How Pantagruel went to sea to visit the oracle of Bacbuc, alias the Holy
Bottle.
In the month of June, on Vesta’s holiday, the very numerical day on which
Brutus, conquering Spain, taught its strutting dons to truckle under him,
and that niggardly miser Crassus was routed and knocked on the head by the
Parthians, Pantagruel took his leave of the good Gargantua, his royal
father. The old gentleman, according to the laudable custom of the
primitive Christians, devoutly prayed for the happy voyage of his son and
his whole company, and then they took shipping at the port of Thalassa.
Pantagruel had with him Panurge, Friar John des Entomeures, alias of the
Funnels, Epistemon, Gymnast, Eusthenes, Rhizotome, Carpalin, cum multis
aliis, his ancient servants and domestics; also Xenomanes, the great
traveller, who had crossed so many dangerous roads, dikes, ponds, seas, and
so forth, and was come some time before, having been sent for by Panurge.
For certain good causes and considerations him thereunto moving, he had
left with Gargantua, and marked out, in his great and universal
hydrographical chart, the course which they were to steer to visit the
Oracle of the Holy Bottle Bacbuc. The number of ships were such as I
described in the third book, convoyed by a like number of triremes, men of
war, galleons, and feluccas, well-rigged, caulked, and stored with a good
quantity of Pantagruelion.
All the officers, droggermen, pilots, captains, mates, boatswains,
midshipmen, quartermasters, and sailors, met in the Thalamege, Pantagruel’s
principal flag-ship, which had in her stern for her ensign a huge large
bottle, half silver well polished, the other half gold enamelled with
carnation; whereby it was easy to guess that white and red were the colours
of the noble travellers, and that they went for the word of the Bottle.
On the stern of the second was a lantern like those of the ancients,
industriously made with diaphanous stone, implying that they were to pass
by Lanternland. The third ship had for her device a fine deep china ewer.
The fourth, a double-handed jar of gold, much like an ancient urn. The
fifth, a famous can made of sperm of emerald. The sixth, a monk’s mumping
bottle made of the four metals together. The seventh, an ebony funnel, all
embossed and wrought with gold after the Tauchic manner. The eighth, an
ivy goblet, very precious, inlaid with gold. The ninth, a cup of fine
Obriz gold. The tenth, a tumbler of aromatic agoloch (you call it lignum
aloes) edged with Cyprian gold, after the Azemine make. The eleventh, a
golden vine-tub of mosaic work. The twelfth, a runlet of unpolished gold,
covered with a small vine of large Indian pearl of Topiarian work.
Insomuch that there was not a man, however in the dumps, musty,
sour-looked, or melancholic he were, not even excepting that blubbering
whiner Heraclitus, had he been there, but seeing this noble convoy of ships
and their devices, must have been seized with present gladness of heart,
and, smiling at the conceit, have said that the travellers were all honest
topers, true pitcher-men, and have judged by a most sure prognostication
that their voyage, both outward and homeward-bound, would be performed in
mirth and perfect health.
In the Thalamege, where was the general meeting, Pantagruel made a short
but sweet exhortation, wholly backed with authorities from Scripture upon
navigation; which being ended, with an audible voice prayers were said in
the presence and hearing of all the burghers of Thalassa, who had flocked
to the mole to see them take shipping. After the prayers was melodiously
sung a psalm of the holy King David, which begins, When Israel went out of
Egypt; and that being ended, tables were placed upon deck, and a feast
speedily served up. The Thalassians, who had also borne a chorus in the
psalm, caused store of belly-timber to be brought out of their houses. All
drank to them; they drank to all; which was the cause that none of the
whole company gave up what they had eaten, nor were sea-sick, with a pain
at the head and stomach; which inconveniency they could not so easily have
prevented by drinking, for some time before, salt water, either alone or
mixed with wine; using quinces, citron peel, juice of pomegranates, sourish
sweetmeats, fasting a long time, covering their stomachs with paper, or
following such other idle remedies as foolish physicians prescribe to those
that go to sea.
Having often renewed their tipplings, each mother’s son retired on board
his own ship, and set sail all so fast with a merry gale at south-east; to
which point of the compass the chief pilot, James Brayer by name, had
shaped his course, and fixed all things accordingly. For seeing that the
Oracle of the Holy Bottle lay near Cathay, in the Upper India, his advice,
and that of Xenomanes also, was not to steer the course which the
Portuguese use, while sailing through the torrid zone, and Cape Bona
Speranza, at the south point of Africa, beyond the equinoctial line, and
losing sight of the northern pole, their guide, they make a prodigious long
voyage; but rather to keep as near the parallel of the said India as
possible, and to tack to the westward of the said pole, so that winding
under the north, they might find themselves in the latitude of the port of
Olone, without coming nearer it for fear of being shut up in the frozen
sea; whereas, following this canonical turn, by the said parallel, they
must have that on the right to the eastward, which at their departure was
on their left.
This proved a much shorter cut; for without shipwreck, danger, or loss of
men, with uninterrupted good weather, except one day near the island of the
Macreons, they performed in less than four months the voyage of Upper
India, which the Portuguese, with a thousand inconveniences and innumerable
dangers, can hardly complete in three years. And it is my opinion, with
submission to better judgments, that this course was perhaps steered by
those Indians who sailed to Germany, and were honourably received by the
King of the Swedes, while Quintus Metellus Celer was proconsul of the
Gauls; as Cornelius Nepos, Pomponius Mela, and Pliny after them tell us.