Quicksilver

“That is entirely too phantastickal for me to believe.”

“Believe. The Dutch are already making plans for this. Remember, they made half of their land with the labor of their hands! What they did once in Europe, they can do again in Asia. If the last ditch is stormed, and the United Provinces fall under the heel of King Louis, I intend to be there, and I will board ship and go to Asia and help build a new Commonwealth-like the New Atlantis that Francis Bacon described.”

“For you, sir, such an adventure might be possible. For me, it can never be anything more than a romance,” Daniel said. “Until now, I’ve always done what I had to, and this went along very well with the Predestination that was taught me. But now I may have choices to make, and they are choices of a practical nature.”

“Whatever acts, ca

Daniel went out the door of the coffee-house and walked up and down London for the rest of the day. He was a bit like a comet, ranging outwards in vast loops, but continually drawn back toward certain fixed poles: Gresham’s College, Waterhouse Square, Cromwell’s head, and the ruin of St. Paul’s.

Hooke was a greater Natural Philosopher than he, but Hooke was busy rebuilding the city, and half-deranged with imaginary intrigues. Newton was also greater, but he was lost in Alchemy and poring over the Book of Revelation. Daniel had supposed that there might be an opportunity to slip between those two giants and make a name for himself. But now there was a third giant. A giant who, like the others, was distracted by the loss of his patron, and dreams of a free Commonwealth in Asia. But he would not be distracted forever.

It was fu

Daniel had the training to be a minister, and the co

These in thir dark Nativitie the Deep

Shall yield us pregnant with infernal flame,

Which into hallow Engins long and round

Thick-rammed, at th’ other bore with touch of fire

Dilated and infuriate shall send forth

From far with thundring noise among our foes

Such implements of mischief as shall dash

To pieces, and oerwhelm whatever stands

Adverse, that they shall fear we have disarmd

The Thunderer of his only dreaded bolt.

-MILTON,Paradise Lost

SNATCHING A FEW MINUTES’ RESTin his cabin between engagements, Daniel’s mood is grave. It is the solemnity, not of a man who’s involved in a project to kill other men (they’ve been doing that all day, for Christ’s sake!), but of one who’s gambling his own life on certain outcomes. Or having it gambled for him by a Captain who shows signs of-what’s a diplomatic way to put it-having a rich and complicated i

Someone is laughing up there on the poop deck. The gaiety clashes with Daniel’s somber mood and a

Trundling noises from the upperdeck,*and all of a sudden Minerva ’s a different ship: heeling over quite a bit more than she was, but also rolling from side much more ponderously. Daniel infers that a momentous shifting of weights has occurred. Getting up, and going back out on the quarterdeck, he sees it’s true: there are several short bulbous carro

“Calculating our odds, Dr. Waterhouse?” Dappa inquires, descending a steep stair from the poop deck.

“What means Zog, Dappa, and why’s it fu

Dappa gets an alert look about him as if it isn’t fu

“Yes-I was going to inquire- whyhaven’t we raised it? It is the largest sail on the ship, and we are trying to go fast, are we not?”

“The mainsail is traditionally raised and worked by the gu

“But wouldn’t it be worthwhile to tip our hand, if we could outrun that schooner?”

“We’ll outrun her anyway.”

“But she wants us to draw abeam of her, does she not-that is the entire point of being a pirate-so perhaps she has thrown out drogues, and that is why she wallows along so pitiably.”

“She doesn’t need to throw out drogues because of her appalling Zog. ”

“There it is again-what, I ask, is the meaning of that word?”

“Her wake, look at her wake!” Dappa says, waving his arm angrily.

“Yes-now that we are so, er, unsettlingly close, I can see that her wake’s enough to capsize a whaleboat.”

“Those damned pirates have loaded so many ca

“Is this meant to reassure me?”

“It is meant to answer your question.”

“ Zogis Dutch for ‘wake,’ then?”

Dappa the linguist smiles yes. Half his teeth are white, the others made of gold. “And a much better word it is, because it comes from zuigen which means ‘to suck.’”

“I don’t follow.”

“Any seaman will tell you that a ship’s wake sucks on her stern, holding her back-the bigger the wake, the greater the suck, and the slower the progress. That schooner, Doctor Waterhouse, sucks.”

Angry words from van Hoek above-Dappa scurries down to the upperdeck to finish whatever errand Daniel interrupted. Daniel follows him, then goes aft, skirts the capstan, and descends a narrow staircase to the aftmost part of the gundeck. Thence he enters the room at the stern where he’s been in the habit of taking his temperature measurements. He commences a perilous traversal of the room, headed towards that bank of undershot windows. To a landlubber the room would look pleasingly spacious, to Daniel it appears desperately short of handholds-meaning that as the ship rolls, Daniel stumbles for a greater distance, and builds up more speed, before colliding with anything big enough to stop him. In any case, he gets to the windows and looks down into Minerva ’s Zog. She has one, to be sure, but compared to that schooner to windward, Minerva hardly sucks at all. The Bernoullis would have a field day with this-