The Confusion

Book 4
Bonanza
Japan
MAY 1700

DAPPA EXCHANGED MALABAR-WORDS with three black sailors who had just hauled in the sounding-lead, then turned toward the poop deck and gave van Hoek a certain look. The captain stretched out a mangled hand towards the bow, then let it fall. A pair of Filipino sailors swung mauls, dislodging a pair of chocks, and the head of the ship pitched upward slightly as it was relieved of the weight of the anchors. Their chains rumbled through hawse-holes for a moment, making a sound like Leviathan clearing its throat. Then chains gave way to soft cables of manila that slithered and hissed across the deck for quite a few moments, gathering force, until everyone abovedecks began to doubt if the Malabari sailors with the sounding-lead had really gotten it right. But then the life seemed to go out of those cables. They coasted to a stop, and the Filipinos went to work recovering the slack. The sails had all been struck, but the wind that they had ridden in from the Sea of Japan found purchase on Minerva’s hull and nudged her forward into the long shadow of a snow-topped mountain, creating the curious impression that the sun was setting in the east.

Jack, Vrej Esphahnian, and Padraig Tallow were up around the foremast, stowing the few paltry sails that van Hoek had used to bring Minerva into this cove. Jack and Vrej were up in the ratlines while Padraig, who had lost his left leg during a corsair-attack around Hainan Island, was stomping around on a hand-carved peg-leg of jacaranda wood, humming to himself and pulling on ropes as necessary. These men were all shareholders in the enterprise, and normally did not do sailors’ work. But today most of the ship’s complement was down on the gundeck. The ship had developed a ponderous side-to-side roll that was obvious to Jack, high up in the ratlines. This told him, without looking, that all of the cannons had been run out as far as they could go, and were protruding from their gunports, giving Minerva the appearance of a hedgehog. The Japanese lurking in the forests that lined this cove would not have to consult their books of rangaku, Dutch Learning, to understand the message.

Gabriel Goto was standing at the bow in a bright kimono. Gazing down on him from above, Jack saw his shoulders soften and his head bow. The ronin had shaved, cut, greased, and knotted his grizzled hair into a configuration so peculiar that it would have gotten him burnt at the stake, or at best beaten to a pulp, in most jurisdictions; but here it was apparently as de rigueur as wigs at Versailles. Gabriel Goto did not have to worry about looking strange in Western eyes ever again, once he set foot on yonder shore. Because either the whole Transaction was a trap, and he would be crucified on the spot (the customary greeting for Portuguese missionaries), or else it was on the up-and-up, and he would become a Japanese in good standing once again-a Samurai looking after some scrap of mining country in the north, and keeping his religious opinions-if he still had any-to himself.

“His journey is over,” Enoch Root observed, when Jack descended to the upperdeck. “Yours is about halfway along, I should say.”

“Would that it were,” Jack said. “Van Hoek tells me that we have another forty degrees to travel eastwards, before we reach the Antipode of London. After all these years I am not even close to halfway.”

“That is only one way to measure it,” Enoch said. He had been crouched on the deck, arranging some mysterious instruments and substances in a black chest. Now he stood up and nodded at some particular feature that his eyes had marked on the shore. “You might instead say that no place is less accessible from London, than this.”

“Or that no place is harder to reach from here than London,” Jack said. “I take your point.”

They stood and looked at Japan for a while. Jack had not been sure what to expect. Nothing would have surprised him: castles floating in air, two-headed swordsmen, demons enthroned on tops of volcanoes. They’d finally reached one of those places that were not shown on the Doctor’s maps in Hanover, save as vague sketchings of shorelines with nothing in back of them. If phantasms existed anywhere on the globe, they’d be here. But Jack saw none. Now that they had been here long enough to begin picking out details, Jack could perceive buildings here and there. They had an Oriental look about them, to be sure. But Minerva had been trading in East Asia for two years, as slow progress was being made towards today’s Transaction, and they had seen Chinese roofs in many places: Manila, Macao, Shanghai, even Batavia. These Japanese buildings seemed much the same. Smoke came from their chimneys as it did in every other place where weather was cold. Hilltops had watch-towers on them, coastlines had piers, fishing-boats and fishnets were drawn up on beaches just as they had been at the foot of Sanlucar de Barrameda. A few Japanese crones were out on a rock with baskets, gathering seaweed, but Jack had seen Japanese Christians doing the same thing near Manila. There were no demons and no phantasms.

“In truth? I feel as if I’ve already been round the world,” Jack said. “The only thing separating me from London is Mexico, which I have seen on maps, and know to be but a narrow isthmus.”

“Don’t forget the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans,” Enoch said. He began closing up the several latches and locks of the little chest.

“’Tis naught but water, and we have a ship,” Jack scoffed. Every Filipino within earshot crossed himself, taking Jack’s words as a more or less direct request for God to strike Jack, and anyone near him, dead. “In truth, I was considering this very subject the night before we departed Queena-Kootah, when we were all convened, there, at the new Bomb and Grapnel, at the foot of Eliza Peak, enjoying the balmy breezes and drinking toasts to Jeronimo, Yevgeny, Nasr al-Ghurab, Nyazi, and others who could not be with us.”

“Oh? You did not seem to be in any condition to consider anything.”

“You forget I am no stranger to mental impairments, and have learned to get by with them,” Jack said. “At any rate. My ruminations-”

“Rum-inations?”

“Roominations ran along these general lines: You gave me advice not to name this ship after Eliza, for one day the Vessel might arrive in the same city as the Lady and give rise to whisperings and inferences that he might find embarrassing or even dangerous. Fine. So when we first dropped anchor before Queena-Kootah, a couple of years ago, and Surendranath ventured ashore to trade with the Moorish natives, and learnt that they stood in need of a new Sultan-I say, when we became aware that the place was essentially being given to us-I looked at that beautiful snow-capped mountain and named it Eliza. Because it was warm, fertile, and beautiful below, while being a bit frosty and inaccessible at the top-yet possessing a volcanick profile foretelling explosions-”

“Yes, you have explained the similitude in great detail on several occasions.”

“Righto. But I reckoned it was safe to use Eliza’s name there, as it was so far away from the cities of Christendom. But later-after we had installed Mr. Foot as Sultan, and Surendranath as Grand Wazir, and they had built the Bomb and Grapnel anew-European ships began to drop anchor there, and old sea-captains began coming ashore, and some of them knew Mr. Foot from of old. They resumed conversations that had been interrupted by tavern-fights thirty years earlier at the first Bomb in Dunkirk. And I began to understand that even Queena-Kootah is not so terribly far from London. Standing on a ship in Japan, I am closer to London than ever I was standing on the banks of the Thames as a mud-lark boy.”

“We must needs see to certain matters before you go for a stroll down the Strand,” said Dappa, who was perched above them on the fo’c’sle-deck like a raven. “Such as whether we will be suffered to leave Japan alive. You have no idea how illegal this is.”

“In truth I have a fairly good idea,” Jack demurred.

But there was no stopping Dappa. “If this were Nagasaki, boats would have come out already to remove our rudder and take it ashore-armed Samurai would be searching every cranny of the ship for stowaway Jesuits.”

