The System of the World

Poop Deck of Minerva, the Pool of London
MIDDAY, TUESDAY, 26 OCTOBER 1714

DANIEL HAD FEARED going back to Crane Court yesterday evening for the reason that Isaac would probably find him there and belabor him, and lambaste him, and browbeat him, and altogether make him feel bad. So he had fetched on the notion of requesting permission to come aboard Minerva, which was more convenient to the Three Cranes, and more hospitable. For weeks the management of that fair ship had been urging him to pay them a call, and for weeks he had been finding excuses not to. They were delighted when Daniel’s water-taxi hove up alongside shortly before midnight, and gave him too much to drink and then bedded him down in his old cabin.

When he woke up, he knew in his bones that he had slept for a very, very long time-probably owing to his inexpressible relief at having rid himself of the Solomonic Gold.

But he also knew that he could have slept much longer if not for all of the crashing and cursing.

He pulled on-with some reluctance-the crusty duds he had worn the day before. It felt like they were wearing him now. A strange man flung his cabin-door open without thinking to knock. Daniel was just in the act of buckling his shoe. He and the intruder studied each other, mutually shocked. The other was young, well-dressed, and properly brought up-mortified, therefore, that he had disturbed an old man at his levee. Why, then, was he here? The answer was suggested by the silver-greyhound badge.

“Sir! I do beg your pardon. But, er…”

“By the King’s command, you must search this cabin?” Daniel guessed.

“Yes, sir. That’s right.”

“For…what, if I may ask? Sleepy old men? Here’s one.”

“No, sir, beg pardon…”

“If you will only tell me what you have been ordered to search for, then perhaps I can assist you.”

“It’s gold, sir. Contraband gold.”

“Ah,” Daniel said, “I’m afraid the only gold in this chamber is this ring on my finger.” Daniel slipped it off and held it up. “Will you be confiscating it, then?”

Now the King’s Messenger was downright embarrassed. “Oh, no, sir, of course not, that is not the sort of thing we are looking for at all. And I really am terribly sorry to be disturbing you. But if you could only…well…”

“Get out of the way, so that you could give this cabin a thorough search? My good man, I was just on my way out!” Daniel said, and after slipping the ring back on to his finger he raised his eyebrows at the Messenger, pushed himself to his feet, and got out.

He found Dappa above, on the poop deck, sighting through a prospective-glass toward the Tower of London. Last night Daniel had reached Minerva without getting a clear notion of where she was situated in the Pool. Now that the sun was up, he was struck by how near she was to the Tower: practically within shouting-distance.

He knew better than to startle Dappa by speaking: this was bad etiquette, when the other chap’s attention was fixed on something far away. And he did not bother inquiring after van Hoek. The Captain’s whereabouts were obvious, for he never let off cursing in Dutch, Sabir, and all other tongues at his command, as he followed the King’s Messengers about his ship.

“It could have been worse,” Dappa said, after an especially bracing out-burst of van Hoekian execration burgeoned from an open hatch. “We are light-laden just now, and there is little difficulty in making a thorough search. A fortnight from now we’d have been laden to the scuppers and it would have been awkward.” He withdrew the glass from his eye and squinted at Daniel. “They are scratching our guns.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Someone important has fallen under the spell of a phant’sy that this magic gold might have been cast into the form of a gun, and painted black, as a way of smuggling it out, and so they have scratched each and every one of our guns with an awl, to be sure they are made of brass.”

“Incredible.”

“There are those among our crew who look on you, now, as bad luck.”

“Ah. I see. Because the first time I came aboard, it led to being assaulted by Blackbeard. And now this.”

“Yes, Doc.”

“Since they are so superstitious,” Daniel said, “perhaps they have heard the saying, ‘Third time’s a charm.’ ”

“What do you have in mind?” Dappa asked, and then could not help smiling.

“I gather from what you said that a voyage is in the offing?”

“We’ll take on some cargo here. Then to Plymouth.”

“Really!”

“When we set you ashore there, ten months ago, we chanced to embark on a little venture that is still playing out. At any rate, we must needs put in there. Then south to Oporto. Then a crossing of the Atlantic Ocean is contemplated, in balmier latitudes than these.”

“And then back to London in the spring-time?”

“We have had quite enough of London, thank you! No,” Dappa said, and laughed. “We go the other way round. Enoch Root has been pestering us to take him to the Islands of Solomon…”

“But those are halfway around the world from Boston!”

“We know where they are,” said Dappa. “They are on our way, though.”

“On your way to where?!”

“Queena-Kootah, where we’d visit old friends, or their grave-sites as the case might be, and then Malabar, where we have an Investrix who, it is safe to say, is now waxing a bit obstreperous. She’ll not accept her Dividend in the form of a Bill of Exchange. We must sail there and stack bullion on the shore.”

“Awkward.”

“When we make profits in London, yes, I should say it is awkward. We’ll go there and stack gold on her beach and I shall make love to her and in time she’ll forgive us.”

