"At the request of Maskelyne, I am coming North a Mountain of suitable Gravity to seek, whose presum'd Influence might deflect a Plumb-line clearly enough to be measur'd without Ambiguity.—  Tho' given the A.R.'s difficult History with Plumb-lines, I feel Apprehension for the Project.
"Having determin'd after deep study in Mr. C. Dicey's County Atlas that it is impossible to travel from here to Scotland without passing your doorstep, I should be oblig'd for any recommendation of a good Inn for the night, whence I shall beg leave to make You Thee a brief visit.
"I pray that thou suffer no further from the Gout. I am well enough,— in Body. Our Afflictions are many, proceeding from an unilluminated Region deep and distant, which we are us'd to call by Names more rev?erent. 'Twill be four years, Brother Lens. I hope it is not too long,— nor yet too soon."
To which,— "The Queen's Head is Bishop's best,— yet, my own house being around but a couple of corners, I would have to insist that thou improve the emptiness of one of its chambers. Besides, at The Queen's Head, despite the excellence of its Larder and Kitchen, strict insistence is kept upon appearing on time at the Table, which might prove inconvenient to thee.
"We'll find the Carp shy of human company, the Dace fat and slow, but none so much as
Thy svt, J.”
Mason finds Dixon still gloomy about the death of his Mother back in January. Tho' they had finally found the time to be together, sometimes 'twas too much, and they fell to bickering. "Tha should have gone when tha had the chance...? Jere, tha never were one for Pit work, nor it for thee, and Father, tha know, never was expecting it of thee."
"Bonny time to be tellin' me thah'...?"
"You were the Baby, the Baby can do no wrong, don't you know thah'?"
"So Dad came to an agreement," Jeremiah press'd, "with Mr. Bird."
"Dear knaahs, Jeremiah."
"How could he repay Mr. Bird," Dixon asks of Mason, years later. "Thah's what I can't see."
Of course it matters to him. Mason has his own mysteries in this regard,— what could the Miller of Wherr have done for the Director-to-be of the Honorable E.I.C.? Bread? "Coal?" he speculates.
"A few pence off upon the Chaldron,— 'twould add up. Yet in that Quantity,— "
"Suggests a need for high heat, sustain'd over time. Glass? Iron?"
Mason is content for the moment simply to sit, inside The Jolly Pitman and a Carousing of Geordies, feeling settled, quietly plumb, seeing against the neutral gray of the smoke all the sun-flashes from the Day, the clear slacks, the sand bottoms, the nettles and rose bay willow-herb, the sudden streak of light as the most gigantic Carp he'd ever run across in his life, keeled, what in legend will be recalled as but inches from his foot. It was the notoriously long-lived Canny Bob, said to've been chased by the Romans who once encamped up above Binchester. "But as you froze there, seemingly the object of Torpidinous assault," Dixon tells him, after Bob has made his escape, "I hesitated to approach you, for fear of electrocuting myself. At least I was able for once to observe him at some leisure,— he strangely seem'd to like you, Mason. I've never had that good a chance at him, no one I know has been as close as you. The Romans 'round here used to say, 'Carpe carpum,' that is, 'Seize the Carp'." "All right. I waited too long. But think how embarrassed all your friends would have felt, had a Stranger taken him,— and my first time on the river, too. Just as well, really." There is a fragility about Dixon now,
 a softer way of reflecting light, such that Mason must accordingly grow gentle with him. No child has yet summon'd from him such care.
"Tha must attend closely to the Dace up here as well, for they look exactly like Chub, yet are they night and Day when it comes to the fight they'll put up...?"
"Excuse me, one looks at the Fins. 'Tis fairly obvious which is which."
"Not here, I fear. Nor will River Wear Chub have much to do with the Bread-baits you no doubt learn'd to use down in Gloucester."
"What then? Some rare Beetle, I imagine."
"Some rare Beef would better do the Trick... ? They are blood-crazed, and feral."
Despite their best Efforts, talk will ever drift to their separate Tran?
sits. "Maskelyne kept me over there," says Mason. "Nothing but
Weather, Day after Day. Couldn't get enough Obs for him. Would have
taken the projected age of the Universe. Brought me back upon a
meat-ship "
In the Hold were hundreds of Lamb carcasses,— once a sure occa?sion for Resentment prolong'd, now accepted as part of a Day inflicted by Fate, ever darkening,— exil'd to which, he must, in ways unnam'd,— perhaps, this late, unable to include "simply,"— persist. In the heavy weather of late November, the carcasses thump'd against the Bulkheads, keeping exhausted and increasingly irritated Mason from sleep. Deep in the mid-watch, his Mental Bung at last violently ejected by the Gases of Rage, he ran screaming to undog the hatch into the forward cargo space, and was immediately caught, a careless Innocent at some Ball of the Dead, among a sliding, thick meat Battery, the pale corpses only a bit larger than he, cold as the cold of the Sea that lay, he helpfully reminded himself, just the other side of these Timbers curving into candle-less blackness,— oof! as the ship roll'd, some dead Weight, odorous of sheep-fat, went speeding by headed for the Port side, nearly knocking Mason upon his Arse, and obliging him immediately to spin away upon one Foot, whilst the Ship pitch'd heavily, down and up,— fine Business. His intention, a true Phlegmatick's, having been but to locate the offend?ing Carcass,— being unable to allow in his Data more than one,— and secure it, somehow, imagining the Meat-Hold well supplied with any Lines and Hardware he might need.