“If this were Nagasaki we would not even be able to enter or leave the harbor without a Japanese pilot to help us over the rocks, and even then we would have to drop anchor several times and wait for tides-so we’d be helpless,” Jack said. “As it is, we can be on our way at a moment’s notice, provided we don’t mind cutting our anchor-cables.”

“When night falls we shall be desperately vulnerable to boarders,” Dappa returned.

“We are in high latitudes for once-it is near the middle of the year (though you’d never guess it from the temperature)-and the day is long,” Jack said, stepping around to a new position where he could get a clear view of the sun rising over the mountains of Japan. The water of the harbor was glancing light into his eyes so that it looked like a sheet of hammered copper. A longboat was clearly silhouetted on it, headed their way. “Damme, these Japanese are punctual-it is not like Manila.”

“Chinese smugglers they accept grudgingly. It pleases them not to have a Christian ship drop anchor here. They want rid of us.”

Van Hoek came by and said, “I had Father Gabriel write, in his last communication, that the transfer of metal would continue until the sun was four fingers above the western horizon-not a moment longer.”

Every man on the ship who was not manning a cannon gravitated to the rail to watch the Japanese boat approach. As it drew closer, and the sun came clear of the rugged horizon, they were able to see a dozen or so commoners in drab clothing pulling on the oars, and, in the middle of the boat, three men wearing the same hair-do as Gabriel Goto, each armed with a pair of swords, and dressed in kimonos. Packed in around them were half a dozen archers in outlandish helmets and metal-strip armor. The boat was moving almost directly up-wind and so had not bothered raising her one sail, but from the mast she was flying a large banner of blue silk blazoned with a white insignia, a roundish shape that like the art of the Mahometans did not seem to be a literal depiction of anything in particular, but might have been thrown together by a man who had seen a flower once.

A fresh breeze was rising up out of the Sea of Japan as the day got under way, and no one needed to consult a globe to guess that this air had originated over Siberia. It was the first time Jack had felt cold since he had left Amsterdam-a memory that caused him to rub absent-mindedly at the old harpoon-scar on his arm, which at the moment was all covered with goose-pimples. The crew of Filipinos, Malabaris, and Malays had never felt anything like this, and muttered to one another in astonishment. “Make sure they understand that this is only a taste of what will come when we are crossing the Pacific, or rounding Cape Horn,” van Hoek said to Dappa. “If any of them desires to jump ship, Manila will be his last opportunity.”

“I am giving thought to it myself,” Dappa said, rubbing and spanking himself. His eyes crossed for a moment as he gazed in alarm at steam rising from his own mouth. “I could be a publican at the new Bomb and Grapnel…and never feel cold, except when I had snow brought down from Eliza Peak, and scooped a handful of it into a rum-drink. Brrr! How can those men stand it?” He nodded across fifty yards of chop to the Japanese boat. The Samurais were kneeling there stolidly, facing into the wind, which made their garments billow and snap.

“Later they will go boil themselves in vats,” Enoch said learnedly.

“When I saw Goto-san’s get-up,” Jack said, “I supposed that he’d had it pieced together of scraps collected from Popish Churches and whorehouses, such are the colors. Yet compared to what those sour-pusses in the boat are wearing, Father Gabriel’s togs look like funeral-weeds.”

“They put French Cavaliers to shame,” Enoch agreed.

In a few minutes the Japanese boat advanced into the lee of Minerva and drew up alongside her. Lines were thrown back and forth, and a pilot’s ladder unrolled from the upperdeck. The protocol of what followed had been worked out in such detail that van Hoek had to consult a written list: First, the Cabal gathered near the mainmast and said farewell to Gabriel Goto. Jack, for his part, had never felt especially friendly toward the man, but now he remembered the ronin doing battle against the foe at the needle’s eye in Khan el-Khalili, and his nose ran and tears came to his eyes. Gabriel Goto was recalling the same thing, for he bowed low to Jack and said in Sabir: “I have been a ronin all my life, Jack, which means a Samurai without a master-except for that one day in Cairo when I swore allegiance to you, and for a brief time knew what it was to have a Lord and to fight as part of an Army. Now I go to a place where I will have a new Lord and serve in a different Army. But in my heart I will always owe my first allegiance to you.” And then he removed the two swords, the katana and the wakizashi, from the belt of his garment, and presented them to Jack.

Dappa, van Hoek, Monsieur Arlanc, Padraig, and Vrej Esphahnian each stepped forward to exchange bows with the Samurai. Moseh, Surendranath, and the Shaftoe boys had remained behind in Manila and had already said their good-byes on the banks of the Pasig. Finally Gabriel Goto strode over to the top of the ladder and threw one leg over the gunwale and began to descend, rung by rung, vanishing below the teak horizon. For a moment only his head was visible, his face clenched like a fist, a few stray strands of hair whipping around in the wind. Then it was only his top-knot. Then he was gone.

Jack sighed. “We are a Cabal no longer,” he said. “What began on the roof of the banyolar in Algiers has dissolved in this Japanese smugglers’-cove.”

“We are all business partners now, and not brothers-in-arms,” said Dappa.

“There is no difference to me,” said Vrej Esphahnian, moderately annoyed. “Why should the bonds holding a business partnership together be inferior to those joining brothers-in-arms? For me the venture does not end here-it only begins.”

Jack laughed. “A great adventure to other men is a routine thing for an Armenian, it seems.”

A different top-knot appeared at the gunwale, and a different Samurai came aboard and exchanged bows with van Hoek. It was obvious from the way he looked around that he had never seen a ship of any size before, to say nothing of sailors with red hair, blue eyes, or black skin. But he kept his composure and carried on with the next phase of the protocol: van Hoek presented him with a single egg of wootz, which had been cleverly boxed and wrapped, with great ceremony, by an ancient Japanese lady in Manila. The Samurai made as great a ceremony of unwrapping it, then handed it off to one of his archers, who had to scamper up the ladder to get it.

Van Hoek gave the visitor a tour of Minerva’s hold, where many more eggs of wootz, and diverse other goods besides, were waiting for inspection. Meanwhile Enoch Root caused his black chest to be lowered into the boat. Then he descended the ladder. In a few minutes he was followed by the Samurai, who’d finished his inspection belowdecks. The Japanese boat cast off its lines, raised a sail, and quickly made its way into a pier, where it was tied up next to a much larger vessel, a sort of cargo-barge that looked as if it might be used for ferrying goods between shore and ship. Under the watchful spyglasses of various men on Minerva, everyone disembarked onto the pier. Enoch was escorted to a sort of warehouse on the shore.

Half an hour later the alchemist came out by himself and boarded the boat. Immediately it shoved off and began rowing towards Minerva. At the same time a few score boat-men swarmed over the barge and cast off its mooring-lines, and began laboring with oars and push-poles to move it away from shore.

Enoch Root ascended the pilot’s ladder like a young man, though when his face appeared above the rail he had a grave look about him. To van Hoek he said, “I performed every test I know of. More tests than the assayers in New Spain will likely do. I submit to you that the stuff is as pure as any from the mines of Europe.” To Jack the only thing he said was, “It is a very strange country.”

