Atdtda[4]: 107.1- 108.39 Summary

[Michel]

We find the Chums of Chance flying over the Indian Ocean (107.19-20), 
following instructions that came a week earlier.  These instructions 
were not very clear; further ones would follow, "from a station unnamed, 
at a distance indetermined" (107.10-11), one of several objects or 
instances without a name in this chapter, which seems to raise doubts 
for its existence.  The instructions come over a "Tesla device" 
(according to the pynchonwiki a radio).  They follow the westerlies -- 
so they come out of the east - or East.  Even the "unimaginative 
Lindsay" (107.15) gets a little bit nervous when the device starts 
talking, "hoarse wispering." (107.17)  Direction is more or less the 
Amsterdam and St Paul islands.

They fly not too high, and the Ch o Ch notice small, volcanic, 
uninhabited isles that bear no more a name, as they did once, causing 
its disappearance from the maps; the Invisible with capital I is there 
again (107.3).  "[M]ystery" (107.11) is enlarged by the presence of 
ships  war-like armaments --what is carried out down there?-- available 
only to the European powers.  There seems to be no real visible reason 
or their presence.

And then, the island of St. Masque: it seems to be unhabited but that is 
not true: after a while bare-footed inhabitants of a small town, which 
is simply Home for its population, appear: "What is home where you came 
from?" (108.23).  Chuck gets to speak to a survivor of the H.M.S 
Megaera, stranded with 400 at Amsterdam 30 years earlier.  "Curious" 
(108.39)

Curious -- that is this chapter indeed, not only section 10.1.

Michel.




	

	
		
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