flickers of gold in those flames, I am not certain that iron be the only element that might yield up that particular hue. E’en if we say, for the sake of argument, that what we glimpsed was the unique signature of iron, why then, there are other explications than that of a harpooned Leviathan.”

  He took another pull upon his pipe and continued to speak, gazing neither at Captain A nor Captain A-prime, but upward at the great vaulted ceiling where once had been chandelier and now naught save battered filigree.

  “But the question is less of causation than of consequence. If, for the sake of argument, we grant that a lance-jawed Leviathan inhabits the seas beneath our ship, what then? Can said Leviathan, harpoon-in-jaw or no, rend us asunder? Well, no. We ourselves are made of iron, and of thickest gauge, and double-hulled at that. So even if your extrapolations, Captain Ahab, be grounded, they do not to me indicate that we should behave any differently than we would were the flame that you saw one of purple, or crimson, or jade green, or pure sky blue. You are following, are you not? While I do not dismiss your speculations, they are of no weight to me in determining the course of future action.”