But every man who was not busy with something else ascended the ratlines and got in position to view this entertainment. Jack got up sooner and higher than most. As a shareholder, he slept in a cabin instead of belowdecks, and as an Englishman he kept his windows open unless there was a positive hurricane blowing, and he had escaped the never-ending round of catarrhs, influenzas, rheumatic malfunctions, and fœbrile disorders that eddied through the crew. At any rate he had more energy and better lungs than they did and so he climbed all the way to the topmast trestletrees: high enough that he could take in Minerva ’s whole length at a glance. At first the mirage was not visible, but van Hoek said that this was the common way of mirages and to be patient. So while he was being patient in the topmast trestletrees, Jack looked down at the crew, struggling up the ratlines and coughing, spitting, and scratching themselves just like the audience in a theatre, waiting for the show to begin. This was not such a bad similitude either. From the point of view of a drawing-room Princess, Minerva had vanished underneath a florid mermaid-cartouche. But from Minerva ’s point of view, it was the world that had disappeared—somewhat as players do when the story pauses between acts. With their wigs, costumes, swords, and stage-props they exeunt; nothing happens for a while; the audience shifts, mutters, farts, cracks hazel-nuts, hawks up phlegm; and if it is a better class of theatre, there begins a little play-within-the-play, an entr’acte .