“Then?”

“I’ve no idea.”

“Your Solomon Islands passenger has been working as my proxy in Boston,” Daniel said, “winding up the Massachusetts Bay Colony Institute of Technologickal Arts, liquidating the assets, assuaging the creditors, and paying the bar tabs. Before he absconds to the Antipodes I really ought to sit down with him and settle accounts.”

“Then you’ll need to go there, and do it soon, for I can assure you he is not coming this way.”

“You said you were going first to Plymouth-?”

“That I did.”

“I, too, have business in the west country,” said Daniel. “Perhaps I could make rendezvous with you there, and obtain passage back home?”

“Perhaps,” Dappa said. Then, startled by his own rudeness, he made haste to add, “Oh, ’tis all good where I am concerned. But after this van Hoek’ll have questions. He’ll want to know just where is this troublous gold. I shall give you a Hint: a satisfactory answer would be far, far away.”

“I’ve an even better answer,” said Daniel, “which is: I don’t know.” He held up his hands as if to indicate all thousand ships in the Pool, and it turned into a shrug.

“It is in transit,” Dappa understood. “You have shipped it.”

“It has been solved,” Daniel said, “con-fused in the currency of the Thames, and it will make its way to Hanover, mysteriously but reliably, even as Pieces of Eight converge, as if they had minds of their own, on Shahjahanabad.”

The more poetic Daniel waxed, the more Dappa’s interest waned, and by the end of this sentence he had plugged the glass back into his eye-socket and trained it again on the Tower.

“What is it you are looking at up there?” Daniel asked. The wind was strong, and cold, and out of the north, and Daniel had no wig or hat. As he had ascended to the poop deck a minute ago, he had looked once toward the Tower, to get his bearings, but since then he had stood with his back to it and the collar of his coat turned up to shield his neck and the base of his skull. Dappa faced resolutely into the breeze, fighting it off with a fixed grimace. He said, “It is easier for you to turn around and see for yourself than for me to explain all.”

“But you have a prospective-glass, and I don’t.”

“It is hardly needed at this range!”

“Why are you you using it, then?”

“Trying to resolve certain details. I am watching a group of men on the top of Lanthorn Tower,” Dappa said, “who are obviously enough responsible for this outrage.”

“Meaning, the ransack of your ship?”

“Yes. These Messengers, you may’ve noticed, keep looking to them for instructions. They have been communicating with semaphores. I think that one of them is Sir Isaac Newton.”

This was altogether predictable, and yet it was enough to make Daniel turn around and brave the wind. In a few moments he had picked out the group that Dappa had described. “Where is he?” Daniel asked.

“In the middle, peering right back at us with a spyglass.”

“Oh, bloody hell, he’ll probably recognize me!” Daniel burst out. He ought to have whirled right back around. But like a field-mouse caught in a raptor’s gaze, he found himself curiously unable to move.

“It’s all right, he is lowering the glass-no, I’m wrong, he dropped the bloody thing!”

“Isaac dropped it!?” Daniel could not conceive of Isaac Newton dropping a telescope.

“He’s a-gawp. Looking our way. Can’t make out his face really…his posture calls to mind such undignified words as gobsmacked, stamagast. Stricken. Oh! Oh! Oh, my god!”

“What! What is it?” Daniel demanded, and mastered the urge to snatch the glass. For all he could see with his naked eye was that the crowd on the top of the tower was puckering inwards toward the center, where Isaac stood-or had stood a moment earlier.

“He’s gone down! Straight down. Lucky that bloke on his right caught him.”

“Caught him!?”

“He just toppled over,” said Dappa, “dropped the glass and like to have landed right on top of it. Look, someone is running for help…they are calling to the soldiers down below them, waving their hats…Jesus Christ, they’re all in a bloody panic!” Dappa finally took the glass from his eye, and looked at Daniel. His brow furrowed above the bridge of his nose, as finally he made sense of what he had just seen. Then it hit Daniel, too, and he had to reach out one hand and steady himself on a railing.

“He’s not dead, or they would not be in such a hurry,” Dappa reasoned. “Sir Isaac Newton has had a stroke. That’s what I’d say.”

“Perhaps he only fainted. He has been ailing of late.”

“A stroke fits better with what I saw. It hit him on his right side-that’s why he dropped the glass, that’s why his right leg gave way. Whether it was a swoon, or a stroke, I do believe it was occasioned-” But here he bit his tongue, and winced.

“By his recognizing my face, when I turned around,” Daniel said, “thereby proving all his darkest and strangest fears. Which fears have been tormenting him ever since I returned to London and got entangled in the weird saga of the Solomonic Gold. Shit! I killed my friend.”

“He is neither dead, nor your friend,” Dappa corrected him.

“If you would be so good as to summon me a water-taxi,” said Daniel, “I must make haste to his niece’s house-which is probably where they’ll take him-and defend him from the physicians.”