The Nautical Chart (49 page)
"Do you mean that they used cryptographs and coded language?"
"Yes, my dear. That ship of yours was using a system of internal and secret codes. Like all the others belonging to the Society, she was traveling the world with charts that like Urrutia's and others', indicated the scales of meridians and parallels necessary for navigation—Cadiz, Tenerife, Paris, Greenwich__ "I took a sip of wine and nodded my approval; the waiter had just uncorked a second bottle. "But theirs had a particular feature. You remember that the meridian is a relative concept used to find one's location on a map that imitates the surface of the earth by means of a spherical projection. There are one hundred and eighty meridians, which are arbitrary in principle. The prime meridian, which some call zero meridian, can pass through any place one wishes, for there is nowhere in heaven or earth a fixed sign that obliges one to count longitude from that mark. Given the shape of the earth, all meridians are eligible to be considered the prime one, and any of them can be designated by that renowned and illustrious appellation. Which is why, until Greenwich was adopted as the universal reference, each country had its own." I drank another sip of wine and looked at each of them, dabbing at my lips with the napkin. "Do you follow me?"
"Perfectly." The dark steel eyes were fixed on me with extraordinary concentration, and I could not help but admire her composure. "In brief, the Jesuits had their own meridian."
"Exactly right. Except that I detest to say things in so few words."
Coy shook his head, slowly and wordlessly, a gesture of resignation and defeat. I saw him reach for his glass, and now he did take a long drink of wine. A very long drink.
"So," said Tanger, "the corrections we have been making with your tables should not be in respect to Cadiz."
"Of course not. They must be made in respect to the secret meridian the Jesuits were using in 1767 to calculate longitude aboard their ships." Again I paused and looked at them, smiling. "Do you see where I'm going?"
"Goddammit!" said Coy. "Just spit it out, will you?"
I gifted him with a look of affection. I believe I have told you that I liked this individual more by the minute.
"Do not deprive me of my moment of suspense, dear friend.
Do not deprive me. The meridian that you are seeking corresponds today to the present 5°40' west of Greenwich. And passes
precisely through the school of cosmography, geography, and navigation, as well as the astronomy observatory that the Jesuits administered until their expulsion in 1767, in what today is the Universidad Pontificia, the old Royal College of the Society of Jesus."
I made one last theatrical pause—abracadabra! Ladies and gentlemen—and pulled the rabbit from my hat. A silky white rabbit chewing happily on a carrot.
'A few feet," and now the precise news, "from the tower of the cathedral of Salamanca."
There was silence for at least five seconds. First they looked at each other and then Tanger said, "That can't be." Said it like that, quietly. That can't be. Looking at me as if I was a Martian. The words did not have the sound of an objection or of disbelief. It was a lament. In free translation: What
a fool
I am.
"I'm afraid it is so," I said softly.
"But that means..."
"That means," I interrupted, jealous of maintaining the lead role, "that at that latitude, between the Salamanca meridian and that of the Guardiamarinas college in Cadiz, on many maps of the period there was a differential of forty-five minutes longitude west—"
As I was talking I appropriated a couple of forks, a piece of bread, and a glass to reconstruct an approximation of a coast. The glass was in the center, representing Cartagena, and the tip of the fork marked Cabo de Palos. It wasn't an Urrutia chart, but it wasn't bad at all. What more did one need? The checked tablecloth even resembled the parallels and meridians of a nautical chart.
'And you two," I concluded, counting squares toward the fork on the right, "have been looking for that ship thirty-six miles west of where she lies."
XIV
The Mystery of the Green Lobsters
Although I speak of the Meridian as if there were only one, there are actually many. All men and ships have their own meridians. MANUEL
PIMENTEL
,
Arte de Navcgar
They were cutting through the dawn mist, sailing east along parallel 37°32', with a slight deviation to the north in order to gain one minute of latitude. Screwed onto the bulkhead, the needle of the brass barometer tilted right: 1,022 millibars. There was no wind, and the deck cleats were shuddering with the gentle vibration of the engine. The mist was beginning to burn off, and although it was still gray behind the wake, dazzling rays of sun and gplden color were filtering through ahead of the bow, and off the port beam, faint and very high, they could see the phantasmal dark gashes of the coastline.
