Weather made it impossible to observe the sun or look for the Galleon's sails for two days after they put the Marianas behind them. Then the sun came out, and they traversed the Tropic of Cancer and sighted the Galleon's topsails, far to the east, at almost the same moment. It was the fifteenth of September. Even before the northernmost of the burning islands of the Marianas had sunk below the southern horizon, they had gone off soundings, which meant that their sounding-lead, even when it was fully paid out, dangled miles above the floor of an ocean whose depth was literally unfathomable. After several days had gone by without sighting land they had brought Minerva's anchors up on deck and stowed them deep in the hold.
They traversed the thirtieth parallel, which meant that they had reached the latitude of southern Japan. Still they continued north. They could not keep the Galleon in sight all the time, of course. But it was not necessary to follow in her wake. They had only two requirements. One was to discover the magic latitude, known only to the Spanish, that would take them safely to California. The other was to arrive in Acapulco at about the same time as the Galleon, so that certain officers aboard that ship could smooth the way for them. With her narrow hull Minerva could not carry as many provisions as the Galleon, but she could sail faster, and so the general plan was to speed across the Pacific and then tarry off California for a few weeks, surviving on the fresh water and game of that country, while keeping a lookout for the Galleon.
But they could not bolt east until they were sure of the right latitude, and so every day they posted lookouts at the top of Minerva's foremast and had them scan the horizon for the sails of the Manila Galleon. Having sighted her, they would plot a converging course, and creep closer until they could see how her sails had been trimmed. The winds almost always came from the southeastern quarter of the compass rose, and every time they caught sight of the Galleon she seemed to be going free, which was a way of saying that the wind was coming in from behind her and from one side—in this case, the starboard. In other words the Galleon's captain was still bending all his efforts to gain latitude, and seemed not to know or care that he had five thousand miles to cover eastwards; or that every degree he went north was a degree he'd later have to go south (Manila and Acapulco lying at nearly the same latitude).
They spent a few days becalmed at thirty-two degrees, then advanced due north to thirty-six degrees, then encountered weather. At the beginning this came out of the east, which made van Hoek extremely nervous that they would be cast away on the shores of Japan (they were at the latitude of Edo, which Gabriel Goto had claimed was the largest city in the world, and so it wasn't as if the wreck of their ship would go unnoticed). But then the wind shifted around to the northwest and they were forced to put up a storm-sail and scud before it. The weather was not nearly as threatening as the waves, which were mountainous.
It happened sometimes that when a wind shifted violently, or a ship was miserably handled, or both, the wind would blow in over the head and strike a ship's sails directly in the face, plastering the canvas back over the rigging, and frequently slamming crew-members off of their perches. The ship would be flung into disarray. She'd go dead in the water, making her rudder quite useless, and would drift and spin like a stunned fish until she was brought in hand again. This was called being taken a-back, and it could happen to persons as well as ships. Jack had never seen van Hoek taken aback until the Dutchman emerged from belowdecks at one point to see one of those waves rolling toward them. Its crest of foam alone was large enough to swallow Minerva.
The only way to survive seas like these was to manage rudder and a few scraps of canvas in such a way that the waves never struck the ship broadside. That was the only thing the men on Minerva thought about for the next forty-eight hours. Sometimes they stood poised on watery mountain-tops and enjoyed the view; seconds later they'd be in a trough with seemingly vertical walls of water blocking their vision fore and aft.
After Jack had been awake for some thirty consecutive hours, he began to see things that weren't there. For the most part this was preferable to seeing the things that were. But strangely enough—with so many natural dangers all around—the one fear that obsessed him was that they would collide with the Manila Galleon. Early in the storm he had seen a great wave coming in the corner of his eye, and phant'sied somehow that it was the Galleon riding a storm-crest; the dark bulk of the wave he took to be her hull of Philippine mahogany, the foamy crest he imagined was her sails. Of course in such a storm she wouldn't have canvas up at all, but in this momentary dream she was a ghost-ship, already dead, and riding the storm with every inch of canvas stretched out before the wind. Of course it was really nothing more than just another damned great wave and so he forgot this apparition in the next instant.
Every wave that came their way was a fresh challenge to their existence, as formidable as anything the Duc d'Arcachon or Queen Kottakkal had flung at them, and had to be met and survived with fresh energy and ingenuity. But they kept coming. And late in the storm, when Jack and everyone else on the ship had entirely lost their minds, and were surviving only because they were in the habit of surviving, the phant'sy of the ghost-Galleon came back and haunted him for long hours. Every wave that came towards them he saw as the underside of the Galleon's hull, the barnacled keel coming down on them like the blade of an axe.
He woke up lying on the deck, in the same position where he had collapsed hours before, at the end of the storm. Bright light was in his eyes but he was shivering, because it was damnably cold.
"Thirty-seven degrees…twelve minutes," croaked van Hoek, working nearby with a back-staff, "assuming…that I have the day right." He paused frequently to heave great laboring sighs, as if the effort of forcing words out was almost too much for him.
Jack—who'd been lying on his stomach—rolled onto his back. His arms had been pressed underneath him the whole time he'd been asleep, and were completely numb and dead now, like sopping rags a-dangle from his shoulders. "And what d'you suppose the day is?"
"If that storm lasted a mere two days, I am ashamed at selling myself so cheaply. For a two-day storm should not leave a sea-captain half dead."
"You are half dead? I am at least three-quarters dead."
"Further evidence that it was more than two days. On the other hand, we could not have survived four days of that."
"I am not some Jesuit, bent on arguing. If you call it three days, I will agree."
"Then we agree that this is October the first."
"Any sign of the Galleon?"
Van Hoek squinted up. "No one has the strength to go above and look. I doubt she survived. So big, and so overloaded…now I understand why they build a new one every year. Even if she survived, she'd be worn out."
"What do we do in that case?"
"North," said van Hoek. "They say that if we turn east too soon, we will make it most of the way across the Pacific, only to be becalmed, almost within sight of America, where we'll starve to death."
This conversation happened at dawn. It was midday before Minerva's topmasts could be raised again, and midafternoon before she was under way, sailing north by northeast. Every man was busy repairing the ship, and those who had no skills at carpentry or rope-work were sent down to the bilge to collect quicksilver that had trickled down there from broken flasks.
Two days later they grazed the fortieth parallel, which put them at the same latitude as the northern extremes of Japan. Van Hoek finally consented to sail towards America. His intention was to hew closely to forty degrees, which (according to a bit of lore he had pried out of a drunken Spanish sea-captain in Manila) would lead eventually to Cape Mendocino. But this went the way of all intentions a day later when he discovered that some combination of winds, currents, and wandering compass-needle had driven them down almost to thirty nine degrees. He laughed at this, and that evening when they gathered in the dining cabin to saw at planks of dried beef and flick maggots out of their beans, he explained why: "Legend would have it that the Spaniards have found out some secret way across the Pacific Ocean. It is a good legend because it prevents Dutchmen, Englishmen, and other prudent Protestants from attempting the voyage. But now I know the truth, which is that they wander across, driven north and south willy-nilly, placing their lives and estates in the hands of innumerable saints. So let us drink to any saints who may be listening!"