Back again, Tavern-crawling near the Wharves upon Delaware, Ale-stuporous, the Surveyors enter The Crook'd Finger Inn,— "We both know what it is, Dixon," Mason is instructing his Partner, "— your hour is come, your Innings, for Retributive Poultrification,— at last, you must prepare, mustn't you, for all that Expression of Jesuit Interest so long-deferr'd,— this next Commission being, after all, the one they were engi?neering all along, isn't it, yes, another Degree of Latitude to put with the others they've appropriated, this is what it all's been leading to, correct? Wondrous! Now shall you,— at least,— finally learn, perhaps even via the Jesuit Telegraph, why you are here,— a Blessing extended to how few. Anything I can do to help, of course.—
"Eeh, but whah's the use, the fuckin' use?" Dixon resting his head briefly tho' audibly upon the Table. "It's over...? Nought left to us but Paper-work... ?" Their task has shifted, from Direct Traverse upon the Line to Pen-and-Paper Representation of it, in the sober Day-Light of Philadel?phia, strain'd thro' twelve-by-twelve Sash-work, as in the spectreless Light of the Candles in their Rooms, suffering but the fretful Shadows of Dixon at the Drafting Table, and Mason, seconding now, reading from Entries in the Field-Book, as Dixon once minded the Clock for him. Finally, one day, Dixon announces, "Well,— won't thee at least have a look... ?"
Mason eagerly rushes to inspect the Map of the Boundaries, almost instantly boggling, for there bold as a Pirate's Flag is an eight-pointed Star, surmounted by a Fleur-de-Lis.
"What's this thing here? pointing North? Wasn't the l'Grand flying one of these? Doth it not signify, England's most inveterately hated Rival? France?"
"All respect, Mason,— among Brother and Sister Needle-folk in ev'ry Land, 'tis known universally, as the 'Flower-de-Luce.' A Magnetickal Term."
' 'Flower of Light'? Light, hey? Sounds Encyclopedistick to me, per?haps even Masonick," says Mason.
A Surveyor's North-Point, Dixon explains, by long Tradition, is his own, which he may draw, and embellish, in any way he pleases, so it point where North be. It becomes his Hall-Mark, personal as a Silver-Smith's, representative of his Honesty and Good Name. Further, as with many Glyphs, 'tis important ever to keep Faith with it,— for an often enormous Investment of Faith, and Will, lies condens'd within, giving it a Potency in the World that the Agents of Reason care little for.
' 'Tis an ancient Shape, said to go back to the earliest Italian Wind-Roses," says Dixon, "— originally, at the North, they put the Letter T, for Tramontane, the Wind that blew down from the Alps...? Over the years, as ever befalls such frail Bric-a-Brack as Letters of the Alphabet, it was beaten into a kind of Spear-head,— tho' the kinder-hearted will aver it a Lily, and clash thy Face, do tha deny it."
"Yet some, finding it upon a new Map, might also take it as a reasser-tion of French claims to Ohio," Mason pretends to remind him.
"Aye, tha've found me out, I confess,— 'tis a secret Message to all who conspire in the Dark! Eeh! The old Jesuit Canard again!"
At which Armand runs in looking anxious. "The Duck is doing some?thing. .. autoerotique, now?" They re-phrase,— unconsol'd, Armand wan?ders away. Becoming reaccustom'd to this City's Angular Momentum is costing him daily Struggle. He appears to miss the West Line, and the Duck it has captur'd and denied him.
"Perhaps, for this Map alone," it occurs to Mason, "as East and West are of the Essence, North need hardly be indicated at all, need it? Or, suppose you were to sketch in something...less politickal?"
"This has been my North Point," Dixon declares, "since the first Map I ever drew. I cannot very readily forswear it, now, Sir, for some temporary Tradesman's Sign. It does not generally benefit the Surveyor to debase the Value of his North Point, by lending it to ends Politickal. 'Twould be to betray my Allegiance to Earth's Magnetism, Earth Her?self if tha like, which my Flower-de-Luce stands faithfully as the Emblem of...?"
Making no more sense of this than he ever may, Mason shrugs. "It may sit less comfortably with the Proprietors, than with me."
"Oh, they're as happy to twit a King, when they may, as the next Lad— "
"Hahr! So that is it!"
"Thy uncritical Worship of Kings, with my inflexible Hatred of 'em,— taken together, we equal one latter-day English Subject."
"Much more likely Twins, ever in Dispute,— as the Indians once told us the Beginning of the World."
"Huz? I'm far too jolly a soul ever to fight with thee for long... ?"
"Because you know how your Shins would suffer...." Mason is able to inspect the long Map, fragrant, elegantly cartouch'd with Indians and Instruments, at last. Ev'ry place they ran it, ev'ry House pass'd by, Road cross'd, the Ridge-lines and Creeks, Forests and Glades, Water ev'ry-where, and the Dragon nearly visible. "So,— so. This is the Line as all shall see it after its Copper-Plate 'Morphosis,— and all History remem?ber? This is what ye expect me to sign off on?"
"Not the worst I've handed in. And had they wish'd to pay for Color?ing? Why, tha'd scarcely knaah the Place...?"
"This is beauteous Work. Emerson was right, Jeremiah. You were fly?ing, all the time."
Dixon, his face darken'd by the Years of Weather, may be allowing himself to blush in safety. "Could have us'd a spot of Orpiment, all the same. Some Lapis...?"
"It is possible," here comments the Revd Cherrycoke, "that for some couples, however close, Love is simply not in the cards. So must they pursue other projects, instead,— sometimes together, sometimes apart. I believe now, that their Third Interdiction came when, at the end of the eight-Year Traverse, Mason and Dixon could not cross the perilous Boundaries between themselves.”
Whatever happen'd at the Warrior-Path, the Partners are to remain amicably together, among the cheerless Bogs of Delaware, thro' nearly another Year, busy with the Royal Society's Degree of Latitude, chaining a Meridian over the same ground as the Tangent Line, shivering in the Damp of Morning after Morning, both fending off the Ague with the miraculous willow-bark powder discover'd by the Revd Mr. Edmund Stone, of Chipping Norton,— return'd to the vegetational Horizons, the Sumach whose Touch brings misery, the deadly water-snakes coil'd together like the Rugae of a single great Brain, the gray and even illumi?nation from the Sky.
Their Agreement to un-couple may easily have come, not after all dur?ing the crisis of the Year before, at the Warrior-Path, but rather here, somewhere upon this Peninsula, wrapp'd in the lambent Passing of any forgotten day of mild Winds, the Day as ever, little to distinguish it from others before and after but the values enter'd for Miles, Chains, and Links,— and why not here, especially with leisure and opportun............