MAD3PAD 46-48

[Toby G Levy]

        Mason and Dixon resolve to go on with their mission thinking
that lightning will not strike twice, but they worry that the lightning
might have struck for one and will soon strike for the other.

        Chapter 6, beginning on page 47, contains the complete trip on
the Seahorse to South Africa. This time they leave port accompanied by a
bigger ship for protection.

        Mason and Dixon had requested that the Royal Society send them
somewhere else other than Sumatra. Mason and Dixon suggested Skanderoon,
but they were rejected and told to go to Bencoolen on the island of
Sumatra.

        Returning to the scene in which Wicks is relating his tale, we
see Uncle Lomax drop in from his day at a soap making factory. His soap
is of very poor quality.

vw#17: loxodrome - a line on the surface of the earth that makes equal
oblique angles with all meridians and that is a spiral coiling round the
poles but never reaching them

        Pynchon uses the term "steers a loxodrome" to equate to "make a
beeline for."

        Wicks resumes his tale to say that he bunked with Lt Unchleigh,
who complained about everything unmilitary. He did not want Wicks
reading the bible because "Print causes Civil Unrest..." The Lieutenant
also does not like coffee.

        Wicks sings a song lamenting the confinements of shipboard life.

Toby