“How strange?” Jack asked.

Enoch shook his head and answered “Enough to make me understand how strange Christendom is.” Then he retired to his cabin.

Minerva’s sailors pulled his belongings up on ropes: first his chest of alchemical whatnot, and second a box, still partly covered in gaudy wrapping paper. Dappa caught this as it was hoisted over the rail and set it down on a table that they’d brought up from van Hoek’s wardroom. Nestled in crumpled paper inside the box was an egg of fired clay: a flask, stoppered at one end by a wooden bung. Wax had been dribbled over this to seal it, but Enoch Root had already violated the seal so that he could perform his tests. Dappa thrust his hands down into the nest of paper and cupped the egg in his hands and raised it up into cold blue sunlight. Van Hoek drew out his dagger and used its tip to worry the bung loose. When this had been removed, Dappa tipped the flask. Fluid sloshed inside with momentum so potent that it nearly pulled him off his feet. A bead of liquid silver leapt out into the sun and built speed until it struck the tabletop with the impact of a hammer. Then it exploded in a myriad gleaming balls that glided across the table and cascaded over its edge like a waterfall and spattered heavily on Minerva’s deck. The quicksilver probed downhill, seeking gaps between planks, spattering down into the gundeck and making an argent rain among the men who stood tense by their guns. A murmur and then a thrill ran through the ship. It was to every man aboard as if Minerva had received a second christening, with quicksilver instead of Champagne, and that she was now re-consecrated to a new mission and purpose.

It was high noon before the barge was alongside Minerva and the transfer of cargo could begin. This was an awkward way to do it, but the Japanese officials would on no account suffer Minerva to approach shore. With larger cargo it would have been well nigh impossible. But Minerva was laden with wootz, silk, and pepper, and the barge carried nothing but flasks of quicksilver, and bales of straw for packing it. Any of these items could be passed or thrown from hand to hand, and once they had got it organized the transfer went on at a terrific pace-a hundred men, sweating and breathing hard, could transfer tons of cargo in a minute. Steel, spice, and silk streamed out of Minerva’s holds and were replaced by quicksilver. The outgoing and incoming flows grazed each other at one place on the upperdeck, where Monsieur Arlanc and Vrej Esphahnian sat at the table facing each other, each armed with a stockpile of quills, one tallying the quicksilver and the other tallying other goods. Every so often they would call out figures to each other, just making sure that the flows were balanced, so that Minerva would not rise too high or sink too low in the water.

Enoch Root emerged, rubbing sleep from his eyes, when the transfer was perhaps two-thirds complete. He flicked his eyes at Jack, and then van Hoek, and then returned to his cabin.

Twenty seconds later Jack and van Hoek were in there with him.

“I was trying to sleep but that lanthorn kept me awake,” Enoch said, nodding at an oil lamp that was suspended from the ceiling of his cabin on a chain. It was swinging back and forth dramatically even though the ship was only rocking slightly from side to side.

“Why don’t you take it down?” Jack asked.

“Because I think it is trying to tell me something,” Enoch said. He then turned his gaze on van Hoek. “You told me, once, that every harbor, depending on its size, has a characteristic wave. You said that even if you were lying in your cabin with the curtains drawn you could tell the difference between Batavia and Cavite simply by the period of the waves.”

“It’s true,” van Hoek said. “Any captain can tell you stories of ships that were proven seaworthy, but that were cast away entering an unfamiliar harbor, because the period of that harbor’s waves happened to match the natural frequency of the ship’s hull.”

“Every ship, depending on how it is ballasted and laden, rocks in a particular rhythm-just as this lantern swings at a fixed rate,” said Enoch, explaining it for Jack. “If waves strike that ship in the same rhythm, then she soon begins moving so violently that she overturns and is cast away.”

“Just as a lute-string that is plucked makes its partner, which is tuned to the same note, vibrate in natural sympathy,” said van Hoek. “Go on, Enoch.”

“When we sailed into this harbor early this morning, my lanthorn suddenly began to swing so violently that it was bashing against the ceiling and spilling oil about the cabin,” Enoch said. “And so I took it down and adjusted the chain to a different length, as you see it now.” Enoch now lifted the lanthorn’s chain from its hook in the ceiling-beam, and began to feel his way along, link by link, until he came to one that was worn smooth. “This is how it was when we entered the harbor,” he said, and then re-hung the lanthorn so that it dangled a few inches lower than before. He pulled it away to the side and then let it go, and it began swinging back and forth in the center of the cabin. “So it follows that the frequency we observe now-swing, swing, swing-is tuned to the natural period of this harbor’s waves.”

“With all due respect to you and your friends of the Royal Society,” van Hoek said, “can this demonstration not wait until we are out in the middle of the Sea of Japan?”

“It cannot,” Enoch said calmly, “because we will never reach the Sea of Japan. This is a death-trap.”

Van Hoek was about to spring to his feet, but Enoch restrained him with a hand on the shoulder, and glanced out his cabin window lest they be observed by some Japanese. “Hold,” he said, “it is a subtle trap and subtle we must be to escape it. Jack, on my bed there is a flask.”

Jack, who was too tall to stand upright in the cabin, crab-walked sideways a step or two, and found one of the quicksilver-flasks nestled among Enoch’s bed-clothes.

“Hold it out at arm’s length,” Enoch said.

Jack did so, though it took the strength of both arms. The quicksilver inside the flask swirled about as he moved it, but then it settled. His hands became still. Then the liquid metal began sloshing back and forth, forcing his hands to move left, right, left, right, no matter how hard he tried to hold it still.

“Mark the lantern,” said Enoch. Attention shifted from the sloshing flask to the swinging light.

Van Hoek saw it first. “They move at the same period.”

“Which is the same as what?” Enoch asked, like a schoolmaster leading his pupils forward onto new ground.

“The natural rhythm of the waves at the entrance to this harbor,” Jack said.

“I have tried three flasks in this way, and all of them slosh at the same frequency,” Enoch said. “I submit to you that they have been tuned, as carefully as the pipes in a cathedral-organ. When this ship is fully loaded, and we try to sail out the harbor’s mouth-”

“We will hit those waves…ten tons of quicksilver will began to heave back and forth…we will be torn apart,” van Hoek said.

“It is a simple matter to remedy,” Enoch said. “All we need is to go down and open the flasks and fill each one up so that they cannot slosh. But we must not let the Japanese know that we have figured out their plan, or else they will swarm on us. The warehouse on shore has an oily smell. I believe that there are many archers concealed in the woods, waiting with fire-arrows.”

THEY FINISHED THE TRANSFER OF goods with plenty of daylight left. The Samurai in charge of the barge bid them farewell with a perfunctory bow and then turned his attention to getting his hoard of exotic goods in to shore. Van Hoek ordered preparations made for sailing, but they were of a highly elaborate nature, and took much longer than they might have. Belowdecks he had pulled one man off of each gun crew and put as many as he could muster to work unstoppering the quicksilver-flasks and decanting the mercury from one to the next, until each one was brim-full. Aboard ship there was never a shortage of pitch and black stuff used for caulking seams, and so each one of the flasks was sealed shut in that way. Half an hour before sunset van Hoek ordered the anchors weighed, a procedure that lasted until twilight had fallen over the harbor.

