Quicksilver

“Elders?”

“The dog was older than the Earl-come on, pay attention!” Pepys said, giving Daniel a tremendous frown.

“Strikes me as an unwise thing to have said,” Daniel muttered.

“The King said, ‘No, no, Upnor has always been a civil fellow,’ or some such, and so there was no duel.”

“Still, Upnor strikes me as a grudge-holder-”

“Enoch has sent better men than Upnor to Hell-don’t trouble yourself about his future,” Wilkins said. “You need to tend to your own faults, young fellow-excessive sobriety, e.g…”

“A tendency to fret-” Pepys put in.

“Undue chastity-let’s back to the tavern!”

HE WOKE UP SOMETIME THEnext day on a hired coach bound for Cambridge-sharing a confined space with Isaac Newton, and a load of gear that Isaac had bought in London: a six-volume set of Theatrum Chemicum,*numerous small crates stuffed with straw, the long snouts of retorts poking out-canisters of stuff that smelled odd. Isaac was saying, “If you throw up again, please aim for this bowl-I’m collecting bile.”

Daniel was able to satisfy him there.

“Where Enoch the Red failed, you’re going to succeed-?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Going after the Philosophic Mercury, Isaac?”

“What else is there to do?”

“The R.S. adores your telescope,” Daniel said. “Oldenburg wants you to write more on the subject.”

“Mmm,” Isaac said, lost in thought, comparing passages in three different books to one another. “Could you hold this for a moment, please?” Which was how Daniel came to be a human book-rest for Isaac. Not that he was in any condition to accomplish greater things. In his lap for the next hour was a tome: folio-sized, four inches thick, bound in gold and silver, obviously made centuries before Gutenberg. Daniel was going to blurt, This must have been fantastically expensive, but on closer investigation found a book-plate pasted into it, bearing the arms of Upnor, and a note from the Earl:

Mr. Newton-

May this volume become as treasured by you, as the memory of our fortuitous meeting is to me-

WHEN THEY’VE MADEit out of Plymouth and into Cape Cod Bay, van Hoek returns to his cabin and becomes Captain once more. He looks rather put out to find the place so discomposed. Perhaps this is a sign of Daniel’s being a bitter old Atheistical crank, but he nearly laughs out loud. Minerva ’s a collection of splinters loosely pulled together by nails, pegs, lashings, and oakum, not even large enough to count as a mote in the eye of the world-more like one of those microscopic eggs that Hooke discovered with his microscope. She floats only because boys mind her pumps all the time, she remains upright and intact only because highly intelligent men never stop watching the sky and seas around her. Every line and sail decays with visible speed, like snow in sunlight, and men must work ceaselessly worming, parceling, serving, tarring, and splicing her infinite net-work of hempen lines in order to prevent her from falling apart in mid-ocean with what Daniel imagines would be explosive sudde

“So the curtain has come down on your performance. Now, a man in your position might feel like a barnacle-unable to leave the ship-an a

Daniel’s not paying attention. A momentous rearrangement has taken place since Daniel was last here. All of the obstructions that formerly cluttered the space have been moved elsewhere or thrown overboard to create rights-of-way for the ca

One sailor, an Irishman, is talking to one of the Plymouth whaleboat pirates captured this morning. A ca

“Is she? Wayward?”

“She’s like any other lass, you must get to know her, and then what might seem inconstant is clearly revealed as a kind of consistency-faithfulness even. And so the first thing you must know about our darling girl is that her bore tends up and to larboard of her centerline. And she’s a tight one, is our virginal Wendy, which is why we on the dub-dub crew must keep a sharp eye for undersized balls and husband ’em carefully…”

Someone on the crew of “Manila Surprise” nudges that gun’s port open for a moment, and sun shines in. But Manila Surprise is on the larboard side of the ship. “We are sailing southwards!?” Daniel exclaims.

“No better way to run before a north wind,” Dappa says.

“But in that direction, Cape Cod is only a few miles away! What sort of an escape route is that?”

“As you have reckoned, we shall have to work to windwards eventually in order to escape from Cape Cod Bay,” Dappa says agreeably. “When we do, Teach’s fleet will be tacking along with us. But his ships are fore-and-aft rigged and can sail closer to the wind, and make better headway, than our dear Minerva, a square-rigger. Advantage Teach.”

“Shouldn’t we head north while we can, then?”

“He would catch us in a matter of minutes-his entire fleet together, working in concert. We want to fight Teach’s ships one at a time if we can. So southwards it is, for now. Ru