face, that if they were aware he might have overheard them, they didn’t really care.
FOR THE NEXT TWO WEEKS, each day on the Innisfree was an uneventful replica of the day before, except for an occasional visit by wandering dolphins or sharks. The latter made Thomas conscious of how flimsy the schooner’s hull was.
Captain Bonney, who’d renamed the schooner after his home in Ireland, seemed to spend much of each day inspecting rigging or helping the crew with caulking seams—an endless task, it appeared. He made his private library—mainly books abandoned by previous travellers—available to the passengers, though only Thomas seemed to take advantage of it. The Reverend read only his Bible, with Mrs. Berkley sitting beside him, vicariously sharing the experience. Schneider and Cameron played chess and dominoes, and, if they read anything, it was their Foreign Office manuals.
Thomas had acquainted himself with the library the first day he felt well enough. It consisted of one side of Bonney’s cabin, made up entirely of shelves full of books half rotten with damp. The books were in no particular order. Some were technical seafaring books, probably Bonney’s own. Many of the others were cheap mysteries and romances. At the end of the top shelf, four of the most mildewed volumes looked as though they’d never been opened. They were called: Inspecting the Faults; The Paladine Hotel; The Wysterium; First Blast of the Cornet . Thomas glanced through a few pages and saw why they were unread—they were appalling rubbish.
Fortunately, he came across a trio of books that were good as well as in readable condition—old friends he could now revisit at leisure: Burton’s Anatomy of Melancholy; Browne’s Religio Medici; and Hobbes’s Leviathan . He was glad that someone, in some past voyage, had had such excellent taste.
That visit to the library made the prospect of the entire journey bearable for Thomas. And indeed, during those endless days as he sat on deck reading, he’d often quite forget he was on a frail sailing ship in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. From time to time, he’d realize afresh just why he loved reading so much: it seemed to make the material world, even his own physical self, superfluous. Yes, it was indeed like thought, thinking itself.
ON ONE MEMORABLE DAY, a week out, he sat alone in the prow of the schooner, reading. He’d enjoyed his lunch, in spite of the company, and was feeling drowsy, what with the warm wind and the swi-i-i-sssh of the bow wave as the ship cut through the sea of deepest blue. The book he was reading was Leviathan . He had come to the passage containing Hobbes’s famous admonition about “the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short,” and was marvelling that such an unpleasant idea could be expressed so delightfully and memorably.
Just then, off the starboard bow, he heard a thunderous splash and saw an amazing sight. Not more than a hundred yards from the Innisfree, the Leviathan itself—a great black sperm whale—was leaping into the air and plunging back into the deep with a flourish. It jumped three times in all, making the air even saltier. After the third jump, the whale didn’t reappear and the surface of the sea was unruffled except for the occasional whitecap. Thomas stared for the longest time. Nothing. He wondered if anyone else on the schooner had shared his experience, for there was no one else on deck except the steersman behind the bulging mainsail, and he seemed to have noticed nothing odd. The whale had come and gone, as though its appearance had been for Thomas’s illumination alone.
FROM THE MOMENT THEY’D LEFT Honolulu, Captain Bonney had warned that the Innisfree would almost certainly run into at least one major storm on the voyage and that was why it was necessary to keep everything shipshape—hence the constant caulking and rigging inspections. Thomas was apprehensive, for it seemed to him that the one tiny lifeboat
FOR THE NEXT TWO WEEKS, each day on the Innisfree was an uneventful replica of the day before, except for an occasional visit by wandering dolphins or sharks. The latter made Thomas conscious of how flimsy the schooner’s hull was.
Captain Bonney, who’d renamed the schooner after his home in Ireland, seemed to spend much of each day inspecting rigging or helping the crew with caulking seams—an endless task, it appeared. He made his private library—mainly books abandoned by previous travellers—available to the passengers, though only Thomas seemed to take advantage of it. The Reverend read only his Bible, with Mrs. Berkley sitting beside him, vicariously sharing the experience. Schneider and Cameron played chess and dominoes, and, if they read anything, it was their Foreign Office manuals.
Thomas had acquainted himself with the library the first day he felt well enough. It consisted of one side of Bonney’s cabin, made up entirely of shelves full of books half rotten with damp. The books were in no particular order. Some were technical seafaring books, probably Bonney’s own. Many of the others were cheap mysteries and romances. At the end of the top shelf, four of the most mildewed volumes looked as though they’d never been opened. They were called: Inspecting the Faults; The Paladine Hotel; The Wysterium; First Blast of the Cornet . Thomas glanced through a few pages and saw why they were unread—they were appalling rubbish.
Fortunately, he came across a trio of books that were good as well as in readable condition—old friends he could now revisit at leisure: Burton’s Anatomy of Melancholy; Browne’s Religio Medici; and Hobbes’s Leviathan . He was glad that someone, in some past voyage, had had such excellent taste.
That visit to the library made the prospect of the entire journey bearable for Thomas. And indeed, during those endless days as he sat on deck reading, he’d often quite forget he was on a frail sailing ship in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. From time to time, he’d realize afresh just why he loved reading so much: it seemed to make the material world, even his own physical self, superfluous. Yes, it was indeed like thought, thinking itself.
ON ONE MEMORABLE DAY, a week out, he sat alone in the prow of the schooner, reading. He’d enjoyed his lunch, in spite of the company, and was feeling drowsy, what with the warm wind and the swi-i-i-sssh of the bow wave as the ship cut through the sea of deepest blue. The book he was reading was Leviathan . He had come to the passage containing Hobbes’s famous admonition about “the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short,” and was marvelling that such an unpleasant idea could be expressed so delightfully and memorably.
Just then, off the starboard bow, he heard a thunderous splash and saw an amazing sight. Not more than a hundred yards from the Innisfree, the Leviathan itself—a great black sperm whale—was leaping into the air and plunging back into the deep with a flourish. It jumped three times in all, making the air even saltier. After the third jump, the whale didn’t reappear and the surface of the sea was unruffled except for the occasional whitecap. Thomas stared for the longest time. Nothing. He wondered if anyone else on the schooner had shared his experience, for there was no one else on deck except the steersman behind the bulging mainsail, and he seemed to have noticed nothing odd. The whale had come and gone, as though its appearance had been for Thomas’s illumination alone.
FROM THE MOMENT THEY’D LEFT Honolulu, Captain Bonney had warned that the Innisfree would almost certainly run into at least one major storm on the voyage and that was why it was necessary to keep everything shipshape—hence the constant caulking and rigging inspections. Thomas was apprehensive, for it seemed to him that the one tiny lifeboat
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