Mason & Dixon by Thomas Pynchon Read Free Book Online Page B

What was afoot here? Had the Frenchman really signal'd, "France is not at war with the~~sciences"? Words so magnanimous, and yet..."Went poohpooh, he did. Sort of flicking his gloves about. Tm westing my time,' he says, 'You are leetluh meennow,— I throw you back. Perhaps someday we meet when you are biggair Feesh, like me. Meanwhile, I sail away. Poohpooh! Adieu!''
    "Nevertheless," Capt. Smith had replied, "I must give chase." One of those French shrugs. "You must, and of course, may." But she is too wounded. They watch the perfect ellipse of the l'Grand's stern dwindle into the dark. At last, well before the midwatch, Captain Smith calls off the Chase, and they come about again, the wind remaining as it has been, and with what sail they have, they return to the Plymouth Dockyard.
      Some at the time said there had been another sail, and that the Frenchman, assuming it to be a British Man o' War, had in fact broken off, and headed back in to Brest as speedily as her condition would allow. Some on the Seahorse thought they'd seen it,— most had not. ("Perhaps our guardian Angel," the Revd comments, "— instead of Wings, Topgallants.")
    A Year before, Morale aboard the l'Grand, never that high to begin with, had seem'd to suffer an all but mortal blow with news of the disaster to the Brest fleet at Quiberon Bay. In calculating her odds vis-a-vis the Seahorse, the Invisible Gamesters who wager daily upon the doings of Commerce and Government must have discounted her advantage in guns and broadside weight, noting that a crew so melancholick is not the surest guarantee of prevailing in a Naval Dispute. Yet, considered as a sentient being, the French Ship continued to display the attitude of an undersiz'd but bellicose Sailor in a Wine-shop, always upon the qui vive for a scrap, never quite reaching the level of Glory it desir'd, always téton dernier of the Squadron, ever chosen for the least hopeful Missions, from embargo patrols off steaming red-dawn coasts below the Equator to rescue attempts beneath the Shadows of the mountainous Waves of winter storms in the Atlantic,— forever unthank'd, disrespected, laboring on, beating now alone at night back into Brest for new spars and rigging and lives.
    "Ooh, La,
    Fran...
    -Ce-euh! [with a certain debonair little Mordant upon "euh"], Ne
    Fait-pas-la-Guerre, Con-truh les Sci--en-
    ceuhs!"
    - sung incessantly till the Ship made Port, and then by the Working-Parties at the Quai, with the sour cadences of Sailors in a Distress not altogether bodily,— humiliated, knowing better, yet unable to keep from humming the catchy fragment, its text instantly having join'd the Company of great Humorous Naval Quotations, which would one day also include, "I have not yet begun to fight," and, "There's something wrong with our damn'd ships today, Chatfield."
    Long after Nightfall, Mason and Dixon, officially reliev'd of their Medical Duties, reluctant to part company, go lurching up on Deck, exhausted, laughing at nothing,— or at ev'rything, being alive when they could as easily be dead. Despite the salt rush of Wind, they can no more here, than Below, escape caught in the Drape of the damag'd Sails, the Reek of the Battle past,— the insides of Trees, and of Men— They have to prop each other up till one of them finds something to lean against. "Well, what's this, then?" inquires Mason.
    "More like a Transit of Mars...?"
    "With us going 'cross its Face."
    "Were I less of a cheery Lad, why, I'd almost think..."
    "It has occurr'd to me."
    "They knew the French had Bencoolen,— what else did they know? Thah's what I'd like to know."
    "Are you appropriating that Bottle for reasons I may not wish to hear, or,— ah. Thankee." They pass the Bottle back and forth, and when it is empty, they throw it in the Sea, and open another.
     
     
    5
    If ever they meant to break up the Partnership, this would've been the time. " 'Twas all so out of the ordinary," Mason declares, "that it must have been