“The French fellow, René Descartes, would say not,” avowed Mr Benjamin with a mock-serious expression, “rather he would say that mentality is a nonphysical substance, from which he deduces the doctrine of duality. He says ‘I think, therefore I am’ and he would say ‘the ship cannot think, therefore it aren’t’. I feel he may have a point there, although he confesses himself to be puzzled by insects, being unable to decide whether they think or merely act in the fashion of a machine, without will or consciousness.”
“That be true,” said Bill. “It be in his book The Passions Of The Soul, which I has in my sea-chest.”
“Ho-ho! Did you purchase it under the misapprehension that it was salacious, Bill?” laughed Blue Peter.
“I did a deal wiv a book-seller when we was in London, for all the books he had by Descartes, an got ‘em a good price, too. All I knew was that he were a mathematician, like. I haven’t read much o’ it, but I remember the bit about insects.” Bill selected an apple and munched it, a glint of amusement in his piggy eyes.
“Why did you want to read Descartes’ mathematical musings?” asked Mr Benjamin, looking taken aback.
“He has some notions about this and that. Summa them very canny. His ideas of ordination, fr’instance, might lead me to say that three and one-half quantities is three and one-half dimensions, which is length, breadth, width and the half-dimension of time.”
The Captain stared at him, mouth slightly open.
“Why is time a half of a dimension?” said Blue Peter, not noticing the Captain’s surprise.
“Because it only goes in one direction. The other three can go back-and-forth, so to speak,” said Bill.
“I confess myself humbled, Bill,” said the Captain. “I was sure that nobody would spot that, I even dubbed the thing ‘deciheptaxial’, smugly content that the name was obscure enough for safety.”
“I would not have smoked it iffen I had not just been reading Mon-sewer Descartes, Cap’n, so I was fortunate there.”
“Well, all of you, please do not breathe a word of these notions outside this cabin for now,” said Captain Greybagges earnestly. “We only have another few days here, and then we are away. All will become clear, I hope, and trying to explain now is, well, too difficult. It’s easier if you just bear with me for now. Here! I have an amusement for you!”
The Captain got up and lifted a square wooden box onto the table.
“I ordered this in London, and it was delivered today.”
He took away the box lid and lifted out a spherical glass bottle the size of a pumpkin.
“Alf Docklefar made it for me. It is our frigate Ark de Triomphe in miniature.”
The Captain moved the oil lamp close to the round bottle and his three officers leaned forward to peer inside.
It was indeed the frigate Ark de Triomphe, the length of a hand-span and beautifully modelled. The black hull ploughed a choppy sea of blue-tinted plaster set in the bottom of the bottle, with whitecaps painted on the crests of the waves. The sails were made of fine silk stiffened with glue-size so that they appeared as if full-drawn by a stiff breeze, the little black skull-and-bones flag flying at the masthead was of stiffened silk, too, as though frozen mid-flap. Every stay, halliard, ratline, hawser and cable was represented in its correct place by silken threads and cords. The tiny muzzles of the cannons peeked from the open gun-ports,
There was silence for several minutes as they examined the ship in its round bottle, broken by the occasional quiet slurp as rum was sipped.
“Goats and monkeys!” said Mr Benjamin at last. “That is indeed a fine maquette of this noble vessel! Perfect in every visible detail! That Docklefar fellow is an artist, in his way.”
“Well, not perfect in every detail,” said Blue Peter.
“Surely yuz jests!” said Bill.
“Look carefully,” said Blue Peter, “those front gun-ports are far too narrow. I know that for a certainty, for we have just spent the past week widening them.”
The days went by quickly as the tempo of work increased towards the day of departure. The tubs came and went, delivering cargoes both mundane and strange; reels of copper wire of different gauges; thirty barrels of sauerkraut; ten sausage-shaped bottles made of cast gun-bronze, each as long as a cannon; forty-two barrels of salted herrings; a device similar to an iron fire-pump, but exquisitely made of polished brass and steel; hogsheads of wine, casks of ale, kegs of rum; ten rifled muskets (a source of much wonder) with their bullet-moulds and tools; sailcloth, canvas, rope, cable and cordage; a portable blacksmith’s forge; rectangular slabs of glossy-black pitch and kegs of turpentine from the pine-forests of the Baltic; tinplate cans of fine castor-bean oil in several grades of viscosity (for “lubrication, not purgation”, as Mr Benjamin assured Israel Feet); fifteen boxes of soap and a hemp sack full of scrubbing brushes; a surveyor’s theodolite with its tripod; two tons of cheese, the truckles wrapped in straw….