From that point onwards it was mad, black toil for many hours. There was a full moon (they’d planned it that way long in advance, so that they’d have better light during the tricky parts of the journey) and it shone very bright in the cold sky. As they traversed the harbor entrance, all of the ship’s officers gathered in Enoch’s cabin to watch the one quicksilver flask that had not been changed; it seemed to come alive at a certain point, when the rhythmic waves struck the hull, and thrashed around as if some djinn were trapped inside trying to fight its way out.

This was the point when the Japanese must have realized that their trap had been foiled, and out they came in longboats that were all ablaze with many points of fire from burning arrows. But van Hoek was ready. Abovedecks, the riggers had quietly readied all the courses of sail that Minerva had to offer, and they spread it all before the wind as soon as they heard the war-drums booming from the shore. Belowdecks, every cannon had been loaded with grape-shot. The Japanese boats could not hope to match Minerva’s speed once she got under way, and the few that came close were driven back by her cannons. All of about half a dozen burning arrows lodged in her teak-wood and were quickly snuffed out by officers with buckets of sand and water. They were able to get well clear of the shore, and of their pursuers, by the moon’s light.

When the sun rose over Japan the next morning, a soldier’s wind came up out of the west-which meant it blew perpendicular to their southerly heading, and was therefore so easy to manage that even soldiers could have trimmed the sails. Nevertheless van Hoek kept her speed low at first, because he was concerned that the flasks would shift about in their straw packing as they entered into heavier seas. As Minerva worked through various types of waves, van Hoek prowled around her decks sensing the movements of the cargo like a clairvoyant, and frequently communing with the spirit of Jan Vroom (who had died of malaria a year ago). His verdict, of course, was that they’d done a miserable job of packing the flasks, and that it would all have to be re-done when they got to Manila, but that, given the hazards of pirates and typhoons, they had no choice but to raise more sail anyway. So that is what they did.

They added one or two more knots to their speed thereby, and after three days, ran the Straits of Tsushima: a procedure that might have been devised by some fiendish engineer specifically to drive van Hoek mad with anxiety, as it involved running down a complex and current-ridden, yet poorly charted chute hemmed in on one side by pirate-islands of Korea and on the other by a country (Japan) where it was death for a foreigner to set foot. The paintings of Gabriel Goto’s father were of very little use because that ronin had been piloting a boat of much shallower draft than Minerva and invariably chose to hug shorelines and squirt through gaps between islands where Minerva could not go.

At any rate they made it through, and putting the mountains of Japan on their larboard quarter they ventured into the East China Sea. Immediately the lookout identified sails to larboard: a ship emerging through a spacious gap between certain outlying Japanese islands, and coming about into a course roughly parallel with their own. This was curious, because the charts showed nothing but Japanese land in the direction from which the ship had come-beyond that, it was the Pacific Ocean for one hundred degrees, and then vague sketches of a supposed American coastline. And yet this ship was unmistakably European. More to the point, as van Hoek announced after peering at it for a while through his spyglass, it was Dutch. And that settled the mystery. This was one of those Dutch vessels that was allowed to sail into the harbor of Nagasaki and anchor before Deshima-a walled and guarded island-compound near that city, where a handful of Europeans were suffered to dwell for brief periods as they traded with the representatives of the Shogun.

Now van Hoek ordered that the Dutch flag be run up on the mizzenmast, and had them fire a salute from the ship’s cannons. The Dutch ship responded in kind, and so after exchanging various signals with flags and mirrors, the two vessels fell in alongside each other, and gradually drew close enough that words could be hollered back and forth through speaking-trumpets. Every man on board who knew how to write was busy writing letters for himself, or on behalf of those who couldn’t, because it was obvious that this Dutch ship was headed for Batavia, and thence west-bound. Within a few months she would be dropping anchor in Rotterdam.

This was when they lost their Alchemist.

When it came clear that they were about to lose their Adult Supervision, Jack felt panic under his feet like a swell pressing up on the ship’s hull. But he did not suppose that it would instill confidence, among the crew, for him to break down and blubber. So he acted as if this had been expected all along. Indeed, in a way it had. Enoch Root had shown inhuman patience during the last couple of years, as the transaction of the quicksilver had been slowly teased together, and there had been plenty of interesting diversions for him in the Chinese and Japanese barangays of Manila, the countless strange islands of the Philippines, and in helping to establish Mr. Foot as the White Sultan of Queena-Kootah. But it was long since time for him to move on.

He had taken up an interest in the vast territories limned on Dutch charts to the South and East of the Philippines: New Guinea; the supposed Australasian Continent; Van Diemen’s Land; and a chain of islands sprawling off into the uncharted heart of the South Pacific, called the Islands of Solomon.

Enoch stood on the upperdeck, waiting for his chests and bags to be lowered into the longboat. As he often did in idle moments, he reached into the pocket of his traveling-cloak and took out a contraption that looked a bit like a spool. But a poorly made one, for the ends of the spool were bulky, and the slot in between them, where the cord was wound, was narrow. He unwound a couple of inches of cord and slipped his finger through a loop that had been tied in its end. Then he allowed the spool to fall from his hand. It dropped slowly at first, as the spool’s inertia resisted its tendency to unwind, but then it picked up speed and plunged smoothly toward the deck. Just shy of hitting the planks it stopped abruptly, having unwound its meager supply of cord. At the same moment Enoch gave a little twitch of the hand, and the spool reversed its direction and began to climb up the string.

Jack glanced across several fathoms of open water toward the Dutch ship. A dozen or so sailors were watching this miracle with their mouths open.

“They cannot see the string at this distance,” Jack commented, “and suppose you are doing some sort of magick.”

“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a yo-yo,” Enoch said.

“That could not hurt a sparrow,” Jack said. “I prefer the original type with the rotating knives.”

“All well and good for striking prey off tree-limbs in the Philippine jungle,” Enoch said, “but it gets uncomfortable, carrying such weapons about in one’s pocket.”

“Where art thou and thy yo-yos bound?”

“It is rumored that the purple savages of Arnhem Land also make throwing-weapons that return to the thrower,” Enoch said, “but without a string, or any other such physickal connexion.”

“Impossible!”

“As I said-‘Any sufficiently advanced tech-’ ”

“I heard you the first time. So it’s off to Arnhem Land. And then?”

Enoch paused to check the progress of the boat-loading, and seeing that he still had a minute or two, related the following: “You know that our entire Enterprise hinges on our being able to corrupt certain Spanish officials and sea-captains, which is not inherently difficult. But we have had to spend countless hours wining and dining them, and listening to their interminable yarns and sea-fables. Most of these are tedious and unremarkable. But I heard one that interested me. It was told me by one Alfonso, who was first mate aboard a galleon that left Manila for Acapulco some years ago. As usual they attempted to sail north to a higher latitude where they could get in front of the trade wind to California. Instead they were met by a tempest that drove them to the south for many days. The next time they were able to make solar observations, they discovered that they had actually crossed the Line and were several degrees south. Now the storm had washed away all of the earth that they had packed around their hearth in the galley, making it impossible for them to light a cook-fire without setting the whole galleon ablaze. So they dropped anchor near an island (for they’d come in sight of a whole chain of ’em, populated by people who looked like Africans) and gathered sand and fresh water. The water they used to replenish their drinking-jars. The sand they packed around their hearth. Then they continued their journey. When they arrived at Acapulco, the better part of a year later, they discovered nuggets of gold under the hearth-evidently that sand was auriferous and the heat of the fire had melted the gold and separated it from the sand. Needless to say, the Viceroy in Mexico City-”

“The same?”

