Page 470

It is past midnight. Someone is creeping down the passage. Entering the kitchen he gropes on the cupboard near the radio. It is Pliny the Elder and he is searching for Moby Dick!

He locates the book, picks it up and tiptoes into the lounge, where he closes the sliding doors behind him and turns on the dimmest of lights by which it is still possible to read. He sits down on a comfortable brown leather 2-seater and examines the book.

It is an old well-thumbed paperback copy, with water-stained sides, and from somewhere near the middle a cardboard bookmark sticks out. It is a remarkable bookmark, in the shape of the flukes of a whale. But Pliny is not interested in the bookmark, which marks page 278. He is interested in page 470.

He opens the book, locates page 470, and reads:

DOES THE WHALE'S MAGNITUDE DIMINISH? WILL HE PERISH?

Assuredly we must conclude so, if we are to credit the accounts of such gentlemen as Pliny, and the ancient naturalists generally. For Pliny tells us of whales that embraced acres of living bulk....... But will any whaleman believe these stories? No. The whale of today is as big as his ancestors in Pliny's time. And if ever I go where Pliny is, I, a whaleman, ( more than he was ) will make bold to tell him so.

Monstrous! exclaims Pliny. I am defamed! I was only reporting tales I'd heard from others. Does no one understand authorial irony? I will not get back to sleep tonight. I'll make myself a cup of tea and commence reading Moby Dick from page one. No book is so bad that one cannot learn something useful from it.