Alarms and panics occurred, as some necessary action or essential article was nearly overlooked, but these became fewer, and those pirates responsible for ensuring readiness started to lose their haunted looks, although they were often found staring glassy-eyed at nothing, their lips moving silently as they ticked-off mental check-lists. Captain Sylvestre de Greybagges oversaw the organisation of this chaos from the Great Cabin, consulting ledgers, rosters, inventories and charts piled all over his desk and scattered on the floor around his chair. The cabin-door was wedged open, as people were coming and going all the time. He wrote letters, and pirates were despatched with bundles of them to deliver to the post-coaches and mail-boats. Occasionally he shouted for Mumblin’ Jake to bring him more coffee.
“We casts off tomorrow, shipmates” roared Captain Greybagges. “We be a-leavin’ on the evening tide!”
The crew of buccaneers cheered, waving their hats like madmen.
“We be a-sailin’ off on a voyage to far lands, me hearty lads, on a very great venture indeed. We sails to strange seas and unknown shores, it be true, but success be assured, since I has laid me plans deep, and I has laid them well! I be keeping me plans under me hat, for now, because you swabs be a bunch of old ladies for the chatterin’ and the gossipin’, and, as the old pirate motto do say, ‘three may keep a secret … if two o’ they be dead’, har-har!”
Blue Peter stood on the quarterdeck behind the Captain and watched the crew, the buccaneers standing packed into the waist or sitting on yards and crosstrees in the rigging. It was no longer easy to tell which were the old pirates and which the new pirates. They were hanging on the Captain’s words, even though he was not telling them much. But then, thought Blue Peter, I know more than any of them and I don’t know what he’s up to either. I suppose the crew are trusting their hearts, just as I am. Captain Greybagges was dressed as a prosperous merchant skipper, in a fine blue broadcloth coat with gold buttons, and his beard was boot-polished a rich brown. Blue Peter had donned his embroidered blue-silk coat, a white ruffled shirt and dove-grey breeches tucked into polished boots, for there seemed little point in being too restrained in dress on the last day, and there was to be a party. The Captain was still speaking:
“…. an’ Captain Morgan, Captain Bloody Morgan, bloody Captain Bloody Morgan, he do think himself to be cock o’ the walk because he and his rag-bag rag-tag ragamuffins took the great port city o’ Panama, but that will seem like mere apple-scrumpin’ when our tale is told!”
The crew cheered again, louder and longer, tramping their feet on the deck. The Captain raised his hands and they quieted.
“Now, listen yuz swabs! Today we shall have ourselves a boucan, and yuz can already smell the meat a-roasting over the fires. Today we grows our beards a little, and has an ale or two! But, me lads, let us have no strife or squabbling! Summa the people from the town are a-coming, so I wants yuz on yer best partyin’ behaviour. Don’t yuz be tryin’ to sweet-talk their womenfolk …” Laughter from the pirates. “… no, not even if they gives yuz a wink! Don’t yuz be dri
nking yerselves mad or dead, neither, and no scrapping, unless it be the boxin’ in the ring that Bill is a-fixin’ up. Surely yuz shall enjoy yerselves, but no shennigans! for tomorrow we sails to meet with fortune, becuz we be gentlemen o’ fortune, boys, and I tells yuz that we shall meet with great good fortune indeed! Now off with you, me cheery lads!”
Somebody called “three cheers for the Cap’n!” and the pirates hip-hip-hoorayed three times, then took themselves to the boatyard for the food, drink and entertainments, filing off the frigate in a surprisingly orderly fashion, with a quiet hubbub of high spirits.
Captain Sylvestre de Greybagges, Blue Peter Ceteshwayoo, Israel Feet and Mr Benjamin took a glass of wine and a biscuit in the Great Cabin before joining the party in the boatyard. Bulbous Bill Bucephalus was already down there, rigging a boxing-ring and arranging the bouts so that the less-skilled combatants would fight first.
