“Oh, but I’m not,” Jack answered, but de Gex plodded onwards with his interrogation.
“Vrej claims that timber and labor are practically free in Hindoostan. According to his review of the accounts, too much gold was missing and whatever I may think of his theology, I would not dream of calling into question his accounting.”
“Vrej has been tiresome on this particular subject for nigh on eight years now,” Jack answered. “When he vaulted over the rail the other day, right out there, the first thing that came to my mind—even before I really grasped that he’d betrayed us—was joy. Joy that I’d never again have to listen to him on this subject. Now, you have picked up the torch.”
“Vrej has related his suspicions to me. He says that whenever he raised this subject, the others would shrug it off with all sorts of vague similitudes, about ‘greasing the path’ or some such…”
“We are all old salts now, and prefer nautickal terms,” Jack answered. “Instead of talking about some path needing to be greased, we’d more likely think of hulls that become barnacle-covered, which slows them down, and we’d speak of the desirability of keeping ’em smooth, for easy movement through the water.”
“In any event—I assume this is a Delphic way of saying that bribes were paid to some Mogul or Maratha chieftain?”
“Assume what you like—that would still place the gold far away from you,” Jack pointed out. He was gazing out to sea, watching Minerva trim her sails as she came out of the lee of the Sghr and picked up a leading wind across her larboard beam. One by one the yards traversed round, and their sails stopped shivering as the crew braced the yards and made her close-hauled. Immediately Minerva began to heel over and pick up speed. But de Gex now blocked Jack’s view, squaring his shoulders and getting his face directly in front of his. “Your ship may be free now, Jack, but you seem to have forgotten that you are not on her. You are in my power now.”
“I thought I was in Leroy‘s power,” Jack said, which was nothing more than an audacious guess; but the look on de Gex’s face told him he’d guessed right.
“My Order is not without influence in his majesty’s court,” de Gex said. “In his efforts to find the gold that the Jew stole, Vrej Esphahnian could do nothing more than bore you. I can do much more.”
Jack rolled his eyes. “Oh come now! If our aim had been to steal from Vrej, we’d have made a proper job of it. We were only chaffing him—we’re not thieves.”
“Where, then, is King Solomon’s gold?”
“Turn around,” Jack said.
De Gex finally turned around. The harbor below the Castle was crowded with French ships, most of them riding at anchor; the few that were in a position to get under way were now, however, frantically trying to raise more sail. Their decks were a-swarm with sailors coming up from below, like ants from a damaged hill. De Gex could not fathom why, until he noticed that every spyglass and pointing finger in the harbor was aimed at Minerva, now several miles ahead of the French ships that were trying to organize a pursuit. Van Hoek—commanding from a sick-bed lashed into place on the poop deck—had heeled her perilously far over for one so lightly ballasted, but she did not capsize, and seemed to be skimming over the water rather than plowing it up. A ship that hadn’t been careened since before Vera Cruz would normally have been too encrusted with barnacles to make much headway, but Minerva moved as if her hull had been freshly scraped and painted. Not until she altered course slightly, and the sun glanced off her exposed hull, did de Gex understand why: the underside of the ship, below the waterline, had been sheathed, from stem to stern, in plates of hammered gold.
Only a sliver of that plating was now visible, but it shone out across the harbor like a gleam of light through a cracked door. Everyone had seen it, and a few French ships were now setting out on a forlorn pursuit, but most of the mariners were content to stand at the railings of their anchored vessels and only gaze in adoration. Jack knew what those sailors were thinking. They did not care about the value of the gold, and they certainly believed no nonsense about King Solomon’s hoard. They were thinking, instead: If I were a sailor on that ship, I’d never have to scrape another barnacle.