Enoch nodded. “The very same from whom you stole the gold before Bonanza. He was informed of this prodigy, and did not delay in sending out a squadron, under an admiral named de Obregon, to sail along that line of latitude until they found those islands.”

“Would those be the Solomon Islands?”

“As you know, Jack, it has long been supposed that Solomon-the builder of the Temple in Jerusalem, the first Alchemist, and the subject of Isaac Newton’s obsessions for lo these many years, departed from the Land of Israel before he died, and journeyed far to the east, and founded a kingdom among certain islands. It is a part of this legend that this kingdom was fabulously wealthy.”

“Funny how no one ever makes up legends concerning wretchedly poor kingdoms-”

“It matters not whether this legend is true, only that some people believe it,” Enoch said patiently. He had begun to do tricks with the yo-yo now, making it fly around his hand like a comet whipping around the sun.

“Such as this Newton fellow? The one who reckoned the orbits of the planets?”

“Newton is convinced that Solomon’s temple was a geometrickal model of the solar system-the fire on the central altar representing the sun, et cetera.”

“So he would fain know about it, if the Islands of Solomon were discovered…”

“Indeed.”

“…and no doubt he has already perused the chronicles of that expedition that was sent out by our friend in Bonanza.”

Enoch shook his head. “There are no such chronicles.”

“The expedition was shipwrecked?”

“Shipwrecked, killed by disease…the vectors of disaster were so plentiful that the accounts cannot be reconciled. Only one ship made it to Manila, half of her crew dead and the rest dying of some previously unheard-of pestilence. The only one who survived was one Elizabeth de Obregon, the wife of the Admiral who had commanded the squadron.”

“And what does she have to say for herself?”

“She has said nothing. In a society where women cannot own property, Jack, secrets are to them what gold and silver are to men.”

“Why did the Viceroy not then send out another squadron?”

“Perhaps he did.”

“You have grown coy, Enoch, and time grows short.”

“It is not that I am coy, but that you are lazy in your thinking. If such expeditions had been sent out, and found nothing, what would the results be?”

“Nothing.”

“If an expedition had succeeded, what result then?”

“Some chronicle, kept secret in a Spanish vault in Mexico or Seville, and a great deal of gold…” Here Jack faltered.

“What did you expect to find in the hold of the Viceroy’s brig?”

“Silver.”

“What found you instead?”

“Gold.”

“But the mines of Mexico produce only silver.”

“It is true…we never solved the mystery of the origin of that gold.”

“Do you have any idea, Jack, how many alchemists are numbered among the ruling classes of Christendom?”

“I’ve heard rumors.”

“If a rumor got out among those people-kings, dukes, and princes-that the Island of Solomon had been discovered, and gold taken from there-not just any gold, mind you, but gold that came from the furnaces of King Solomon himself, and was very close to being the pure stuff of the Philosopher’s Stone and the Philosophick Mercury-I should think that it would excite a certain amount of interest. Wouldn’t you say?”

“If rumor got out, why, yes-”

“It always gets out,” Enoch explained flatly. “Does this help to explain why so many great men are so very angry with you?”

“I never thought it wanted explanation. But now that you mention it…”

“Good. And I hope it also explains why I must go and see these Solomon Islands myself. If the legends are true, then Newton will want to know all about it. Even if they are nothing more than legends, those islands might be a good place for a man to go, if he wanted to get away from the world for a few years, or a few centuries…in any event, that is where I am bound.”

The yo-yo came up sharply into Enoch’s palm and stopped.

THE SEA-VOYAGE FROM JAPAN to Manila had in common with all other sea-voyages that it was all about latitudes. Van Hoek, Dappa, and several others aboard knew how to find their latitude by observing the sun’s position in the sky. The sun came out at least once a day and so they always had a good idea of which parallel they were at. But there was no way to reckon longitude. Accordingly, van Hoek’s charts and records of Hazards to Navigation tended to be organized by latitude. Along certain parallels they had nothing to worry about, because in this part of the world (according to the documents) no reefs or islands existed there. But along certain other parallels, hazards had been discovered, and so whenever Minerva was found to be in such latitudes the mood of the ship changed, sail was reduced, lookouts added, soundings taken. They might have been a hundred miles due east or due west of the Hazard in question; not having any idea of their longitude, there was simply no telling. Since the voyage from Japan to Manila was a north-to-south one, their degree of latitude, and their degree of anxiety, were changing every moment.

Other than reefs and islands, the chief hazards were typhoons, and the kingdom of Corsairs who had wrested Formosa from the Dutch some years previously, and through whose waters they had to sail in order to reach Luzon. On this voyage both of those hazards struck on the same day: Corsairs sighted them and fell into an intercept course, but before they could close with Minerva, the weather began to alter in ways that suggested an approaching typhoon. The Corsairs broke off the pursuit and turned their energies to survival. By this point Minerva had ridden out several such storms, and her officers and crew knew how it was done; van Hoek could make educated guesses as to how the direction of the wind would change over the course of the next two days, and how its strength would vary according to their distance from its center. By setting some storm-sails and managing the tiller personally, he was able to arrange it so that they were not driven against the isle of Formosa. Instead the typhoon flung them out to the south and east, into the Philippine Sea, which was deep water with no obstructions. Later, when the weather cleared and they could shoot the sun again, they sought out a particular latitude (19° 45’ N) and followed that parallel west for two hundred miles until they had passed through the Balintang Channel, which separated some groups of small islands north of Luzon. Turning to the south then, they made way with great care until the hills and headlands of Ilocos-the northwestern corner of Luzon-came into view.

At that moment the character of the voyage changed. Three hundred miles separated them from the point of Mariveles at the entrance to Manila Bay, and it would all be coastal sailing, which meant contending with weak and fickle winds, and taking frequent soundings, and dropping anchor at night lest they run aground on some unseeable hazard in the dark. Some days they made no progress whatever, owing to contrary winds-by day, they traded with locals for fresh fruit and meat brought out in long dual-outrigger boats, and by night they patrolled Minerva’s decks with loaded blunderbusses, waiting for those same locals to steal out in the same boats and creep over the gunwales with knives in their teeth.

At any rate, ten days of this sort of travel brought them, late one afternoon, to the point of Mariveles, where several rocks projected from the surf like daggers. The garrison on the nearby island of Corregidor caught sight of Minerva around sunset and lit some fires to prevent her from running aground. By triangulating against these they were able to bring the ship gingerly around the south side of the island and drop anchor in the bay there. The next morning the Spanish ensign in command of the garrison came out on a longboat for an hour’s visit; they knew him thoroughly, as Minerva had passed this way a dozen or so times on her triangular voyages among Manila, Macao, and Queena-Kootah. He gave them the latest jokes and gossip from Manila and they gave him some packets of spices and a few trinkets they’d picked up in Japan.

