“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.