These were all the words they could exchange before they were drowned out by cheering and jeering from Minerva‘s sailors, who had all come abovedecks to watch the bark approach and to see how many of the “dry” group had survived the year and a half in New Spain. They seemed generally happy and surprised, which Jack looked on as indicating that no one in the “wet” contingent had ever expected to see a live Shaftoe again. For his part Jack felt almost like a mother hen counting her chicks as he recognized one familiar face after another, and only a few new ones. Minerva herself had never looked better. Jack guessed from this that they’d made a good profit in Peru and that any damages suffered rounding Cape Horn had already been made good in some Caribbean port. If so, it showed excellent foresight on van Hoek’s part, because Vera Cruz was both wretched and expensive, and, in sum, probably the most unfavorable place imaginable to fit out a ship for the Atlantic crossing.
“Let us load her up and be done with New Spain,” Jack said when he had climbed aboard and been duly pounded on the back or embraced by every member of the complement. “Also, I would like to carry on Jeronimo’s tradition, as long as we are here…”
“Which tradition is that?” asked Vrej Esphahnian, looking every inch the successful merchant.
“That of burning down Vera Cruz at every opportunity.”
“We’ll be several months sieving the Gulf for the Captain’s books,” said Dappa when laughter had died down. He was the only man aboard who had not aged several years, and he still had more teeth in his head than any four sailors.
“I was only jesting. We’ve the books, and a letter as well,” Jack said.
“A letter from whom?” asked Vrej.
“I’ve no idea,” Jack returned. “Edmund de Ath might have read it to me, I suppose, but…”
“You don’t trust him! That is very wise,” said van Hoek.
“On the contrary—in the Prison of the Inquisition I had no choice but to trust him with my life, and he extended me the same consideration. He is odd, but harmless.”
“Then why didn’t you have him read the letter?”
“Because I know you will never trust him.”
“Is he still in Vera Cruz?” Vrej inquired.
“As you have probably learned, the Spanish treasure-fleet is massing in Havana Bay, getting ready to bring thirty million pieces of eight to Cadiz,” Jack said. “Several galleons weighed anchor in this harbor four days ago, and went thither to join that Fleet. Edmund de Ath took passage on one of those ships—I’ve already paid him his commission as cargador.”
“Notwithstanding your affection for the man—” Dappa began.
“I didn’t say anything about affection,” Jack said.
“Very well—I’m happy he will be going home on some other ship.”
“We have no time to waste,” van Hoek said. “If we can embark at the same time as the Treasure-Fleet, we’ll have a much easier voyage. Every pirate in the Caribbean will be hunting for Spanish galleons.”
“Yes, they will, won’t they?” Jack mused.
“We will be looked on as a Dutch privateer,” van Hoek predicted.
“Or a heavily armed sugar-barge headed back to London or Amsterdam,” Dappa put in.
“In any event, no boca-neer in his right mind will trifle with us when thirty million pieces of eight are afloat in the same waters.”
AND SO THEY WENT and rounded up all their buried pigs and loaded them on board Minerva, and stowed them alongside silver from Peru and gold from Brazil. Of course van Hoek’s books were loaded aboard first of all. He complained of the miserable job Jack had done re-caulking the lid, and threatened to make him pay the devil, but when the box was set down on the deck of his cabin the Dutchman looked as close to happy as Jack had seen him in years.
There was no time even to pry the lid off, though. Getting the pigs and loading them aboard only took four days, but it seemed longer to Jack than all the time he’d spent in New Spain before. He avoided going ashore, and could not set foot on dry land without entertaining a moment’s phant’sy that Minerva would sail away and leave him stranded in that town, where anything that moved was pursued by a cloud of mosquitoes, and anything that didn’t was shortly buried in wind-blown sand.
THEY DID NOT OPEN the crate and read the letter until they had cleared Bermuda, a month after departing Vera Cruz. Dappa passed it around the table first so that Jack, Vrej, and van Hoek could inspect the seal. Pressed into a daub of red wax was a coat of arms too detailed to be made out: Jack imagined he saw a fragment of fleur-de-lis in one corner and a seagull in another. But the other men were all smirking.
“Who the hell is it from?” he demanded.
“It claims to be from the Duchess of Arcachon-Qwghlm,” said Dappa.
This bit of news hit Jack like a yard-arm across the brow, and shut him up long enough for Dappa to break the seal and smooth the page out on the table. “It is in English,” he announced, and took a swallow of chocolate to whet his whistle. ” ‘To Jack Shaftoe, esq. The inexorable tides ebb and flow ’neath the battlements of the Castle as I pen these lines, reminding me that what is submerged and seemingly drown’d forever in fatal Seas may yet rise forth from Neptune‘s wat’ry Dungeon if one hath only Patience to await the natural Wheeling of the Heavens. I am put in mind of a certain Man who when I last spied him seem’d to’ve been dragged down by the Moral Undertow which sweepeth away even strong souls who stand long in it, and to have fallen into a condition of Degradation worse than Death; and whose Body was scarcely more fit than his Spirit, as he was far gone with the French Pox and afflicted with divers Wounds and Amputations to boot—’ ”