John Barth - The Sot-Weed Factor

"If 'twill ease your conscience," he said at last, "I cannot say ye nay, at least for the nonce — 'twill give me time to write some verse below. But Coode or no Coode, Bertrand, I swear you this: 'tis the last time I'll be any man whate'er save Eben Cooke. D'you hear?"

"Very good, sir," Bertrand nodded. "Shall I send word to the Captain?"

"Word? Ah, yes — that I'm thy Bertrand, a fop that makes pretense to glory. Aye, spread the word!"

When the Poseidon, running before a fresh breeze from the northeast, left Lizard Point behind and in company with the rest of the fleet set her course southwest to the Azores, life on shipboard settled into its wonted order. The passengers had little or nothing to do: aside from the three daily messes and, for those who had the ingredients with them, the intervening teas, the only other event of the normal day was the announcement of the estimated distance traveled during the past twenty-four hours. Among the gentlemen a good deal of money changed hands on this announcement, and since servants, when idle, can become every bit as bored as their masters, they too made bets whenever they could afford to.

The wagering, as a rule, was done at the second mess, since the runs were computed from noon to noon. Upon arising in the morning, every man sought out some member of the crew, to inquire about the progress of the night past; all morning the company watched the wind, and finally made their estimations. At midday the Captain himself mounted the poop, quadrant in hand, and on notice from the first mate that it was twelve o'clock sharp, made the traditional "noon sight" for longitude; retiring then to his quarters he computed latitude by dead reckoning from the compass course and the estimated distance run since the last measured elevation of the polestar before dawn — which crucial figure was itself reckoned from data in the ship's log concerning the direction and velocity of the wind, the height and direction of the seas, and the making, taking in, and setting of the sails, together with the Captain's own knowledge of the direction and velocity of ocean currents in the general area at that particular time of year, and of the ability of each of his officers to get the most out of the men on his watch and the ship itself. Since even under full sail the Poseidon rarely made more than six miles per hour and never more than eight — in other words, a fast walk — the daily run could be anything from zero, given a calm (or, given stormy headwinds, even a negative quantity), up to one hundred ninety-two miles — which theoretical maximum, however, she never managed to attain. Having computed latitude and longitude, the Captain was able to plot the Poseidon's estimated position on his chart with parallel rule and dividers and, again allowing for winds, currents, the leeway characteristics of his vessel, and compass variation, he could give the helmsman a corrected course to steer until further notice. Finally he would enter the main cabin for his midday meal with the ladies and gentlemen among his passengers, who in the meantime had pooled their wagers and their estimates and, after announcing the official figure, he would bid the mate search out the closest approximation from among the folded bits of paper and identify the winner of the day.

The basic gamble was the pool — five to ten shillings a head, usually, for the gentlemen and ladies; a shilling or less for the servants — but the more ambitious speculators soon contrived a variety of side bets: a maximum or minimum figure, for example, could be adjusted for virtually any odds desired, or one could gamble on a maximum or minimum differential between each day's run and the next one. As the five days passed and boredom increased, the sport grew more elaborate, the stakes higher: one really imaginative young minister named George Tubman, suspected by the other passengers of being a professional gambler in disguise, devised a sliding odds system for accepting daily bets on the date of raising Flores and Corvo — the westerly islands of the Azores — a system whereby the announcement of each day's run altered the standing odds against each projected date-of-landfall according to principles best known to the clever young man who computed them, and one could in the light of each day's progress make new wagers to reinforce or compensate for the heightened or diminished probability of one's previous wagers on the same event. This system had the advantages of cumulative interest and a tendency towards geometrically increasing stakes, for when a man saw his whole previous speculative investment imperiled by an unusually long or short day's run, he was naturally inclined to cover himself by betting, on what now seemed a more promising date, an amount equal to or exceeding the sum of his prior wagers; and since, of course, each day brought the Poseidon closer to a landfall and narrowed the range of speculation, the odds on the most likely dates lowered sharply, with the result that a man might invest five pounds at the going odds on a currently popular date in order to cover ten shillings previously wagered on a now unlikely one, only to find two or three days later that a third, much larger, bet was required to make good the second, or the first and second combined, and so forth. The excitement grew proportionately; even the Captain, though he shook his head at the ruinous size of the stakes, followed the betting with unconcealed interest, and the crew members themselves, who, of course, would not have been permitted to join in the game even if they could have afforded it, adopted favorites among the bettors, gave, or when possible sold, "confidential" information on the ship's progress to interested parties, made private little wagers of their own on which of the passengers would win the most money, and ultimately, in order to protect their own bets, volunteered or accepted bribes to convey false information to bettors other than the one on whom their money was riding.

For his part, Ebenezer wasted little interest at the outset on this activity, to which his attention had been called early in the first week of the voyage. One sparkling April morning Bertrand had approached him where he stood happily in the bow watching seagulls dive for fish, and had asked, in a respectful tone, his general opinion of gambling. In good spirits because of the weather and a commendable breakfast, and pleased to be thus consulted, Ebenezer had explored the subject cheerfully and at length.

"To ask a man what he thinks of gambling is as much as to ask him what he thinks of life," was one of the positions he experimented with. "Doth not the mackerel gamble, each time he rises, that yonder gulls won't snatch him up, and the gulls make wager that they will? Are we not gamblers all, that match wits with the ocean on this ship of wood? Nay, life itself is but a lifelong gamble, is't not? From the moment of conception our life is on the line; every meal, every step, every turning is a dare to death; all men are the fools of chance save the suicide, and even he must wager that there is no Hell to fry in. Who loves life, then, perforce loves gambling, for he is Dame Chance's conquest. Moreover, every gambler is an optimist, for no man wagers who thinks to lose."

Bertrand beamed. "Then ye favor games of chance?"

"Ah, ah," the Laureate cautioned. He cocked his head, waggled a forefinger, and quoted a proverb which unaccountably made him blush: "There are more ways to the woods than one. It could as well be argued that the gambler is a pessimistic atheist, inasmuch as he counts man's will as naught. To wager is to allow the sovereignty of chance in all events, which is as much as to say, God hath no hand in things."