They weighed anchor and sailed across Manila Bay. The Spanish castle on the point of Cavite came into view first, and later they could make out, beyond it, the bell-towers and fortifications of Manila, and a thicket of masts and spars, shot through with furling silk banners, around the outlet of the Pasig River. It was the expectation of most aboard that they would make direct for there. But as they weathered the point of Cavite and entered into calmer water in the lee of the castle, van Hoek ordered most of the sails taken in. A banca-a sort of longboat hewn from the trunk of a single colossal tree-came toward them, and as it drew closer, Jack was able to recognize Moseh and Surendranath, who had stayed behind to settle some business affairs, and Jimmy and Danny, who had been acting as their bodyguards. One by one these men clambered up the pilot’s ladder and joined their brethren on the upperdeck. Moseh and Surendranath went back into van Hoek’s wardroom to confer with the captain and the other chief men of the enterprise. Jack could have participated in this meeting but declined to because he could tell from the look on Moseh’s face that it had all gone more or less well, and that their next voyage would be eastbound.

This was the innermost harbor of Manila Bay: a hammock-shaped anchorage slung between two points of land several miles apart, each of which had been built up into a fortress by the Spaniards, or rather by their Tagalian minions, during the century and a half that they had held sway over these islands. The closer of the two forts, just off their starboard, was Cavite: a conventional square, four-bastioned castle thrust out into the water on a slender neck of land, so that the bay served as its moat. A ditch had been dug across that neck so that the landward approach could be controlled by a drawbridge. This ditch was situated at some distance from the castle proper, and the intervening space had been covered with buildings: a crowd of cane houses with more substantial wood-frame dwellings rising out of it from place to place, and three stone churches that had been erected, or were being erected, by various Popish religious orders.

The opposite end of the harbor was the city of Manila proper. The Spaniards had taken a small peninsula framed on one side by the Bay and on two others by rivers: the Pasig, and a welter of pissant tributaries that joined the Pasig just short of where it emptied into the Bay. They had enclosed this peninsula in a modern sort of slope-sided wall, a couple of miles in circuit, and erected noble bulwarks and demilunes at its corners, rendering it impregnable to land assault by Dutch, Chinese, or native legions. The outlet of the Pasig was dominated by a considerable fortress whose guns commanded the river, the Bay, and certain troublesome ethnic barangays across the river.

From this point of view-or any point of view, for that matter-it did not look like a fabled citadel of inconceivable wealth. If the Spaniards had built Manila anywhere else, her church-spires and watch-towers would have reached into the clouds. As it was, even the noblest buildings hugged the ground and had a stoop-shouldered look about them, because they had learned the hard way that anything more than two storeys high, and built of stone, would be brought down by an earthquake while the mortar was scarcely dry. So as Jack stood there on Minerva’s deck he perceived Manila as something very dark, low, and heavy, and overlaid with smoke and humidity, softened only a little by the high coconut palms that lined her shore.

This was just the sort of weather that culminated in a bracing thunder-shower-a fact Minerva’s crew knew well, for Manila had been their home port for most of the three years since the ship had made her maiden voyage out of Malabar, and at any rate half the crew had grown up along the shores of this bay. They also knew that this bay offered no protection from north winds, and that a big ship like Minerva would be cast away if she were caught between Cavite and Manila when the wind shifted round that way; she would run a-ground in the shallows and fall prey to Tagalians who would come out in their tree-trunk boats and Chinese sangley s who would come out in their sampans to salvage her. So instead of being boisterous, as one might reasonably expect of sailors who’d just made a perilous and improbable voyage to Japan and back, they were solemn as monks on Sunday, and angrily shushed anyone who raised his voice. Malabaris had suspended themselves in the ratlines like spiders in webs and were hanging there motionless with eyes half closed and mouths half open, waiting for meaningful stirrings in the air.

The sky and air were all white, and of a uniform brightness, so that it was impossible to get even a general notion of where the sun might be. According to the hour-glasses they used to keep track of watches, it must be an hour or so before sunset. The whole bay was as still and hushed as Minerva’s upperdeck; the only noise, therefore, came from the vast shipyard that spread along the shore below the sullen arsenal of Cavite. There five hundred Filipino slaves were at work under the whips and guns of helmeted Spaniards, constructing the largest ship Jack had ever seen. Which, considering the places he had been, meant that it was very likely the largest ship the world had seen since Noah’s Ark had run a-ground on a mountain-top and been broken up for firewood.

Piled on the shore in pyramids were the stripped boles of giant trees that these Filipinos, or others in the same predicament, had cut down in the bat-infested jungles that crowded in along the shores of Laguna de Bay (a great lake just inland of Manila) and floated in rafts down the Pasig. Some of the workers were cutting these into beams and planks. But the great ship was close to being finished and so the demand for huge timbers was not what it had been months ago when the keel and frames had stood out like stiff fingers against the sky. Most of the laborers were concerned with finer matters now: making cables (indeed, Manila made the finest cordage in the world), caulking joints between hull-planks, and doing finish carpentry on the cabins where the most ambitious merchants of the South Seas would dwell for most of the next year, or drown within weeks, depending on how it went.

“Dad, either my eyes play tricks, or else you’ve finally traded in that Mahometan spadroon for proper armaments,” said Daniel Shaftoe, eyeing the katana and wakizashi of Gabriel Goto, thrust into Jack’s belt.

“I’ve been trying to grow accustomed to ’em,” Jack allowed, “but it’s all for naught. One-handed is how I learned to fight, and it’s all I’ll ever know. I wear these to honor Goto-san, but when next I venture into some place where I might need to do some defensing, it’s the Janissary-sword I’ll be wearing.”

“Aw, it ain’t that hard, Dad,” said Jimmy, coming up to shoulder past his brother. “By the time we reach Acapulco we’ll have you swingin’ that katana like a Samurai.” Jimmy patted the hilt of a Japanese sword, and now Jack noticed that Danny was armed in the same manner.

“Been broadening your horizons?”

“Manila is better than the ’varsity,” Danny proclaimed, “as long as you remain a step ahead o’ that pesky Spanish Inquisition…”

“From the fact that Moseh is still alive, and has all his fingernails, I’m guessing you succeeded there.”

“We fulfilled our obligations,” Jimmy said hotly. “We took lodgings on the edge of the barangay of the Japanese Christians-”

“-an orderly place-” Danny offered

“Perhaps a bit too orderly,” Jimmy said. “But we were hard up against the wicker walls of the sangley neighborhood, which is a perpetual riot, and so whenever the Inquisitors came after us we withdrew into that place for a while, and kept a sharp eye on one another’s backs until such time as Moseh could settle the matter.”

“I did not appreciate that Moseh had any such influence with the Sons of Torquemada,” Jack said.

“Moseh has let it be known, to a few of the Spaniards, what we are planning,” said Danny. “Suddenly those Spaniards are our friends.”