“That was a fine rousing speech, Cap’n,” said Mr Benjamin, “and this is capital wine!”
“Thank you, Frank! I had to tell them something to raise their spirits afore we go. It’s difficult though. I was thinking that it’s a bit like wooden clocks. I had Mumblin’ Jake open a bottle of the Margaux, as it is an occasion. It is an excellent vintage, fifteen years in the bottle.”
“Wooden clocks again? said Blue Peter. “They are surely a great inspiration to you!”
“Ah, but hear me out! Your Swisser makes a wooden clock. That’s clever, thinks you, I should like to make a wooden clock myself, so you asks a Swisser to write up an account, call it, say How To Make Traditional Swiss Wooden Clocks. You read it, and it is most enlightening, and you wish to put it in your library, but where in your library do you put it? Do you put it on the shelf reserved for books on carpentry? Or on the shelf for books on clockmaking? Or on the shelf for books on Switzerland? Or on the shelf for books on traditions? It is not obvious, and so the book may not be easily found when you wish to find it again!”
“I can indeed follow you thus far,” said Blue Peter, sipping wine.
“But think! The memory – my memory, your memory, anybody’s memory – is much alike to a library. Many of the notions which I would have to impart to explain my plans are the same as the Swiss clockmaking book. It is difficult to categorise them, and if I tried to explain my plans to the crew they would be confused and not enlightened because those slippery notions would not fit comfortably on this shelf of their memory or that shelf of their memory, let alone whether the notions themselves would be understood.”
“That is an intriguing way of considering the condition of incomprehensibility,” said Mr Benjamin. “The memory imagined as a library, and the mind, or pneuma, as its librarian. Rational thought thus dependent on the system which joins the two. Fascinating!”
“Librarians are indeed much under-valued, in the general way of things,” said Captain Greybagges. “I confess that I would not have achieved very much at all, were it not for a … for librarians.”
“Wooden clocks, by the bones o’ Davy!” said Israel Feet. “That be a marvel, or yuz may fry me in dripping, else, wi’ a curse! Damm’ee!” He emptied his glass in a gulp.
The First Mate was practicing his pirate patois, the others guessed, for he would be master-of-ceremonies at some of the entertainments, and the pirate’s lingo had been at a low ebb of late, as the influence of the educated new pirates was felt, despite the enthusiasm of the young men for speaking it.
“Come, gentlemen!” said Captain Greybagges, with a sudden smile. “Let us be away to the revels! Izzy shall be our Lord of Misrule, and with luck it may not rain too much! Come, I wishes to grow me beard, I does! Wi’ a curse I does, damn’ yuz eyes!”
Captain Greybagges strode out of the Great Cabin, shouting to Mumblin’ Jake that he may come to the boucan once he had washed the glasses and locked the Captain’s pantry. His officers followed.
Blue Peter was the last to leave the Great Cabin, as he was savouring the last of his glass of vintage French wine. The Captain is very good at deflecting any curiosity about his plans, he thought, bamboozling Mr Benjamin with the problems of libraries, dazzling the crew with promises of riches and fame. Blue Peter noticed that the carpenter had fixed the ship-in-a-bottle on a special shelf on the cabin bulkhead, and it was brightly lit by the weak sunlight through the tall stern windows. He took a moment to examine it in daylight, rather than the yellow glow of a lamp. It was a beautiful model, quite surprising in its tiny details; there was a seagull on the foremast topgallant yard, barely the size of a flea, and a wash-tub by the hatchway to the galley. Blue Peter noticed the incongruous diagonal yard with a little platform that had been fitted to the Ark de Triomphe between the foremast and the mainmast. It was partially obscured by the sails and rigging, but he saw that there was something on the little platform. It was a tiny golden sphere, the size of a small bead. How odd. thought Blue Peter, the little platform of the real frigate has nothing upon it. Even more odd, the bright golden orb appeared to be at the exact centre of the spherical glass bottle. That is strange. He scratched his head. There seemed to be only two human figures upon the model’s deck, a dark figure and a pale figure upon the quarterdeck. The figures were very tiny, so he could make out no more.
