Read Online Lieutenant by Kate Grenville - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Kate Grenville
Tags: General Fiction
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rain gauge sitting on the stump of a tree sawn off as level as could be managed, let alone know that the same stump performed the office of dressing table. It was a pleasure that Rooke would have to enjoy alone, that his life and his work were so little separate that, if he wished, he could conduct his researches whilst shaving.
All Dr Vickery would see were the ledgers in which the readings would be entered. They would represent a miracle of translation. The language of muddle, of wobble, of improvisation, would be transformed into exactitude. It was a shame, Rooke thought, that Dr Vickery could not share his delight in that transformation. Winds, Weather, Barometer, Thermometer, Remarks . Perhaps rashly, Rooke ruled up six observation times for every day, between four in the morning and eight at night. It was like the beginning of a grand enterprise to dip his pen in the ink and write up the first readings. June 24, 1788. Wind: SSW, 4 knots. Weather: heavy cloud & hazy. Barometer: 29. Thermometer: 60 . Remarks: About 7 h it began to rain and soon after the barometer rose .
Up the four lopsided steps from his living quarters, there was barely enough space in the observation room for one slender astronomer, and the canvas of the roof crackled distractingly in the wind. But the rock on which the quadrant stood had never been moved since the foundation of the world. Under his feet he could feel it, unmediated by floorboards or rug: the sphere of rock, spinning through space and time, taking himself and his instruments with it.
Through the telescope the stars burned with a foreign clarity, explosively brilliant, living things pulsing in the blackness. For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face . He thought Paul must have been a man who had lain flat on his back on the ground and looked up at just such a sky as this.
Rooke knew the southern constellations now as well as those he had grown up with. All the way down the curve of the globe from Portsmouth to New South Wales he had watched them night by night creeping further up over the southern horizon. But at sea he had never seen them so bright.
The moon was crisp against the black sky, its seas and mountains as clear as if etched, upside down, of course, from the point of view of someone looking out the window of a parlour in misty Portsmouth.
He could have drawn that parlour, every crease in the tablecloth, every stain on the armchair, the place where the fringe of the rug was fraying. He could have told you how, at thismoment—noon there, more or less, and summer of course—his father would be drawing his napkin out of his napkin ring and his mother would be slicing the bread and handing it to Anne to butter, and Bessie would be putting it on their plates, all of them suppressing the rumbling of their insides, impatient for the servant-girl to bring in the midday meal.
It was as real as that. He did not have to imagine the hunger, as the governor had them on short rations until the promised supply ships arrived from England. Yet it was also not real at all, a story someone had told him long ago about people in a dream.
From his stretcher he could hear the waters of the port, the restless sound coming in the window hole. The water was never still, always in conversation with itself and with the shore. He could hear it slapping up against the rocks at the foot of the point, knew how it must look, washing foamily into crannies. Nothing prevented a drop of that water from making in reverse the same voyage that he had. That drop could travel along the currents until it arrived at the Motherbank and slide past the Round Tower. It could splash up at last on the Hard, just where the tender from Sirius had pushed off with Daniel Rooke aboard a year before. It would leave a dark hieroglyph on one of the stones, a greeting from the far side of the globe to the world he had left behind.
E ven after he took up residence in the observatory, Rooke joined the
All Dr Vickery would see were the ledgers in which the readings would be entered. They would represent a miracle of translation. The language of muddle, of wobble, of improvisation, would be transformed into exactitude. It was a shame, Rooke thought, that Dr Vickery could not share his delight in that transformation. Winds, Weather, Barometer, Thermometer, Remarks . Perhaps rashly, Rooke ruled up six observation times for every day, between four in the morning and eight at night. It was like the beginning of a grand enterprise to dip his pen in the ink and write up the first readings. June 24, 1788. Wind: SSW, 4 knots. Weather: heavy cloud & hazy. Barometer: 29. Thermometer: 60 . Remarks: About 7 h it began to rain and soon after the barometer rose .
Up the four lopsided steps from his living quarters, there was barely enough space in the observation room for one slender astronomer, and the canvas of the roof crackled distractingly in the wind. But the rock on which the quadrant stood had never been moved since the foundation of the world. Under his feet he could feel it, unmediated by floorboards or rug: the sphere of rock, spinning through space and time, taking himself and his instruments with it.
Through the telescope the stars burned with a foreign clarity, explosively brilliant, living things pulsing in the blackness. For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face . He thought Paul must have been a man who had lain flat on his back on the ground and looked up at just such a sky as this.
Rooke knew the southern constellations now as well as those he had grown up with. All the way down the curve of the globe from Portsmouth to New South Wales he had watched them night by night creeping further up over the southern horizon. But at sea he had never seen them so bright.
The moon was crisp against the black sky, its seas and mountains as clear as if etched, upside down, of course, from the point of view of someone looking out the window of a parlour in misty Portsmouth.
He could have drawn that parlour, every crease in the tablecloth, every stain on the armchair, the place where the fringe of the rug was fraying. He could have told you how, at thismoment—noon there, more or less, and summer of course—his father would be drawing his napkin out of his napkin ring and his mother would be slicing the bread and handing it to Anne to butter, and Bessie would be putting it on their plates, all of them suppressing the rumbling of their insides, impatient for the servant-girl to bring in the midday meal.
It was as real as that. He did not have to imagine the hunger, as the governor had them on short rations until the promised supply ships arrived from England. Yet it was also not real at all, a story someone had told him long ago about people in a dream.
From his stretcher he could hear the waters of the port, the restless sound coming in the window hole. The water was never still, always in conversation with itself and with the shore. He could hear it slapping up against the rocks at the foot of the point, knew how it must look, washing foamily into crannies. Nothing prevented a drop of that water from making in reverse the same voyage that he had. That drop could travel along the currents until it arrived at the Motherbank and slide past the Round Tower. It could splash up at last on the Hard, just where the tender from Sirius had pushed off with Daniel Rooke aboard a year before. It would leave a dark hieroglyph on one of the stones, a greeting from the far side of the globe to the world he had left behind.
E ven after he took up residence in the observatory, Rooke joined the
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