ADMIRAL HORNSWOGGLE’S NAUTICAL ADVENTURES.

No. 5.—The Lost Axe, concluded

(continued from Part 1).

The rest of the voyage toward the Horn was uneventful; a light typhoon off Madagascar did not dampen our spirits, and the few pirates we encountered treated us with the utmost deference, apparently under the impression that we were the Ghost Galleon of the Maldives, a legendary apparition noted for its extraordinarily colorful sails. We reached the port of Cor Anglais in better time than we had expected, and we immediately made contact with a man who, we had been told, was the best guide in the French Horn.

Our only difficulty was in communicating with the gentleman. He did not speak our language, so I tried a few words of French, describing in the simplest possible language the monastery we hoped to find. His face lit up with recognition, and he immediately informed us, with perfect French pronunciation, that his aunt’s pen was on his uncle’s table. This, however, was not the information we had been looking for, and it seemed to be useless to attempt any other form of conversation with him.

Fortunately, however, we were able to secure the services of an interpreter, whose only detriment was that he suffered immoderately from agoraphobia. He had no difficulty in performing the functions for which we had engaged him in the small rooms we had hired in Cor Anglais, but as soon as he came out into the outside world, even in the narrow streets of this ancient port, he was overcome by terror and flung his cloak over his head. For our journey, we had to construct a portable tent; and whenever we had need of his interpretive services, we retreated to the dark interior of the tent, where our interpreter felt secure enough to perform his duties. This made our progress rather slow, as we had to set up the tent whenever we needed to communicate with our guide. The rest of the time, our interpreter kept his cloak over his head, and my junior officers carried him.

I shall not weary you with the details of our progress overland. We settled into a tedious routine of stopping at every fork in the trail, setting up our tent, posing our questions to the interpreter, waiting for him to pose them to the guide and receive his responses, listening to his translation, and then folding the tent and following the directions we had received until the next time we needed guidance.

At last we came within sight of a curious flat-topped mountain, on the top of which we could see a few ancient constructions and one tall spire.

“Voilà!” our guide shouted excitedly, without waiting for our interpreter. “Voilà la Plume de ma tante!” He pointed toward the top of the mountain. “C’est vraiment comme je vous ai dit! La Plume de ma tante est sur la Table de mon oncle!”

Here we made a rather embarrassing discovery. Our guide indeed spoke perfect French; we had simply misunderstood him the first time we spoke to him. The mountain, from its extraordinary flat top and sheer sides, was called “My Uncle’s Table” by the locals, and the monastery at the top of it was known as “My Aunt’s Feather.” (The words for “feather” and “pen” are the same in French—a fact I had not considered back in Cor Anglais.) I must admit that I felt rather silly about all the effort we had put into maintaining our interpreter; but what’s done is done, and the important thing was that we had reached our destination.

That is to say, we had nearly reached our destination; but there still remained the nearly insurmountable problem of climbing the sheer rock face of the mountain. We agreed that it could not be done without a rope. I therefore went up to the top and tied our rope to a stout stump, and then came down, letting out the rope as I came. Once I had returned to the base, we began our laborious ascent, clinging to the rope; and indeed I was grateful that we had thought to bring it, since without our rope the climb would have been clearly impossible.

At the top we were greeted by the abbot, who made us welcome with signs and gestures, and shared with us the simple fare that was the monks’ daily sustenance. We were grateful enough to get it, and once our stomachs were full I made signs that I should like to see the interior of the church. The abbot was glad to show me, and once my eyes adjusted to the dim light in the cavernous nave, I saw, hanging behind the altar, the very reliquary that had been described to me in Admiral Blanderson’s chambers.

This was the thing I had sought; but how to get my hands on it? I was a determined young man, but I was not a monster; nothing could induce me even to show disrespect for the holy monks who were the relic’s keepers, let alone to turn my strength against them in a contest over the relic.

I decided at length to make a simple honest appeal to the abbot’s better nature. By elaborate signs I indicated how much better and more virtuous we were than the Spanish, and that the power of the relic behind the altar might do much good in the world if it were placed in the custody of a nation so strictly moral as our own; and, on the other hand, that it might be the cause of much evil if it fell into the hands of the perfidious Spaniards. Needless to say, the effort of communicating all these ideas by gestures was exceedingly fatiguing. I was disappointed, therefore, to discover that the abbot seemed not to understand anything I had attempted to convey to him. He only understood that I wanted to take the reliquary, and he did not want to give it to me. I had no choice but to call on the services of our interpreter once more.

The interpreter was brought into the church; but having briefly glanced out from under his cloak and seen the vast dim space within the church, he let out an unearthly howl and flung the cloak over his head again.

This howl caught the attention of the abbot. He turned, and, in the dim light, beheld the spectral figure of our interpreter stumbling toward him, his cloak over his head, looking very much like a shapeless spirit from the other world. The abbot gave voice to an unearthly howl of his own, and immediately took down the reliquary and gave it to me, pleading with me by animated gestures to depart as quickly as practicable and take the horrible specter with me.

