MDMD2: Where's the delete button?

[Paul Nightingale]

Our introduction to Mason and Dixon is to a double-act; their relationship
is based on timing. Given that Ch3 is "how they remember'd meeting" - as
told to the absent Cherrycoke, then relayed to the reader, also absent if
reader-in-the-text - we might anticipate the traces of a struggle to offer
an authoritative account. Hence the moments of conflict or, in terms of the
double-act and its routine, the bad timing. Ch3 then ends, as it began, with
another double-act: between the narrative and its telling. Again
Cherrycoke-as-narrator tells the reader: "Something about crazy Frigate
Captains sailing out of Brest, is all either of them can remember by now".
What are we to make of this, given that the absent narrator's only sources
deny any recollection of what the events that have taken place?

Ch4 then unites Mason and Dixon against Captain Smith. The scene opens in
mid-conversation. Dixon is only identified here by Mason's response. His
question ("He wants whah?") immediately puts the reader at a disadvantage;
as yet, we don't even know what has baffled him. The following line ("Mason
nodding with a sour Smile") confirms our exclusion. Characters are
introduced, or introduce themselves, as they speak. The (explanatory)
third-person narration has to assert itself with "the Captain's own
Expectation". Cherrycoke has, as yet, made no appearance as a character in
the story he relates; his role as narrator is far from secure. His
appearance ("the helpful young Revd Wicks Cherrycoke") then takes the form
of interpretation.