ATDTDA (5): Storytelling, 126-129 #1

[Paul Nightingale]

At the outset we're told the ship "was named for the Napoleonic army
engineer and physicist who ..." etc. This passage begins, then, by
continuing the theme of representation: the ship stands in for, takes the
place of, acts as a reminder of the once 'real' Etienne-Louis Malus. This
individual is, therefore, another kind of figurehead. We have just read that
choosing the Inconvenience's actual figurehead provoked, or inspired,
conflict among the Chums. On an earlier occasion there was talk of the
possibility of mutiny, and Randolph did generalise in speaking of "any
ship's armoury" (54). He did speak, perhaps, of airships but the point
remains valid. If the naming of the Malus is symbolic, it (or "she") has
been constructed with a view to "cut[ting] through ice", so its very
existence is predicated on the likelihood of a journey involving some threat
to livelihood.

The crew is introduced anonymously through their use of song and rumour:
each is repetitive. The song highlights an awareness of danger ("no sure
returning"); rumour brings its own threatening scenarios, the incapable
Captain, the ice-pirates. The return of the repressed. The crew "[pass]
around rumours", which are endlessly inventive: once spoken, brought into a
kind of being, the threat invoked can be neutralised. Subsequently, we are
reminded of "[t]ales [that have] survived here from the first millennium"
(127). This is an oral culture, in which repetition ("reported on over the
years by lost fisherfolk ..." etc) is (re)creation: if nothing else, one
might think of the importance of storytelling to Merle and Dally.

And with "tales of Harald the Ruthless ... sailing north ..." etc one might
recall the exchange early on between Chick and Randolph: "Going up is like
going north," etc (9). On that occasion Chick struggled to make sense of the
way we represent time and space; here, myth-as-popular culture is an
important means to deal with the unknowable, what lies ahead recast as what
lies behind us. So: repetition as (re)creation, until "this current
expedition" finds unavoidable "the chance, in this day and age, of sailing
off the surface of the world" (128). That "in this day and age" is
instructive: we should be beyond such fears by now, they belong to a less
sophisticated age.