“They call off the Inquisitor’s dogs whenever Moseh lets out a squawk,” Jimmy said airily.

“I wonder what their friendship will cost us,” Jack said.

“They’d be more expensive as enemies, Dad,” Danny said, and in his voice was a confidence that Jack had not felt about anything in about twenty years.

The teak deck was changing color from a weathered iron-gray to a warmer hue, almost as if a fire had been kindled belowdecks and was trying to burn its way through. Jack looked away toward the exit of the bay, and saw the cause: The sun, now a hand’s breath above the horizon, had bored a hole through the miasma of vapor over the bay. Wisps and banks that still lurked in pockets of shade and stagnant coves round the foundations of the arsenal were fleeing from its sudden heat like smoke driven before a gust. For all that, the air was still. But a faint rumble prompted Jack to turn around and look east. Manila stood out in the clear now, her walls and bastions glowing in the sunlight as if they had been hewn out of amber and lit from behind by fire. The mountains behind the city were visible, which was a rare event. By comparison with them, the highest works of the Spaniards were low and flat as paving-stones. But those mountains in turn were humbled by phantasmic interlocking cloud-formations that were incarnating themselves in the limitless skies above, somewhat as if the personages and beasts of the Constellations had become fed up with being depicted in scatterings of faint stars, and had decided to come down out of the cosmos and clothe themselves in the stuff of typhoons. But they seemed to be having a dispute as to which would claim the most gorgeous and brilliant vapors, and the argument showed every sign of becoming a violent one. No lightning had struck the ground yet, and the cataracts of rain shed by some clouds were swallowed by others before they descended to the plane of the mountain-tops.

Jack altered his focus to the yards of Minerva, which compared to all of this were like broom-straws tangled together in a gutter. The men of the current watch were quietly making ready to be hit. Below, the head men of what had formerly been the Cabal had emerged from van Hoek’s cabin and were moving forward. Some of them, such as Dappa and Monsieur Arlanc, had gone to the trouble of changing into gentlemanly clothes: breeches, hose, and leather shoes had been broken out of foot-lockers. Vrej Esphahnian and van Hoek were wearing actual periwigs and tri-cornered hats.

Van Hoek stopped just in front of the mainmast, at the edge of the quarterdeck, which loomed above the broadest part of the upperdeck like a balcony over a plaza. Most of the ship’s complement had gathered there, and those who couldn’t find room, or who were too short to see over their fellows’ heads, had ascended to the forecastledeck whence they could look aft and meet van Hoek’s eye from the same level. The sailors had grouped themselves according to color so that they could hear translations: the largest two groups were the Malabaris and the Filipinos, but there were Malays, Chinese, several Africans from Mozambique by way of Goa, and a few Gujaratis. Several of the ship’s officers were Dutchmen who had come out with Jan Vroom. To look after the cannons they had rounded up a French, a Bavarian, and a Venetian artilleryman from the rabble of mercenaries that hung around Shahjahanabad. Finally there were the surviving members of the Cabal: van Hoek, Dappa, Monsieur Arlanc, Padraig Tallow, Jack Shaftoe, Moseh de la Cruz, Vrej Esphahnian, and Surendranath. When Jimmy and Danny Shaftoe were added, the number came to a hundred and five. Of these, some twenty were active in the rigging, readying the ship for weather.

Jack ascended the stairs to the quarterdeck and took up a position behind van Hoek, among the other share-holders. As he turned round to look out over the upperdeck-facing in the general direction of Manila-one of those constellation-gods in the sky above the city, furious because he had ended up in possession of nothing more than a few shredded rags of dim gray-indigo stuff, flung a thunderbolt horizontally into the mid-section of a rival, who was dressed in incandescent coral and green satin. The distance between them must have been twenty miles. It seemed as if a sudden crack had spanned a quarter of Heaven’s vault, allowing infinitely more brilliant light to shine through it, for an instant, from some extremely well-illuminated realm beyond the known universe. It was just as well that the crew were facing the other way-though some of them noticed startled expressions on the faces of the worthies on the quarterdeck, and swiveled their heads to see what was the matter. They saw nothing except a blade of rain sinking into the black jungle beyond Manila.

“It must have been Yevgeny, throwing a c?lestial Harpoon, to remind van Hoek that brevity is a virtue,” Jack said, and those who had known Yevgeny chuckled nervously.

“We have lived through another voyage,” van Hoek announced, “and if this were a Christian ship I would take my hat off and say a prayer of thanksgiving. But as it is a ship of no one particular faith, I shall keep my hat on until I can say my prayers alone later. Go you all to your temples, pagodas, shrines, and churches in Manila this night and do likewise.”

There was a general muttering of assent as this was translated. Minerva had no fewer than three cooks, and three completely different sets of pots. The only group who did not have their own were the Christians, who, when it came to food, would balk at nothing.

“Never again will this group of men be all together in one place,” said van Hoek. “Enoch Root has already bid us farewell. Within a fortnight Surendranath and some of you Malabaris will set sail for Queena-Kootah on the brig Kottakkal so that the rightful share of our profits may be conveyed to the Queen of the same name. In time Padraig will join them. He, Surendranath, and Mr. Foot will pursue happiness in the South Seas while the rest of us journey onwards. You sailors will disperse into Manila tonight. Some of you will return to this ship in one month’s time to prepare on our great voyage. Others will think better of it.”

Van Hoek now yanked out his cutlass and aimed it at the titanic ship that was being finished before the arsenal of Cavite. “Behold!” he proclaimed. All heads turned toward the mountainous galleon, but only for a moment; then attention turned to the weather. A wind had finally been summoned up, and it came from the east but showed signs of swinging round to the north. But the watch had a sail ready on the maintop, and they raised it now and let the wind bite into it, and trimmed it so as to bring Minerva about and convey her toward deeper waters in the center of the bay.

“A great ship for a great voyage,” van Hoek said, referring to the Spanish behemoth. “That is the Manila Galleon, and soon it will be laden with all the silks of China and spices of India and it will sail out of this bay and commence a voyage of seven months, crossing half of the terraqueous globe. When the Philippines fall away to aft her anchors will be brought up and stowed in the nethermost part of her hold, because for more than half a year they’ll not see a speck of dry land, and anchors will be as much use to her as bilge-pumps on an ox-cart. Northward she’ll sail, as far north as Japan, until she reaches a certain latitude-known only to the Spaniards-where trade winds blow due east, and where there are no isles or reefs to catch them unawares in mid-ocean. Then they’ll run before the wind and pray for rain, lest they die of thirst and wash up on the shores of California, a ghost-ship crowded with parched skeletons. Sometimes those trade-winds will falter, and they’ll drift aimlessly for a day, then two days, then a week, until a typhoon comes up from the south, or Arctic blasts come down out of the polar regions and freeze them with a chill compared to which what made us shiver and chafe so in Japan is as balmy as a maiden’s breath against your cheek. They will run out of food, and wealthy Epicureans, after they’ve eaten their own shoes and the leathern covers of their Bibles, will kneel in their cabins and send up delirious prayers for God to send them just one of the moldy crusts that earlier in the voyage they threw away. Gums will shrivel away from teeth, which will fall out until they must be swept off the deck like so many hailstones.”

