The Confusion

They added one or two more knots to their speed thereby, and after three days, ran the Straits of Tsushima: a procedure that might have been devised by some fiendish engineer specifically to drive van Hoek mad with anxiety, as it involved running down a complex and current-ridden, yet poorly charted chute hemmed in on one side by pirate-islands of Korea and on the other by a country (Japan) where it was death for a foreigner to set foot. The paintings of Gabriel Goto’s father were of very little use because that ronin had been piloting a boat of much shallower draft than Minerva and invariably chose to hug shorelines and squirt through gaps between islands where Minerva could not go.

 

At any rate they made it through, and putting the mountains of Japan on their larboard quarter they ventured into the East China Sea. Immediately the lookout identified sails to larboard: a ship emerging through a spacious gap between certain outlying Japanese islands, and coming about into a course roughly parallel with their own. This was curious, because the charts showed nothing but Japanese land in the direction from which the ship had come—beyond that, it was the Pacific Ocean for one hundred degrees, and then vague sketches of a supposed American coastline. And yet this ship was unmistakably European. More to the point, as van Hoek announced after peering at it for a while through his spyglass, it was Dutch. And that settled the mystery. This was one of those Dutch vessels that was allowed to sail into the harbor of Nagasaki and anchor before Deshima—a walled and guarded island-compound near that city, where a handful of Europeans were suffered to dwell for brief periods as they traded with the representatives of the Shogun.

 

Now van Hoek ordered that the Dutch flag be run up on the mizzenmast, and had them fire a salute from the ship’s cannons. The Dutch ship responded in kind, and so after exchanging various signals with flags and mirrors, the two vessels fell in alongside each other, and gradually drew close enough that words could be hollered back and forth through speaking-trumpets. Every man on board who knew how to write was busy writing letters for himself, or on behalf of those who couldn’t, because it was obvious that this Dutch ship was headed for Batavia, and thence west-bound. Within a few months she would be dropping anchor in Rotterdam.

 

This was when they lost their Alchemist.

 

When it came clear that they were about to lose their Adult Supervision, Jack felt panic under his feet like a swell pressing up on the ship’s hull. But he did not suppose that it would instill confidence, among the crew, for him to break down and blubber. So he acted as if this had been expected all along. Indeed, in a way it had. Enoch Root had shown inhuman patience during the last couple of years, as the transaction of the quicksilver had been slowly teased together, and there had been plenty of interesting diversions for him in the Chinese and Japanese barangays of Manila, the countless strange islands of the Philippines, and in helping to establish Mr. Foot as the White Sultan of Queena-Kootah. But it was long since time for him to move on.

 

He had taken up an interest in the vast territories limned on Dutch charts to the South and East of the Philippines: New Guinea; the supposed Australasian Continent; Van Diemen’s Land; and a chain of islands sprawling off into the uncharted heart of the South Pacific, called the Islands of Solomon.

 

Enoch stood on the upperdeck, waiting for his chests and bags to be lowered into the longboat. As he often did in idle moments, he reached into the pocket of his traveling-cloak and took out a contraption that looked a bit like a spool. But a poorly made one, for the ends of the spool were bulky, and the slot in between them, where the cord was wound, was narrow. He unwound a couple of inches of cord and slipped his finger through a loop that had been tied in its end. Then he allowed the spool to fall from his hand. It dropped slowly at first, as the spool’s inertia resisted its tendency to unwind, but then it picked up speed and plunged smoothly toward the deck. Just shy of hitting the planks it stopped abruptly, having unwound its meager supply of cord. At the same moment Enoch gave a little twitch of the hand, and the spool reversed its direction and began to climb up the string.

 

Jack glanced across several fathoms of open water toward the Dutch ship. A dozen or so sailors were watching this miracle with their mouths open.

 

“They cannot see the string at this distance,” Jack commented, “and suppose you are doing some sort of magick.”

 

“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a yo-yo,” Enoch said.

 

“That could not hurt a sparrow,” Jack said. “I prefer the original type with the rotating knives.”

 

“All well and good for striking prey off tree-limbs in the Philippine jungle,” Enoch said, “but it gets uncomfortable, carrying such weapons about in one’s pocket.”

 

“Where art thou and thy yo-yos bound?”

 

“It is rumored that the purple savages of Arnhem Land also make throwing-weapons that return to the thrower,” Enoch said, “but without a string, or any other such physickal connexion.”

 

“Impossible!”

 

“As I said—’Any sufficiently advanced tech—’ ”

 

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