course I was grinning all over my silly face with pleasure. Nobody was taking much notice of him apart from me, because a couple of the crew had just put another cupful of Irish moss in the beer-barrel and were peering anxiously at it to see if it would do any good. Funny stuff, Irish moss—I think it’s made up of ground-up fish bones, and I haven’t the faintest idea why…Sorry, you’re right, I do tend to wander off the subject from time to time. It’s probably subconscious.”
“I imagine the alchemist must have lost heart, because he stopped shouting after a while and went and leaned sullenly against the rail, muttering to himself in Latin and breathing heavily through his nose. Did I mention he had a big nose? Oh, well, anyway, what with the drink and the general
“Given the quantity of its contents which I had consumed, waving the flagon was a bad move. It was, as I said, a big thing, and as soon as I lifted it up so that the alchemist could see it, I felt it slipping through my fingers. I made a desperate attempt to grab it back, but all I succeeded in doing was spilling its contents, which went soaring off into the air in a magnificent golden wave, like a sort of proof rainbow. A moment later I followed it, since I’d completely lost my balance; and that is a foolish thing to do in a crow’s nest. Shall we talk about Charlemagne now? All right, please yourself.”
“It’s a very, very strange feeling to fall from a great height, I can tell you, and not something I would recommend to anybody who isn’t employed by the Revenue. It seems to take a long time, and it isn’t actually particularly frightening, even though the logical part of your mind is telling you that when you land you are definitely going to die. Of course I did land—eventually—and very unpleasant it was, too. Only I didn’t die.”
“I didn’t even break anything. I just lay there on my back feeling an utter fool, with the crew gathered round staring at me as if I’d just grown an extra ear.”
“After a while I got up and walked round the deck a few times, and my loyal crew seemed to lose interest. They muttered something about some people being born lucky, looked back a couple of times to make sure I was still alive and hadn’t been fooling them, and went back to the beer-barrel. The only person who seemed to want to talk to me was the alchemist, and since I had a fairly good idea of what he was likely to say I kept plenty of deck between him and myself. He was gaining on me steadily when a terrific cheer went up from the vicinity of the beer-barrel.”
“I pushed my way to the front and saw the most miraculous sight. That beer was actually clearing; the Irish moss must have done the trick after all. There was a very short interval, while everyone dived for vessels of any description, and then an orgy of sploshing noises while twenty involuntary abstainers made up for lost time. I had to use all my authority as captain to get close enough to the barrel to dip a tin cup in.”
“In the general excitement I had forgotten all about the alchemist, and when I emerged from the ruck round the barrel he was standing over me with a face only marginally more pleasing to the eye than Sir Francis Drake’s culverins. The only thing to do, I thought, was try to jolly him along.”
“‘Now look,” I said, “I’m sorry I pinched your beer but there’s plenty for everyone now. Grab a jug and get stuck in.”
“‘It wasn’t beer,” he said.
“‘Porter, then,” I replied, “perry, ale, whatever. Does it matter?”
“‘Yes,” he said. “That was my elixir.”
“‘Your what?” I asked.
“‘My elixir,” he replied. “The philosopher’s stone. The elixir of life. The living water.”
“I frowned” I hate beer snobs, don’t you? “All right,” I said, “so it was better than ship’s beer, but let’s not get carried away. They say you can get a very nice pint in Bristol.”
“‘It wasn’t beer,” he said solemnly. “It was elixir.”
“Then something clicked in my brain and I remembered something. I remembered that I had just fallen out of my own crow’s nest onto a deck of hard oak plants without suffering so much as a nosebleed.”
“‘Elixir?” I said.
“‘Yes,” he said. “E for Enrico, L for Lorenzo, I for Iachimo, X for Xeres, I for Iago, R for Roderigo, elixir. And you drank it.”
“I felt unwell. “Is it safe?” I asked.”
“He grinned. “I don’t know,” he said, “but it definitely works.” ”
“‘Does it?” I asked.
“‘I think you just proved that,” he said, “by falling out of the crow’s nest. Or how would you interpret it? Luck? A sudden gust of wind? Dry rot in the deck? What do you expect if you drink the elixir of life?”
The stranger fell silent and drew the tip of his finger round the rim of his glass. “Anyway,” he said at last, “that’s how I came to acquire eternal life, for what it’s worth. All this talk of beer has made me thirsty. Can I get you one?”
The young German replied in a small, awed voice that he would like another armagnac, and the stranger entered into an oral contract with a waiter for an armagnac and a half-litre of Stella Artois. Once the contract had been discharged to the satisfaction of both parties, the stranger continued.
“Not only me,” he said, “my whole crew as well. You see, when I spilt the rest of the stuff in the flagon, just before my untimely descent from the crow’s nest, it landed in the beer barrel, rendering the beer free from impurities and immortalising everyone who drank it. The alchemist saw it happen, and once he had calmed down he explained it all to us. I don’t think we were really convinced until he drank a half-pint of the beer and shot himself. Then we were all profoundly convinced.”
Especially the first mate; it was his pistol the alchemist borrowed, and when he pressed it to his head and pulled the trigger, the barrel burst. The first mate was livid, of course, but when he tried thumping Fortunatus Magnus all he did was squash his wedding-ring. The man was completely invulnerable. So were we all. As soon as it had sunk in, we all went completely mad and started belting each other about with our swords and roaring with laughter until there wasn’t anything larger than a paperknife left on the whole ship. Mind you, we had all been drinking rather heavily.
“As for Fortunatus, he cheered up very quickly. It turned out that he had been lugging this elixir of his around with him for years but had never found anyone brave enough to test it out on, and he was damned if he was going to risk it himself, since he was petrified of possible side-effects. Naturally we asked him what possible side-effects, but all he would say was that so far as he knew there weren’t any but we were bound to find out sooner or later, weren’t we? The only living thing he’d ever given any to, he told us, was a stray cat in Cadiz, and the contrary thing had escaped before he could do much in the way of properly-organised tests. Mind you, I don’t think he had intended to drink any himself, even when he saw that it hadn’t killed us outright. He just got caught up in the general spirit of adventure and wanted to justify his discovery to us. Common or garden scientific vanity. Well, there we are.”
“The next morning we got a breeze that took us straight into Bristol, where Fortunatus was immediately arrested as a Spanish spy and thrown in prison. He went very quietly for an invulnerable man, but when we offered to rescue him he said no, he’d much rather go quietly, since he had a lot to think over and prison seemed as good a place as any. So we left him to it and set out to spend five thousand gold pistoles on refreshments and riotous living.”
“We were all fairly well pleased with ourselves, as you can imagine, what with suddenly being made immortal and having five thousand gold pistoles. At first, we couldn’t see beyond the immediate benefits, such as being able to clean up on extremely dangerous wagers involving tall buildings, loaded firearms and ravenous bears; but even after the first wave of euphoria had worn off and nobody would bet us any more, we reckoned that we had done all right for ourselves, all things considered. For example, being immortal we were incapable of starving to death, which meant a tremendous saving on food; we could drink as much as we liked without the slightest danger of damaging our health; and since we were completely immune from what was then described as the Pox…Anyway, we felt we had every reason to be cheerful, one way or another. My only regret was that the morning before we left Cadiz I had wasted five pistoles taking out a life assurance policy, which was no obviously of no use whatsoever.”
As the stranger stopped speaking again the young German caught sight of his face. It was a terrible sight,