This was as good an outcome as could be expected under the circumstances, and I gladly accepted his gift of the reliquary.

The journey back to Cor Anglais was a good bit easier than the journey thence had been, as we were now able to communicate with our guide directly; and the long sea voyage was interrupted by few incidents, the only one of any note being our meeting with the real Ghost Galleon of the Maldives, whose spectral crew merely congratulated us on our taste in fabric.

Thus I was in good spirits when I returned home, and it was with a jaunty step that I entered Admiral Blanderson’s chambers to present him with the Axe of the Apostles. He received me warmly and congratulated me on my success; then, very carefully, he set the ancient reliquary on his capacious desk and delicately pulled the pins out of the latches. Slowly he opened the lid of the reliquary to reveal, nestled amongst the costliest jewels and gold filigree, a four-string banjo.

This was not quite what we had anticipated, but we decided to make the best of it. I suggested that we could give the banjo as a goodwill gift to the Spanish ambassador. And so we did; the ambassador was much pleased, and soon taught himself to play “I’ve Been Floating Down the Old Green River” on the instrument in a rather aggressive ragtime style. This ambassador later became his country’s foreign minister; and I flatter myself that the good relations we established with this gift were in no small measure responsible for the cordial understanding that currently obtains between our nation and the Spanish. I consider, therefore, that my mission was on the whole a success.

ADMIRAL HORNSWOGGLE’S NAUTICAL ADVENTURES.

No. 4.—The Lost Axe, Part 1.

CERTAINLY THE MOST unusual of my assignments as captain came shortly after the end of the Spanish War. The successful conclusion I had brought to that conflict had increased my reputation enormously in the admiralty, and it was decided—by whom I do not know to this day—that I was to be trusted with a great secret, a mission of such importance that it could well change the history of the world. So, at any rate, I was told when Admiral Blanderson spoke to me in his private rooms.

“Captain Hornswoggle,” he said gravely, “what I am about to reveal to you is a great secret. The mission on which you are to be sent is of such importance that it could well change the history of the world. I must remind you, therefore, that nothing you hear within these walls may ever go beyond them.”

I swore the most powerful oath I knew, which as I recall was “cross my heart and hope to die,” that I should never reveal what I heard in this chamber; and indeed if the details of the mission had not long since been published far and wide under the Freedom of Information Act, thus releasing me from my oath, I should have taken the memory to my grave.

“It is not often,” the Admiral continued, “that the naval forces are sent in search of holy relics; but such indeed is your mission, which you may regard almost as a kind of crusade.”

The Admiral reached for an ancient manuscript bound in crusty leather. Opening it to a marked page, he turned it to face me. There was a good bit of writing in the old Gothic style, and a remarkably vivid illumination of a jewel-encrusted double-bladed axe.

“This,” the Admiral explained, “is the Axe of the Apostles. It is said to have been blessed by St. Thaddeus himself, whose blessing endowed it with such potency that with it any good Christian, no matter how weak or infirm, will be able to chop enough wood to keep a family of four moderately well supplied through the winter, provided they are not too prodigal with it.”

He looked both ways, as though, even in the privacy of his private chambers, he could not trust that we were unobserved. Then he leaned closer and continued.

“Although your prompt action in the Battle of Batter Bay brought peace with Spain on very advantageous terms (in addition, you must recall, to saving my own life), I need hardly tell you that vigilance is necessary to keep the peace. Were the Spanish to possess this remarkable instrument, there is no telling how they might turn it to their advantage. With so much wood at their disposal, they might perhaps even be in a position to reverse our victory, and dictate to us the terms of the peace.”

This, I agreed, would be a catastrophe for us, and I was willing to do anything in my power to keep the perfidious Spaniards from forcing paella down our throats. The voyage, the Admiral told me, would not be without danger; but in those youthful days I laughed at danger. (Since that time my sense of humor has become more refined.) I assured the Admiral that, wherever the Axe of the Apostles might be hidden, I was the man to find it. The Admiral assured me, in turn, that he had complete confidence in my abilities.

The Axe, he explained to me, had been lost since the time of the Apostolic Fathers; but recent research in ancient records suggested that it had been transported to the Horn of Africa by Abyssinian converts. The Horn in my youth, you may recall, was divided between English and French territories; and it was unfortunately in the French Horn that the Axe of the Apostles would most probably be found. A certain ancient monastery was said to have been its last known location, and a recent visitor to that monastery had reported seeing a large reliquary directly behind the altar which, from its form, most probably held either a double-bladed axe or a banjo.

No time was to be lost. I was assigned a merry frigate, the Indifferent, which was outfitted with everything necessary for a voyage around the Cape—for such was to be our route, in hopes that the Spanish and other unfriendly powers might assume that we were merely another ship bound for the Cape Colony. To make that assumption even more plausible, we brought with us a considerable cargo of silk capes, the profitable trade in which with the fashion-conscious natives gave the colony its name. There was no time for long goodbyes: we set out within two days after my meeting with Admiral Blanderson, and it was just as well that I had no family to speak of, or at least none that would acknowledge me.