In the cockpit, El Piloto was setting the course. And below, in the cabin, bent over her parallel rulers, compass, pencil, and gum eraser, like a diligent student preparing for a difficult exam, Tanger was superimposing the squares of a graph on chart 464 of the Naval Hydrographic Institute: Cabo Tinoso to Cabo de Palos. Coy was sitting beside her, with a cup of coffee and condensed milk in his hands, watching her trace lines and calculate distances. They had worked all night without sleeping, and by the time El Piloto woke and cast off before dawn, they had established the new search area on the chart, with the center located at 37°33,N and o°45,W. This was the rectangle that Tanger, under the ligjht of the chart table, and with patience and careful allowance for the
Carpanta's
gentle rocking, was now dividing into tracks of one hundred sixty-five feet in width. An area a mile and a half long by two and a half wide, south of Punta Seca and six miles to the southwest of Cabo de Palos.
"... But it happened that after the wind veered to the north, and having already glimpsed the cape to the northeast, upon forcing more sail in avoidance of the chase of which she was object, she had the bad fortune to lose her foretopmast, while engaging in most lively combat almost yardarm to yardarm. Her foremast was lost and nearly all hands on deck dead or out of action by reason of the other's having raked them with shot and point-blank broadsides, but when the xebec was being brought alongside for boarding, the flames from one of her lower sails, as the deponent recalls having seen, jumped across to some cartridges of gunpowder, with the result that the xebec was blown up. The explosion also brought down the mainmast of the brigantine, sending her to the bottom. According to the deponent there were no survivors but himself, who was saved by knowing how to swim and finding the launch the brigantine had jettisoned as the battle began, spending there the rest of the day and the night. At nearing eleven hours on the following day he was rescued six miles to the south of that place by the tartane
Virgen de los Paroles.
According to the deponent, the sinking of the brigantine and the xebec took place at two miles from the coast at 37°31'N, 4°51'E, a position that matches the one written on a half-leaf of paper he was carrying in his pocket at the time of his rescue, the navigating officer having noted it once established on a chart of Urrutia, but having no time to log it because of the rapidity with which battle was joined. The deponent was quartered in the naval hospital of this city awaiting further proceedings.
The most Excl. Sr. Almirante requested the following day new investigations on certain points of this event, given the circumstance that the deponent had abandoned the environs of the hospital during the night, and there being until this moment no notice of his whereabouts. A circumstance about which the most Excl. Sr. Almirante has ordered that a timely investigation be initiated without prejudice to the depuration of responsibilities. Dated in the Headquarters of the Seaport of Cartagena, eighth February 1767. Lieutenant of the Navy Ricardo Dolarea."
EVERYTHING
fit. They had discussed it inside and out, with the copy of the boy's testimony on the table, analyzing every turn in the exasperating posthumous joke that the ghosts of the two Jesuits and sailors of the sunken
Dei Gloria
had played on them and everyone else. With 464 spread out before him and compass in hand, the line of the coast in the upper portion of the chart— Tinoso to the left, Palos to the right, and the port of Cartagena in the center—Coy had easily calculated the dimensions of their error. That night and predawn morning of February 3 and 4, 1767, with the corsair tight at her stern, the brigantine had sailed much faster and much farther than they had originally thought. At dawn, the
Dei Gloria
was not southwest of Tinoso and Cartagena, but had already passed those longitudes and was sailing further east. She was
southeast
of the port, and the cape glimpsed from her bow, to the northeast, was not Tinoso but Palos.
Tanger had finished. She laid her rulers and pencil on the chart, and sat looking at Coy.
"For that they tortured Abbot Gandara for eighteen years— They were looking for the ship in the location given by the ship's boy. They may even have gone down with divers and diving bells, but they found nothing because the
Dei Gloria
wasn't there."
Lack of sleep had left dark circles under her eyes, making them look bigger. Less attractive, more exhausted.
"Now tell me what happened," she said. "Your final version."
