To the right of the pipes an amorino tapped out (striking a wand upon a wooden book held in his other hand) the ternary rhythm on which the melody “Daphne” was based.
On a slightly lower level lay the console of the organ, its keys rising and falling according to the notes emitted by the pipes, as if an invisible hand were running over them. Below the keys, where as a rule the organist works the bellows with his feet, a cylinder had been set, in which teeth were fitted, large spikes, in an order unpredictably regular or regularly unpredictable, which suggested the way notes are arranged in rising and descending patterns, unforeseen breaks, vast white spaces and a density of crotchets, on the lines of a sheet of music.
Below the cylinder was a fixed horizontal bar supporting some little levers which, as the cylinder turned, successively touched the teeth and, through a play of half-hidden rods, operated the keys—as they operated the pipes.
But the most stupefying phenomenon was the reason why the cylinder rotated and the pipes received breath. To the side of the organ a glass syphon was fixed, whose form recalled the cocoon of a silkworm, inside which two perforated plates could be discerned, one above the other, dividing it into three separate chambers. The syphon received an influx of water from a pipe entering its lowest chamber from an open gun-port that also admitted light to this room, pouring in the liquid that through the action of some hidden pump was obviously sucked directly from the sea, but in such a way that, entering the cocoon, it was mixed with air.
The water entered the lowest part of the cocoon with force, as if it were boiling; spun in a vortex against the walls, it no doubt released the air, which was inhaled through the two plates. Thanks to a tube linking the upper part of the cocoon with the base of the organ pipes, the air was transformed into song through artful movements. The water, which meanwhile had gathered in the lower part, ran off through another tube and, moving the wheel of a little mill, then poured into a metal shell below, whence it was emptied, by another pipe, through the gun-port.
The wheel turned a bar that, connected to the cylinder, transmitted its own movement.
To the drunken Roberto all this seemed natural, so natural that he felt betrayed when the cylinder began to slow down, and the pipes whistled their tune as if it was dying in their throat, while the Cyclopes and the amorino relaxed their blows. Obviously—though in his day there was much talk of perpetual motion—the hidden pump that controlled the intake and flow of the water could operate only for a certain amount of time after being set in motion, and then its impetus came to an end.
Roberto did not know whether to be amazed more by this feat of technasma—and he had heard talk of other similar feats, the making of little skeletons or winged cherubs dance—or more by the fact that the Intruder (since it could be none but he) had made the organ play on that morning and at that hour.
And to send what message? That Roberto was defeated from the beginning? That the Daphne could still conceal such and so many surprises, that he could spend his life trying to violate her, in vain?
A philosopher once told him that God knows the world better than we do because He made it. And that to approach divine knowledge, even slightly, it was necessary to conceive the world as a great building and try to construct it. This is what he had to do. To know the Daphne, he had to construct her.
He sat down at his table then and traced the outline of the ship, relying both on the remembered structure of the Amaryllis and on what he had seen so far of the Daphne. So, then, he said to himself, we have the cabins of the quarterdeck and, below, the guard-room. Even further below (but still at the level of the deck), the gun-room and the space where the tiller passes. It has to emerge at the stern, and there can be nothing more than that.
All this is on the same level with the cook-room in the forecastle. After that, the bowsprit rests on another elevation, and there—if I am correctly interpreting Roberto’s awkward paraphrases—is the place where, with buttocks exposed, bodily functions were performed at that time. If you went down below the cook-room, you arrived at the stores. He had explored to the end of the bowsprit, and here, too, there could be nothing else. Below he had found the hawsers and the fossil collection. There was no going beyond that.
So he retraced his steps and crossed the whole lower deck, through the aviary and the greenhouse. Unless the Intruder could transform himself at will into animal or vegetable, he could not hide there. Beneath the tiller were the organ and the clocks. There, too, Roberto had gone all the way to the hull.
Descending still farther, he had found the broadest part of the hold, with additional provisions, ballast, wood; and he had knocked against the side to make sure there was no false wall that would give off a hollow sound. If this was a normal ship, the bilge would not allow other refuges. Unless the Intruder himself clung to the keel, underwater, like a leech, and crawled aboard at night; but of all the explanations—and he was prepared to consider many—this seemed to Roberto the least scientific.
Aft, more or less beneath the organ, there was the soda with the basin, the telescope, and the other instruments. Looking around it, he had not investigated to see if the space ended right at the helm; but from the drawing he was now making, it seemed to him that the paper did not allow him to imagine any other void—if he had drawn the curve of the stern correctly. Below, only the blind passage was left, and after that there was nothing, he was sure.
So, dividing the ship into compartments, he had filled it all and left no space for any other storage. Conclusion: the Intruder did not have a fixed place. He moved as Roberto moved, he was like the far side of the moon, which we know must exist though we never see it.
Who could see the other face of the moon? Only an inhabitant of the fixed stars: he could wait, not moving, and he would catch the concealed face by surprise. As long as Roberto moved with the Intruder or allowed the Intruder to base his movements on Roberto’s, Roberto would never see him.
He had to become a fixed star and force the Intruder to move. And as the Intruder obviously was on deck when Roberto was below, and vice versa, he had to make the Intruder believe him below in order to surprise him on deck.
To mislead the Intruder, Roberto left a light burning in the captain’s quarters, as if he were there, engaged in writing. Then he went and hid at the top of the forecastle, just behind the bell, so that, turning, he could survey the area below the bowsprit, while before him he dominated the deck and the aftercastle all the way to the lantern of the poop. He set his musket beside him—and, I fear, also a keg of aqua vitae.
He spent the night alert to any sound, as if he were still spying on Dr. Byrd, pinching his ears to stay awake, until dawn. In vain.
Then he went back to his berth, where meanwhile the light had gone out. And found his papers in disorder. The Intruder had spent the night there, perhaps reading the letters to the Lady, while Roberto was suffering the chill of the night and the morning’s dew!
The Adversary had now penetrated his memories … Roberto recalled Salazar’s warning: expressing his private passions had opened a breach in his spirit.
He rushed out on deck and fired a bullet at random, splintering a mast, then he shot again, until he realized that he was killing no one. Considering the time it took in those days to reload a musket, the enemy could take a stroll between shots, having a good laugh at that rumpus—which had impressed only the animals, clucking below.
The Intruder was laughing, then. But where was he laughing? Roberto went back to his drawing and told himself that he truly knew nothing about ship-building. The drawing showed only top, bottom, and length, not breadth. Seen in its length (we would now say, in cross-section), the ship revealed no other possible hiding-places, but seen in its breadth, other places could be lurking among those already discovered.
Roberto, pondering, realized only now that on this ship too many things were still missing. For example, he had found no other weapons. Very well: assume that the sailors had taken them away—if they had abandoned the ship of their own volition. But on the Amaryllis the hold had been crammed also with considerable lumber, for repairing masts, the helm, the sides, in the event of damage by the elements, whereas here he had found only enough firewood, recently dried, to supply the cook-stove, but nothing of oak or larch or seasoned fir. Also wanting, along with carpenter’s wood, were carpenter’s tools: saws, axes of various sizes, hammers, nails….
Were there other storerooms? He drew the design over again, and tried to portray the ship not seen from a side but as if observed from the crow’s nest.
