The diplomacy of de Ath only seemed to make van Hoek more suspicious. "What sort of Papist are you, to make light of your own faith?"
"Make light of it? Never, sir. I am a Jansenist. I seek reconciliation with certain Protestants, finding their faith nearer truth than the sophistry of the Jesuits. But I would not bore you with tedious theologickal discourse—"
"How about Jews?" asked Moseh gravely. "We could use an extra Jew on this ship, if you could stretch your principles that far."
"I will not stretch my principles, but I will stretch my mind," said Edmund de Ath, refusing to be baited. "Tell me, what do the rebbes say concerning the eating of larvae? Kosher, or trayf?"
"I have been thinking of writing a scholarly treatise on that very subject," said Moseh, "but I need access to certain rabbinical writings that are not available in Captain van Hoek's library of nautical lore and picaresque novels."
Everyone laughed—even Monsieur Arlanc, who was hard at work grinding a fragment of boiled jerky against the tabletop with the butt of his dagger. His last remaining tooth had fallen out a week ago and so he had to chew his food manually.
They had spent so many years together that they had nothing to say to one another, and so this new fellow—whether they liked him or not—held their attention fast, no matter what he did or said. Even when he was answering Vrej Esphahnian's questions about Jansenist views towards the Armenian Orthodox Church, they could not look at anything else.
After dinner, hot sugar-water was brought out. Dappa finally broached the subject they all wanted to hear about. "Monsieur de Ath, you seemed to take a dim view of the Manila Galleon's management. Without intending disrespect for the recently departed, I would like to know how the disaster came about."
Edmund de Ath brooded for a while. The sun had set and candles had been lit; his face stood out pale, floating in the darkness above the table. "That ship was as Spanish as this one is Dutch," he said. "The overall situation was more desperate, as the ship was slowly disintegrating and the passengers were unruly. But the atmosphere was gay and cheerful, as everyone aboard had given themselves over to the verdict of Fortune. The chief distinction between that ship and this is that this is a single unitary Enterprise whereas the Manila Galleon belonged to the King of Spain and was a sort of floating bazaar—a commercial Ark supporting diverse business interests, many of which were naturally at odds. Just as Noah must have had his hands full keeping the tigers away from the goats, so the Captain of the Galleon was forever trying to adjudicate among the warring and intriguing commerçants packed into her cabins.
"You'll recollect that a few days ago we had two days of hailstorms. Several of the merchants who'd bought passage on the Galleon had brought aboard servants from balmy climes where cold air and hailstones are unheard of. These wretches were so unnerved by the hail that they fled belowdecks and secreted themselves deep in the hold and would not be fetched out for anything. In time the weather cleared, and they emerged to be soundly beaten by their masters. But about the same time, smoke was observed seeping out from one of the hatches. It appears likely that one of those servants had brought a candle below with him when he had gone down fleeing the hailstorm. Perhaps they had even kindled a cook-fire. The truth will never be known. In any event, it was now obvious that a slow smoldering fire had been started somewhere down amid the countless bales of cargo that the merchants had stuffed into the hold."
Van Hoek rose and excused himself, for from the point of view of ship's captain the story was finished. There was no point in hearing the details. The others remained and listened.
"Now, many ponderous sermons could be written about the rich pageant of greed and folly that played out over the next days. The correct action would have been to man the pumps and drench everything in the hold with sea-water. But this would have ruined all of the silks, and caused incalculable losses, not only for the merchants but for the ship's officers, and various of the King's officials in Manila and Acapulco who had bales of their own in the hold. So the captain delayed, and the fire smoldered on. Men were sent below with buckets of water to find and douse the fire. Some returned saying that the smoke was too thick—others never came back at all. Some argued that the hatches should be opened and bales brought out onto the deck, but others who had more knowledge of fires said that this would allow an in-rush of air that would cause the fire to billow up and consume the Galleon in a moment.
"We sighted your ship in a mirage, and fired a signal-cannon hoping you would come to our aid. There was disagreement even concerning this, for some supposed you were Dutch pirates. But the captain told us that you were a merchant-ship loaded with quicksilver, and confessed he had made an agreement with you in secret, that he would guide you across the Pacific and grease the path for you in Acapulco in return for a share of your profits."
"Was everyone shocked and dismayed?"
"No one batted an eye. The signal cannon was fired forthwith. No answer came back to our ears: only the silence of the Pacific. At this, madness descended on the Galleon like a Plague. There was an insurrection—not merely a mutiny but a three-sided civil war. Again, someday it will make for a great allegory-tale that preachers may recite from pulpits, but the way it came out was that those who wanted to unload the cargo-hold prevailed. Hatches were opened—smoke came out, which you must have seen on the horizon—a few bales were hoisted out—and then, just as some had predicted, flames erupted from below. I saw the very air burning. A boiling flame-front came towards me, trapping me against the rail, and I toppled overboard rather than be roasted alive. I climbed onto one of the bales that had been thrown overboard. The ship crept downwind, slowly getting farther away from me, and I watched the final catastrophe from a safe distance."
Edmund de Ath bowed his head slightly, so that arcs of reflected candle-light gleamed in the tear-filled channels beneath his eyes. "May Almighty God have mercy on the hundred and seventy-four men and the one woman who perished."
"You may scratch the one woman off that list, at least for the time being," Jack said. "We plucked her out of the water fifteen minutes after you."
There was a long pause, and then Edmund de Ath said: "Elizabeth de Obregon survived?"
"If you call this surviving," Jack answered.
"HE SWALLOWED!" SAID MONSIEUR ARLANC the next day, having cornered Jack up at the head. "I saw his Adam's apple move."
"Of course he swallowed—he was eating dinner."
"Dinner was finished!"
"All right, he was drinking sugar-water then."
"It was not that sort of a swallow," said Monsieur Arlanc. "I mean he was perturbed. Something is not right."
"Now Monsieur Arlanc, consider it: What could de Ath possibly find troubling about the poor lady's survival? She's half out of her mind anyway."
"People who are half out of their minds sometimes forget discretion, and say things they would normally keep secret."
"All right, then, perhaps he and the lady were having a scandalous affair de coeur—that would explain why he's been sitting at her bedside ever since."
Jack was sitting in a hole, his buttocks dangling over the Pacific, and Monsieur Arlanc was standing next to him; together they gazed down the length of the ship for a few moments. The several divisions and subdivisions of the current watch were distributed among the masts and sail-courses, running through a drill that every man knew in his sleep, trimming the sails for new weather that was bearing down on them out of the northwest. Their limbs were swollen from beri-beri and many of them moved in spasmodickal twitches as their feet and hands responded balkily to commands from the mind. On the upperdeck, in the middle of the ship, a dozen Malabaris were standing around a corpse stitched up in a sheet, joining in some sort of heathenish mourning-chant prepatory to flinging it overboard. A scrap of cordage had been lashed around its ankles and made fast to an empty drinking water jar packed with pot-shards and ballast-sand, so that the body would be pulled smartly down to David Jones's Locker before the sharks who swarmed in the ship's wake could make sport with it.