Coy looked at chart 464. It was lying above the reproduction of Urrutia's chart, which was also covered with penciled marks and notations. The dark brown line of the shore and the blue band of shallows followed the coastline, ascending in a gentle diagonal toward Palos point and the Hormigas Isles in the upper right corner of the chart. All the geographic features were represented, from west to east: Cabo Tinoso, the port of Cartagena, Escombreras Island, Cabo de Agua, Portman Bay, Cabo Negrete, Punta Seca, Cabo de Palos_ Maybe the wind from the southwest had been stronger that night than they calculated, Coy argued. Twenty-five or thirty knots. Or maybe Captain Elezcano had taken the risk of putting the rigging at jeopardy earlier, and had set more sail. It could also be that the wind veered to the north, blowing offshore long before dawn, and that the corsair, a ship able to sail close to the wind, thanks to the jib on her bowsprit and lateen sails on her foremast and mizzenmast, had gained the weather-gauge and slipped between the brigantine and Cartagena to prevent her from taking refuge. There was also the possibility that in the course of some nocturnal maneuver intended to throw the corsair off the trail, the
Dei Gloria
had put herself in a perilous position by sailing too far from potential protection. Or maybe the captain, stubborn and holding to his instructions, gave strict orders not to enter any port but Valencia, to prevent the emeralds from falling into the wrong hands.
Coy tried to describe that first glimmer of morning—the still hazy coastline, the uneasy glances between the captain and the navigation officer as they attempted to recognize where they were, and their devastation when they discovered that the corsair was still there, giving chase, drawing closer, and that they had not lost her in the dark. At any rate, with that first light, while the captain kept looking up to the rigging, wondering whether it could tolerate so much canvas, sailing close-hauled as she was, the navigation officer went to the port rail and took bearings on the land to establish their position. Doubtless he obtained simultaneous bearings, situating Junco Grande at 345 °, Cabo Negrete at 2950, and Cabo de Palos at 300. Afterward he would have joined those three lines on the chart, and established the brigantine's position at their intersection. It wasn't difficult to imagine him with his spyglass and the alidade or bearing circle on the magistral, alien to everything other than the technical steps of his responsibilities, and the ship's boy at his side, paper and pencil ready to jot down the observations, glancing out of the corner of his eye at the sails of the corsair, red in the slanting rays of dawn and closer every minute. Then the officer, hurrying below to make the calculation on the Urrutia chart, and the ship's boy running back to the poop along the sharply listing deck, the paper with the bearings in his hand, showing them to the captain just at the moment when high overhead the topmast sprang with a crack and everything fell to the deck, and the captain ordered the crew to cut it free, throw it overboard, and ready the guns, and the
Dei Gloria
gave the tragic yaw that confronted her with her destiny.
Coy stopped, a quiver in his voice. Sailors. After all, those men were sailors like him. Good sailors. He could feel their fears and sensations as clearly as if he himself had been aboard the
Dei Gloria.
Tanger was studying him.
"You tell the story very well, Coy."
Through the porthole he could see light struggling through the fog as the sun rose past the hazy gray circle. He also saw the bow of the corsair
Chergui
gradually bearing toward one of the open gunports of the brigantine.
'It isn't hard," he said. "In a way, it isn't hard."
He half-dosed his eyes. His mouth was dry, sweat was running down his naked chest, and the doth he had just tied around his forehead was dripping wet. Bent down behind a black four-pound gun in the smoke of the sizzling fuse, he heard the breathing of his comrades crouched beside the gun carriage with rammer, sponge, and worm, poised to ease off the tackle, load, prime, and fire again.
"Oh, well," he added after a few seconds, ‘I’m not saying that
is
how things happened."
"How do you explain the position of the ship's boy?"
Coy bunched his shoulders. The roar of the cannonade and shattering wood was slowly fading from his head. He pointed to a place on the chart before tracing a diagonal line southwest.
"Just the way we explained it before," he said. "With the difference that after the shipwreck, the wind pushing the launch wasn't blowing from the northwest, but northeast. The offshore breeze could have shifted a few quarters to the east when the sun was high that morning and sent the boy out to sea, bringing him closer to the true bearing on Cartagena, a few miles to the south, where he was rescued the next day."