We encountered no trouble until we came near the Cape Colony. Then a vicious storm arose from the south so suddenly that we had no chance to prepare for it. The Indifferent was a brave ship and could hold her own in nearly any seas, but no one on board had ever suffered through such a storm as this. The waves appeared as so many Alpine peaks capped with snow, and our ship, which had seemed so generously large when we left port, looked hardly bigger than a dinghy as it was now tossed up to the highest peak, now with dizzying rapidity plunged into the deepest valley. The sturdy crew did what they could to furl the sails; but the howling wind tore the ropes out of their hands, and shredded our sails like excelsior.

By the mercy of heaven we made it through the storm with no loss of life. Our ship, however, was dead in the water, every last one of our sails reduced to tatters, and most of the tatters carried off by wind and wave to parts unknown.

Although we gave thanks for our delivery from the storm, we were in danger of exchanging a quick death for a long and unpleasant one. We had provisions for a while, but without our sails we would drift aimlessly until they ran out.

At this point I bethought myself of our cargo. Inquiring amongst the crew, I found one young sailor whose mother had sent him off to sea with a sewing kit, in case he should damage his fresh uniform during the occasional bouts of vigorous activity which are common to the nautical life. With gratitude and the promise of a speedy promotion, I commandeered his sewing kit, and I put the entire crew to work sewing the capes together into sails. I had to teach most of them to sew, but within a few days we had the most colorful ship in the fleet; and, more to the point, we were moving again, continuing once more our voyage toward the French Horn.

Proceed to the Conclusion.

DR. BOLI’S ENCYCLOPEDIA OF MISINFORMATION.

Supplemental Number.

Alpine views. The Alps are full of excellent natural vantage points, but most of the vistas are spoiled by mountains blocking the view.

Baseball. Abner Doubleday had heard rumors of a game called “cricket,” but he badly misunderstood what he had heard.

Inventions. According to a recent opinion poll, the invention that has most improved the quality of life worldwide was the invention of the opinion poll.

Library of Congress. The entire contents of the Library of Congress can be engraved on the head of a pin, given a sufficiently large pin.

Prohibition. Legally, the passage of the twenty-first amendment to the United States Constitution erased the entire history of the years 1920 to 1933. In a constitutional sense, there never was a “Calvin Coolidge.”

Trees. The seed of a tree contains all the material necessary for the growth of the tree throughout its life. Some of the smaller tree seeds are denser than neutron stars.

Yugoslavia. At the end of the First World War, an anonymous diplomat sketched the nation of “Yugoslavia” on a map of the Balkans as a joke. He did not anticipate that he would be the only statesman in Europe with an ironical sense of humor, but by the time he revealed his pleasantry it was too late.

ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY.

ON THIS DAY in 1838, Sir Mortimer Throttle first demonstrated his Arithmetical Engine, a mechanical computer so complex that it had taken Sir Mortimer and the village blacksmith more than thirty years to construct. The machine was made mostly of iron, which did not admit of very precise mechanics; it was therefore very large, and occupied a great barn behind the main house at Throttleworth, Sir Mortimer’s ancestral home. The local villagers had long since come to the conclusion that Sir Mortimer was mad—an opinion which he did nothing to discourage, since it tended to keep stray villagers out of his way. Nevertheless, a fair number of them showed up to view the demonstration, which was also attended by most of the Royal Society and a certain number of curiosity-seekers from London.

A local brass band played “When Last the Sukebind Bloom’d Aloft,” and everything was done to make the affair a gay occasion. Everyone waited with gleeful anticipation to see the machine perform its first addition. Sir Mortimer, meanwhile, was poring over the details of what he called his “operating system,” a booklet of instructions for the correct manipulation of the many thousands of parts in the machine. At the appointed moment, Sir Mortimer, with the assistance of the blacksmith, adjusted the switches, lubricated the pinions, and carefully placed the muppocks over the joints; then he set the first of the machine’s enormous dials to the number 2, and the second to the number 2 as well. When everything was set to his satisfaction, and he had placed a small tick mark beside each step in his operating system, Sir Mortimer and the blacksmith, working together and using all their strength, turned the great crank that set the machinery in motion. The hand of the third dial began to move, and it continued to move slowly until it came to rest at the number 5.

This was not quite the result they had hoped for; but every subsequent trial produced the same result. No matter how much oil Sir Mortimer used in the lubrication, or how forcefully he and the blacksmith turned the crank, the Arithmetical Engine remained convinced that 2 + 2 = 5.

After this public humiliation, Sir Mortimer gave up the project in disgust and devoted the rest of his life to breeding irises. Eventually the resourceful blacksmith turned the Arithmetical Engine into a combine harvester, the first machine of its kind and the foundation of a gigantic industry from which he profited enormously.

Nevertheless, although the Arithmetical Engine was itself a failure, the operating system invented by Sir Mortimer Throttle was passed down from one mathematician to another, adapted in digital form, and eventually formed the basis of the Unix operating system still in use on some computers today. Curiously enough, the computation “2 + 2” still yields the answer “5” even in up-to-date Unix systems; but in the current academic climate this is no longer considered a liability.