“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.”