Blue Peter recalled that there was a magnifying-glass in the drawer of the Captain’s desk. Through the lens the model frigate was even more exquisite. The tiny wash-tub by the galley hatch was visibly made of separate wooden staves barely the size of splinters. The two figures on the quarterdeck swam into focus in the glass. They were very small and lacked detail, the faces just dots of pink paint, but so cleverly wrought that the dark figure was quite recognizable as the Captain, with a black justaucorps coat, black tricorne hat, clad entirely in black except for his long green beard. The pale figure that stood close to the Captain was a tall slender woman with black hair, dressed in a white Greek chiton belted at the waist with a wide zoster. From far away Blue Peter heard a faint roar; the first boxing-bout of the boucan had just ended.
CHAPTER THE ELEVENTH,
or Blue Peter Trusts His Heart.
The pirate frigate Ark de Triomphe thumped through the Atlantic rollers on a freezing-cold grey spring morning, the strong wind full of sleety rain. The dawn sky was light behind the frigate, yet dark with the promise of more dirty weather to the west where her bowsprit pointed. She bears it handsomely well, thought Blue Peter, standing in greased sea-boots on the quarterdeck, wrapped in a boatcloak and hatted with a tarred sou’wester. A wave topped the leeward rail and washed across the deck, foaming against the giant upturned bucket lashed-down on the foredeck, then knocked over a pirate in the frigate’s waist. The rebuilt pirate-ship’s freeboard had been made low for ease of boarding a prize, but perhaps a little too low for the north Atlantic in the blustery spring. Bulbous Bill Bucephalus stepped forward from the wheel, which was held by two experienced steersmen with a bully-boy for added weight, and shouted down at the unfortunate pirate.
“Moors yerself with a safety-line, yer damn-yer-eyes lubber! If yuz goes over the side we shall not turn back for yuz! ’Pon my oath we shall not!”
The pirate, one of the new recruits from the port of London, rolled helplessly in the scuppers until another grabbed his arm and hauled him upright, water draining from under his griego, where a mischievious water-slosh had filled it, rolling from his bare feet to his head as he lay on the deck.
“Arrgh! Take him below to dry off. He’s no use frozen!” and, in a much louder voice, “Pay some mind, yer swabs! Old Neptune he be playful today! Har-har!”
Blue Peter had noticed that the new pirates seemed slightly stunned by the unremitting violence of the seas in mid-ocean, although in truth the Ark de Triomphe was romping through the waves as playfully as a seal, just occasionally sliding beneath a wave-crest in an insouciant fashion. It is a good thing, really, thought Blue Peter, they will realise that the ship has no desire to founder and their fright will then subside, for every sailor must master his fear of
the sea. But then, he thought, Bill’s words are a concealed rebuke to me, for I am not tied down yet he has a stout length of rope around his great belly attached to a cleat by the binnacle, and the steersmen are lashed to the wheel-stanchion in a seamanlike fashion. I have no wish to be roped, so I will go below.
Why do I not wish to be roped? he thought, as he clumped down the steps to the waist, water dripping from his sou’wester. Is it because we approach the North American Colonies, and the remembrance of slavery rises within me? Are memories linked to places by some invisible bond, some genius loci, so that the coast of Virginia stirs recollections of old pains, old humiliations, even though it lies hundreds of miles yet to the west? Even though it is not visible to my eyes? The very thought of being tied then seems offensive, being freighted with suggestions of bondage, despite it being an entirely reasonable and necessary precaution.
Mr Benjamin and an assistant were working on the demiheptaxial mechanism in its locker underneath the ship’s wheel, talking in low voices. The locker was now almost filled with brass and steel shafts, cams and gear-wheels, all glinting in the yellow glim from a lantern and the wan rays from a skylight. The ropes from the wheel came vertically down through the quarterdeck above, through the rear of the locker and down into the tiller-room below, from where the ship could be steered if the wheel was carried away by a cannon-ball, and where strong men could be stationed to haul on relieving-tackles to ease the load on the steersmen, and would be if the seas got any rougher. Mr Benjamin and his assistant had just connected an indicator to the mechanism showing the position of the ship’s rudder, a blue-steel arrow on a brass quadrant graduated in degrees. As the steersmen turned the frigate to ride the waves the steering-ropes went up and down creaking, and the blue-steel arrow swung slightly from on side to the other and back again. Mr Benjamin regarded it with a happy smile, and reached out to buff the brass quadrant with a rag.
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