"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.