This similitude was apparently improvised by van Hoek, for a barrage of pea-sized hail had just sprayed out of a low swirling cloud and speckled the deck. All hands looked at the hail and dutifully imagined teeth. A gust came across the water, decapitating a thousand whitecaps and flinging their spray sideways through the air; it caught them upside their heads, and in the same instant the sail popped like a musket-shot and the whole structure of the ship heaved and groaned from the impact. A rope burst and began thrashing about on the deck like a living thing as the tension bled out of it and its lays came undone. But then this momentary squall subsided and they found themselves working into a blustery north wind, across the darkling bay. The sun had plunged meteorically into the South China Sea, and its light was now overmatched by the lightning over Manila, which had merged into a continuous blue radiance that a person could almost read by.

“One day, long after they’ve given up hope, one of these wretches-one of the few who can still stand-will be up on deck, throwing corpses over the rail, when he’ll see something afloat in the water below: a scrap of seaweed, no bigger than my finger. Not a thing you or I would take any note of-but to them, as miraculous as a visitation by an angel! There’ll be a lot of praying and hymn-singing on that day. But it will all end in cruel disappointment, for no more seaweed will be observed that day, or the next, or the next. Another week they’ll sail-nothing! Nothing to do but run before the wind, and try with all their might to resist the temptation to cannibalize the bodies of the dead. By that point the most saintly Dominican brothers aboard will forget their prayers, and curse their own mothers for having borne them. And then another week of the same! But finally the seaweed will appear-not just a single bit of it, but two, then three. This will signify that they are off the coast of California, which is an island belted all around with such weeds.”

Jack noticed at about this time, that the blue-green light had grown much brighter, and had become steady and silent as if some eldritch Neptunian sun had risen out of the water, casting light but no warmth. Fighting a powerful instinctive reluctance, he forced himself to look up into the spars and rigging of the mainmast. Every bit of it-every splinter of wood and fiber of cordage-was aglow with crackling radiance, as if it had been dipped in phosphorus. It was a sight worthy of a good long look, but Jack made himself look down at the crowd on the quarterdeck instead. He saw a pool of upturned faces, teeth and eyes a-gleam, a well of souls gazing up in wonder.

“First ’twas Yevgeny-now Enoch Root is putting in his tuppence worth,” he joked, but if anyone did so much as chuckle, the sound was swallowed up in the susurration of waves against the hull. Van Hoek turned and glanced at Jack for a moment, then squared off again to continue his terrible Narration. The weird Fire of Saint Elmo had crawled down the mast to dance round the fringes of his tri-cornered hat, and even the curls of his goat-hair wig had become infected by sparks that buzzed and rustled as if alive. The individual hairs of that long-dead goat were now re-animated as if by some voudoun chaunt, and began trying to get away from each other, which entailed straightening and spreading out-wards. The quivering tip of each hair was defended by a nasty corona.

Van Hoek paid it no mind; if he was even aware of it, he evidently saw it as a way to add emphasis to his words. “Yet their ordeal is not finished, but only takes a different form; now they must endure the torment of Tantalus, for that land of milk and honey is the domain of savages, and no victuals are to be found on her shores-only sudden and violent death. Now they must sail for many long days down that coast, moving ever southeastward, making occasional desperate forays on to the land to scavenge fresh water or game. Finally one day they spy a Spanish watch-tower glowering down upon ’em from a stony mountain-top above the sea. Signals are exchanged, letting those on the ship know that riders have been sent out, galloping down the King’s Highway to the City of Mexico to spread the news that this year’s Manila Galleon has not been cast away or sunk in a storm but, mirabile dictu, has survived. Several days more and then a Spanish town comes into view. Boats come out bearing the first fruit and vegetables that these travelers will have eaten in half a year. But, too, they bring tidings that both French and English pirates have rounded Cape Horn and are prowling the coast-many dangerous miles still separate them from their destination of Acapulco…”

The Saint Elmo’s Fire was dying down now, and the miraculous pocket of calm in which they had drifted for the last several minutes was giving way to something a bit more like a thunderstorm. A big roller got under the hull, and the faces on the upperdeck undulated like a field of grain as every man sought his balance.

“As I said, we will be departing a few weeks after the Galleon, and we require sailors…” van Hoek began.

“Er, excuse me there, Cap’n,” Jack said, “your description of the voyage’s terrors was most affecting, and I’m sure every man jack has shited his breeches now…but you have forgotten to include any countervailing material. Having aroused the fear, you must now stimulate the avarice, of these sailors or else they will jump overboard and swim to shore right now, and will never enlist again.”

Van Hoek now got a contemptuous look which Jack was only able to see with the help of a convenient triple lightning bolt. “You sorely underestimate their intelligence, sir. It is not necessary to come out and state everything so directly. A well-formed Narration says as much by what is left out of it as by what is put in.”

“Then perhaps you should have left more out. I have some experience in matters theatrickal, sir,” Jack said, “which is applicable here insofar as this quarterdeck resembles nothing so much as a stage, and those, to my eye-notwithstanding your very generous estimate of their intelligence-look like nothing so much as groundlings, knee-deep in hazelnut shells and gin-bottles, waiting-begging-to be hit over their heads with some direct and unambiguous message.”

A lightning-bomb detonated over Manila.

“There is your message,” van Hoek said pointing toward the city, “and your groundlings will go into it tonight, and dwell in that Message for the next two months. You have dwelt there, too, Jack-did the Message not reach your ears?”

“I may have heard faint whisperings-could you amplify it?”

“Of all the enterprises to which a man can devote his energies,” van Hoek began grudgingly, raising his voice, “long-distance trade is the most profitable. It is what every Jew, Puritan, Dutchman, Huguenot, Armenian, and Banyan aspires to-it is what built the Navies and palaces of Europe, the Court of the Great Mogul in Shahjahanabad, and many other prodigies besides. And yet in the world of trade, it is common knowledge that no circuit-not the slave trade of the Caribbean, not the spice trade of the Indies-exceeds the Manila-to-Acapulco run in sheer profit. The wealthiest Banyans in Surat and bankers in Genoa lay their perfumed heads on silken pillows at night, and dream of sending a few bales of cargo across the Pacific on the Manila Galleon. Even with all the dangers, and the swingeing duty that must be shelled out to the Viceroy, the profits never fall below four hundred percent. That city is founded upon such dreams, Jack. We are all going to go there now.”

Van Hoek finally shut up at this point, and in the silence that followed he realized that, down below him on the upperdeck, his rant was being dutifully translated into diverse heathen tongues. The translators took more or less time to relate it, depending on the wordiness of their several languages and how much they edited out or how freely they embellished. But when the last of them finally wound up his oration, a light pattering started up. Jack flinched, thinking it was more hail. But then it grew into a heavy, stomping roar, and he recognized it as applause. Dappa thrust both index fingers into his mouth and emitted a piercing noise. Van Hoek seemed startled at first; then understanding dawned, and he turned to Jack, removed his hat, and bowed.