The Voyage of the Dolphin by Kevin Smith Page A

have,’ Rafferty said.
    â€˜Couldn’t have what?’
    â€˜He couldn’t have survived.’
    â€˜How do you mean?’
    â€˜I mean he would have been dissolved by the whale’s gastric juices. He would have been digested. It’s just a parable.’
    â€˜I’m sure you’re mistaken old man. Jonah and the Whale’s a true story, isn’t it Crozier?’
    â€˜All stories are true,’ Crozier replied. ‘And some of them actually happened.’
    â€˜See, I told you.’
    â€˜I read a real-life account of a man being swallowed by a whale once,’ Rafferty recalled. ‘Fell off a harpoon boat. When they cut the whale open he’d been bleached white and gone completely blind. And he’d only been in there for half a day.’
    â€˜Crikey.’
    They watched for a while longer but the sea was keeping its secrets.
    â€˜Right,’ Fitzmaurice said at length, ‘I suppose we’d better make a start on the photographs.’
    The others groaned. Along with Jacob’s Cream Crackers, and O’Shea’s Tinctures, Salves & Balsams, one of the main sponsors of the expedition was a gentlemen’s outfitters, Savage Newell of Kildare Street, a firm that had gained a foothold selling cheap, tight uniforms to British regiments during the Boer War. They required, in part-return for their donation of one hundred pounds, a set of publicity photographs of the intrepid lads sporting their outdoor clothing in a variety of rugged scenarios. To this end they had provided a handsome square-bellows camera (the latest model) and several boxes of trousers, pullovers, vests, mitts, balaclavas, reindeer-hide boots, stiff gabardine coats and prickly woollen longjohns.
    â€˜I’ll fetch the equipment, you fellows go and put on the garments.’
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    The camera, a Magiflex Rectograph Imperial, was a large and unwieldy device made of brass-bound mahogany, and it was with some difficulty that Fitzmaurice secured it to its tripod. He stared at the instructions.
    Once fitted to the tripod and with glass plate inserted on the rear standard (fig.1), open the shutter on the lens (fig.2) to focus and compose the image. Straightforward enough. The taking lens may be stopped down (fig.3) to help gauge depth of field and vignetting, and a focusing cloth may be used in conjunction with a Fresnel lens (fig.4) or a loupe (fig.5)… He frowned. To make a photograph pull back the ground glass (fig.6) and slide the film holder into place within the plane of the lens (fig. 7) taking care not to damage the springback mechanism (fig 8)… Breathing heavily through his nose he skipped twenty or thirty pages ahead . Close and cock the shutter (fig. 193) and set speed and aperture before removing the darkslide...
    â€˜Christ.’ He looked up. Crozier and Rafferty were loitering bulkily around the companionway in their Savage Newell coats, knickerbockers and gaiters. Rafferty was additionally wearing a thick balaclava, that combined with his milk-bottle glasses to give the impression of a diving helmet, or an insect head on a human body.
    â€˜Right-o, stand over there by the rigging and act as though you know what you’re doing. As if you’re expert sailors.’
    Crozier seized a brush and made sweeping motions; Rafferty attempted to reach up and grasp the rigging but the seams beneath his armpits refused to yield and he had to settle for resting his hands on his hips in an approximation of a jolly tar about to dance the hornpipe.
    â€˜Good. Now hold it like that.’
    Fitzmaurice squinted again at the manual then reached into the box and drew out a pane. It slipped from his fingers and shattered. He extracted another and after several attempts from a number of angles managed to insert it into the rear standard (fig.1) . He opened the shutter on the lens (fig.2) .
    â€˜How long do we have to stand here?’ Rafferty wanted to know.
    â€˜I’m not