Fool. Here were the Representatives of ev'ry sheep he had ever spoken ill of,— and now he was at their Mercy. But they are dead, he told him?self. Aye, but not only dead. Here was a category beyond Dead, in its pointless Humiliation, its superfluous Defeat,— stripp'd, the naked faces bruis'd and cut by the repeated battering of the others in this, their final Flock, they slither'd lethally 'round him. He had a clear moment in which he saw them moving of their own Will,— nothing to do with the move?ments of the Ship,— elaborately, the way dancers at Assemblies danc'd.
"Well I certainly wouldn't want to be a Disruption, here!" Mason roar'd at them, waiting, blind as a Corn in a Mill, to be crush'd. The situation held little hope for him,— wherever he stepp'd, he slipp'd, there being no purchase upon the Deck, owing to the untallied Tons of Fat that had long made frictionless ev'ry surface,— Mason instantly recognizing the same proximity to pure Equations of Motion as he had felt observing Stars and Planets in empty Space, with only the beautiful Silence missing now—
"However'd tha get out of thah' one?" Dixon wonders.
"Ahrrhh! the Smell alone might have done for me. Quite snapp'd me back, yes it did, like a Spring, back to that damn'd Cape. I recall being very annoy'd, that my last Earthly Memories should be of that dismal place. Purgatory has to be better, I told myself, maybe even Hell.—  For?tunately, just then, a Party of Sailors, who for some reason were neither on Watch nor asleep, seeming indeed almost furtive in Demeanor, res-cu'd me. I noted too a puzzling air of Jollification, some of it directed at me. 'How is it in there?' one of them ask'd, with what, upon Shore, would certainly've been taken as an insinuating Leer. Not 'How was it,'— which is odd enough, no, what this Sailor distinctly said—
"Why aye, Mason, tha see it, don't tha ...? they were Sailors...? 'Tis probably a standard practice, upon those Meat-Voyages...? Something a foremast Swab, in his Day's unrelenting bleakness, might have to look forward to, when the Midnight Hour creeps 'round...?"
"What.—  Do you mean,— Oh, Dixon, really."
Dixon shrugs. "If a Lad were wide awake, kept his wits about him, why the pitch of Danger...? eeh, eeh! at thah' speed, thah' lack of Fric?tion.. . ? and one's Mates in there as well,— might be just the Thing,—
"And then at the Dock," Mason continues brusquely, " - at Pres?ton,— for the Captain declared that he 'would not risk Liverpool,'— this
 enormous crowd were waiting,— some of them quite fashionable-looking indeed, significant Wigs and so forth, running about, screaming, setting fire to Factors' Sheds, and now and then, to one another. 'Twas the Food Riots,— the same having pitch'd, as I'd thought, to full fury when I sail'd for Ireland, now a year later, far from having abated, reach'd even to Proud Preston. And what of the rest of England? My Father? Had they burn'd down the Mill yet?
"No one was there to meet me. The Sunlight abovedecks was smear'd, the Shadows deeper than Day-time's. The Mob, many of them small and frail from Hunger, yet possess'd by a Titanic Resentment that provided them the Strength, storm'd the Ship, and began removing Lamb car?casses (the Abasement of these not yet complete), and throwing them into the Water,— casting away food they might rather have taken with them, and had to eat. The loud insanity, the pure murderous Thumping. Thou wouldn't've wish'd to go out there at that moment, either. The Cap?tain allow'd me to shelter in his Quarters, till it should be safe to emerge,— proving meantime an engaging conversationalist, particularly upon the Topick of Mutton, as to which he seem'd most well inform'd, and even strangely...affectionate,—
"Of course,— being, as tha'd say, the Sultan of the Arrangement." "Well, it never occurr'd to me. Too late to do anything about it—" "Pity...? Tha might've had a bit of Fun in there, at least...?" "Aahhrr— With its Corollary, that whatever I do imagine as Fun, invariably produces Misery...."
"Not only for thee," adds Dixon, pretending to scrutinize the Fire, "but for ev'ry Unfortunate within thy Ambit, as well."
"Gave thee a rough time, didn't I, Friend." Reaching to rest his hand for a moment upon Dixon's Shoulder, before removing it again.
"Oh," Dixon nodding away at an Angle from any direct view of his Partner's Face, "as rough times go,...the French were worse...? Then five Years of Mosquitoes, of course—" The old Astronomers sit for a while in what might be an Embrace, but that they forbear to touch.
"Quite a Lark, you must have had I returned from the North Cape in
some Con-fusion,— wishing but to put distance between my back and
 Hammerfost, a-Southing I went, in a true Panick, all the way to London. Hoping the while, that I had only slamm'd my Nob once too often upon the roof-beams of that Dwarf's Hovel the Navy styl'd an Observatory.... Would have welcomed the chance to see thee, to talk, but Maskelyne was being a Nuisance as ever, and thou were yet in Ulster....
"Bayley went to the North Cape. I was put off about seventy miles down the coast, at Hammerfost, on Hammerfost Island. The Ground was frozen so hard it took a week to dig a hole for a Post to fix the Clock to. Then it snow'd for a week, sometimes with violent Winds, and Hail. The days just before the Transit were hazy, and now and then very hazy indeed. On the morning of the Transit, the fir............