MAD3PAD 37-39

[Toby G Levy]

        Captain Smith barks orders to the crew. He orders Bongo to
"smell wind!"  Do all the sailors names begin with the letter B
(Bodine, Blinky, Bongo)?

vw#13: holystoning - scouring the decks using soft while sandstone.

        Bongo is a Lascar, or East Indian sailor.

        Bongo climbs up into the sails and calls back "Frenchies!"
Captain Smith advises the non-combatants Mason, Dixon and Wicks to make
themselves useful below the deck.

        For an hour and half the Seahorse exchanges gunfire.=with
l'Grand.

vw#14: scupper -  An opening in the side of a ship at deck level to
allow water to run off.

        Wicks, in watching the kids enjoying his description of the
carnage, thinks that one of the functions of youth is to allow adults to
entertain fantasies of immortality.

        Wicks and the astronomers attend to the wounded below deck.
After the cannons stop booking they remove a large splinter from the leg
of Captain Smith, who reports that thirty of his crew have been killed.

        Dixon, his thoughts on his mortality, casts aside his Quaker
sensibilities, to join forces with Mason in the medical work, thinking of
"Fox's advice" which refers to  Charles James Fox, a famous British
symbol of religious tolerance.

vw#15: loblolly boy - a surgeon's attendant on shipboard

vw#16: lazarette - A storage space between the decks of a ship

        Wicks muses on why the French commander lets the Seahorse sail
away.  He imagines the French commander telling Captain Smith that he
will let the ship go on to accomplish the mission of delivering the
astronomers to their destination.  He also imagines the French commander
telling Captain Smith that the Seahorse is too small a catch and that he
is throwing it back in the sea, to let it grow so that he might catch it
again later.

Toby