WHEN THEY'VE MADE it out of Plymouth and into Cape Cod Bay, van Hoek returns to his cabin and becomes Captain once more. He looks rather put out to find the place so discomposed. Perhaps this is a sign of Daniel's being a bitter old Atheistical crank, but he nearly laughs out loud. Minerva 's a collection of splinters loosely pulled together by nails, pegs, lashings, and oakum, not even large enough to count as a mote in the eye of the world – more like one of those microscopic eggs that Hooke discovered with his microscope. She floats only because boys mind her pumps all the time, she remains upright and intact only because highly intelligent men never stop watching the sky and seas around her. Every line and sail decays with visible speed, like snow in sunlight, and men must work ceaselessly worming, parceling, serving, tarring, and splicing her infinite net-work of hempen lines in order to prevent her from falling apart in mid-ocean with what Daniel imagines would be explosive suddenness. Like a snake changing skins, she sloughs away what is worn and broken and replaces it from inner reserves – evoluting as she goes. The only way to sustain this perpetual and necessary evolution is to replenish the stocks that dwindle from her holds as relentlessly as sea-water leaks in. The only way to do that is to trade goods from one port to another, making a bit of money on each leg of the perpetual voyage. Each day assails her with hurricanes and pirate-fleets. To go out on the sea and find a Minerva is like finding, in the desert, a Great Pyramid blanced upside-down on its tip. She's a baby in a basket – a book in a bonfire. And yet van Hoek has the temerity to appoint his cabin as if it were a gentleman's drawing-room, with delicate weather-glasses, clocks, optickal devices, a decent library, a painting or two, an enamel cabinet stocked with Chinese crockery, a respectable stock of brandy and port. He's got mirrors in here, for Christ's sake. Not only that, but when he enters to discover a bit of broken glass on the deck, and small impact-craters here and there, he becomes so outraged that Dappa doesn't need to tell Daniel they'd best leave him alone for a while.