Quicksilver

Daniel’s elbowed hard by a man hauling on a line that enters Minerva through a small orifice above the gunport. This has the effect of (1) knocking Daniel down on his bony pelvis and (2) swinging said gunport all the way open, creating a sudden square of light. Framed in it is part of the rigging of a smaller ship, so close that a younger man could easily jump to it. There is a man-a pirate-on that ship pointing a musket in Daniel’s direction, but he’s struck down by a gaudy spray of out-moded china fragments, fired down from Minerva’s upperdeck. “Caltrops away!” says someone, and boys with sacks lunge toward the open gunport and hurl out a tinkling cosmos, down to the deck of the smaller ship. Moments later the same ceremony’s repeated through a gunport on the larboard side-so there must be a pirate-vessel there, too. The gunports are hauled closed again, sporting new decorations: constellations of lead balls fired into ’em from below.

The screaming/bellowing ratio has climbed noticeably. Daniel (helping himself to his feet, thank you, and hobbling crabwise to a safe haven near the mainmast, to inventory his complaints) reckons that the screaming must originate from shoeless pirates with caltrop-spikes between their metatarsals-until he hears “Fire! Fire!” and notes a curl of smoke invading the gundeck through a cracked gunport, speared on a shaft of sunlight. Then some instinct makes Daniel forget his bruises and sprains-he’s up the last flight of stairs, spry as any eight-year-old powder monkey, and out in the sail-dappled sunlight, where he’ll happily risk musket-balls.

But it’s the pirate-sloop, not Minerva, that’s on fire. Lines are going slack all over the starboard half of the ship. Each of them happens to terminate in a rusty grappling-hook that’s lodged in a ratline or a rail. The pirates are cutting themselves free!

Now comes a general rush of men to larboard, where a whaleboat is still pestering them. Minerva rolls that direction on a sea. The whaleboat comes into view, no longer eclipsed by the hull’s tumblehome, and a score of muskets and blunderbusses fire down into it at once. Daniel only glimpses the result-appalling-then Minerva rolls starboard and hides it from view.

The men throw their weapons into lockers and ascend into the rigging, pursuant to commands from van Hoek, who’s up on the poop deck bellowing into a shiny trumpet of hammered brass. There are plenty of men belowdecks who could be making contributions here, but they don’t come up. Daniel, begi

They have been ru

A panic of luffing and shivering spreads through Minerva ’s rig as all the sails change their relationship to the wind, then everything snaps tight, just as the sailors knew it would, and she’s ru

All the more surprising that van Hoek orders a tack, when it isn’t really necessary. Minerva comes about and sails directly toward the meandering sloop. Several minutes later, Minerva bucks once as she rams the sloop amidships, then shudders as her keel drives the wreckage under the sea. Those burly forecastlemen go out with cutlasses and hatchets to cut shreds of the sloop’s rigging away from the bowsprit, where it has become fouled. Van Hoek, strolling on the poop deck, aims a pistol over the rail and, in a sudden lily of smoke, speeds a drowning pirate to Hell.

“IRENEW MY OBJECTION -” said Robert Boyle. “It does not seem respectful to inventory the contents of our Founder’s guts as if they were a few keepsakes left behind in a chest-”

“Overruled,” said John Comstock, still President of the Royal Society-just barely. “Though, out of respect for our remarkably generous host, I will defer to him.”

Thomas More Anglesey, Duke of Gunfleet, was seated at the head of his drawing-room, at a conspicuously new gilt-and-white-enamel table in the barock style. Other bigwigs, such as John Comstock, surrounded him, seated according to equally barock rules of protocol. Anglesey withdrew a large watch from the pocket of his Persian vest and held it up to the light streaming in through about half an acre of window-glass, exceptionally clear and colorless and bubble-free and recently installed.

“Can we get through it in fifty seconds?” he inquired.

Inhalations all round. In his peripheral vision, Daniel saw several old watches being stuffed into pockets-pockets that tended to be frayed, and rimmed with that nameless dark shine. But the Earl of Upnor and-of all people-Roger Comstock (who was sitting next to Daniel) reached into clean bright pockets, took out new watches, and managed to hold them up in such a way that most everyone in the room could see that each was equipped, not just with two but three hands, the third moving so quickly that you could see its progress round the dial-counting the seconds!

Many hunched glances, now, toward Robert Hooke, the Hephaestus of the tiny. Hooke managed to look as if he didn’t care about how impressed everyone was-which was probably true. Daniel looked over at Leibniz, sitting there with his box on his lap, who had a soulful, distant expression.

Roger Comstock, noting the same thing: “Is that how a German looks before he bursts into tears?”

Upnor, following Roger’s gaze: “Or before he pulls out his broadsword and begins mowing down Turks.”

“He deserves our credit for showing up at all,” Daniel murmured-hypnotized by the movement of Roger Comstock’s second-hand. “Word arrived yesterday-his patron died in Mainz.”