Fragments of tile smash on the ground. I lost my apple, he thinks.

‘By Christ, Mahomet and Fhu Tsi Weh,’ says Marinus, ‘that was close.’

I survived twice, thinks Jacob, but troubles come in threes.

The Dutchmen help one another up like a pair of invalids.

The Land-Gate’s doors are blown away and the tidy ranks and files of guards in Edo Square are no longer tidy. Two shots tore through the soldiers in two different places: like marbles, Jacob recalls a boyhood game, through wooden men.

Five or six or seven flesh-and-blood men are down, twitching and screaming.

There is chaos and shouting and running and places of bright red.

More fruits of your principles, mocks an inner voice, President de Zoet.

The Phoebus’s sailors have stopped taunting them now.

‘Look below.’ The doctor points to the roof underneath. A shot passed first through one side, then out through the other. Half the stairs going down to Flag Square were knocked away. As they watch, the roof ridge collapses into the upper room. ‘Poor Fischer,’ remarks Marinus. ‘His new friends have broken all his toys. Look, Domburger, you’ve made your stand and there’s no dishonour in-’

Timber sings and the Watchtower stairs crash to the ground.

‘Well,’ says Marinus, ‘we could jump into Fischer’s room… possibly…’

Damn me, Jacob trains his telescope on Penhaligon, if I run now.

He sees gunners up on the quarterdeck. ‘Doctor, the carronades…’

He sees Penhaligon training his telescope on him.

Damn you, watch and learn, Jacob thinks, about Dutch shopkeepers.

One of the English officers appears to be remonstrating with the Captain.

The Captain ignores him. Barrels are lifted to the mouths of the ship’s deadliest close-range guns. ‘Chain-shot, Doctor,’ says Jacob. ‘Hazard that leap.’

He lowers his telescope: there is no gain in looking further.

Marinus throws his apple at the Phoebus. ‘Cras Ingens Iterabimus Aequor.’

Jacob imagines the dense cones of shrapnel hurtling towards them…

… about forty feet wide by the time they reach the platform.

The shrapnel will tear through his clothes, skin and viscera and out again…

Don’t let death, Jacob reproves himself, be your final thought.

He tries to map, backwards, the tortuous paths that led to this present…

Vorstenbosch, Zwaardecroone, Anna’s father, Anna’s kiss, Napoleon…

‘You have no objection if I say the Twenty-third Psalm, Doctor?’

‘Provided you have no objection if I join you, Jacob.’

Side by side, they grip the platform’s rail in the slippery rain.

The pastor’s son removes Grote’s hat to address his Creator.

‘ “The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.” ’

Marinus’s voice is a seasoned cello’s; Jacob’s is shaking.

‘ “He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me…” ’

Jacob closes his eyes and imagines his uncle’s church.

‘ “… in the paths of righteousness for his name’s sake.” ’

Geertje is at his side. Jacob wishes she had met Orito…

‘ “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death…” ’

… and Jacob still has the scroll, and I’m sorry, I’m sorry…

‘ “I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff…” ’

Jacob waits for the explosion and the swarm and the tearing.

‘ “… they comfort me. Thou preparest a table before me…” ’

Jacob waits for the explosion and the swarm and the tearing.

‘ “… in the presence of mine enemies; thou anointest my head with oil…” ’

Marinus’s voice has fallen away: his memory must have failed him.

‘ “… my cup runneth over. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me…” ’

Jacob hears Marinus shake with quiet laughter.

He opens his eyes to see the Phoebus tacking away.

Her mainsails are falling, catching the wet wind and billowing…

Jacob sleeps fitfully in Chief van Cleef’s bed. An habitual maker of lists, he lists the reasons for his fitful sleep: first, the fleas in Chief van Cleef’s bed; second, Baert’s celebratory ‘Dejima Gin’ so-named because gin is the only drink it doesn’t taste of; third, the oysters sent from Magistrate Shiroyama; fourth, Con Twomey’s ruinous inventory of damage inflicted to the Dutch-owned properties; fifth, tomorrow’s meetings with Shiroyama and Magistracy officials; and sixth, his mental record of what History shall call the Phoebus Incident, and its ledger of outcomes. In the profit column, the English failed to extract one clove from the Dutch or crystal of camphor from the Japanese. Any Anglo-Japanese accord shall be unthinkable for two or three generations. In the debit column, the factory’s complement is now reduced to eight Europeans and a handful of slaves, a roster too lean even to be called ‘skeletal’ and unless a ship arrives next June – unlikely if Java is in British hands and the VOC is no longer extant – Dejima must rely on loans from the Japanese to meet its running costs. How welcome a guest the ‘Ancient Ally’ will be when reduced to rags remains to be seen, especially if the Japanese view the Dutch as partly responsible for conjuring up the Phoebus. Interpreter Hori brought news of damage ashore: six soldiers dead in Edo Square, and another six injured; and several townspeople burnt in a fire begun when a ball struck a kitchen in Shinmachi Ward. The political consequences, he intimated, were even farther-reaching.

I never heard, Jacob thinks, of a twenty-six-year-old Chief Resident…

… or, he tosses and turns, of a factory so beset by crises as Dejima.

He misses Tall House, but the Chief must sleep near the safe-boxes.

Early the following morning, Jacob is met at the Magistracy by Interpreter Goto and Chamberlain Tomine. Tomine apologises for asking Jacob to perform a distasteful service before meeting the Magistrate: the body of a foreign sailor was retrieved yesterday evening by a fishing-boat, near the Papenburg Rock. Would Chief de Zoet examine the corpse and assess the likelihood of it being from the Phoebus?

Jacob is not afraid of corpses, having helped his uncle at every funeral in Domburg.

The chamberlain leads him across a courtyard to an empty storehouse.

He says a word unknown to Jacob; Goto says, ‘Place dead body wait.’

A mortuary, Jacob realises. Goto asks Jacob to teach him the word.

Outside, an elderly Buddhist priest is waiting with a pail of water.

‘To make pure,’ Goto explains, ‘when leave… “mortuary”.’

They enter. There is one small window and the smell of death.

The single inmate is a young, wiry-pigtailed mestizo sailor on a pallet.

He wears nothing but a sailor’s duck trousers and a lizard tattoo.

A cold, strong draught is sucked from the window through the open door.

It tousles the boy’s hair, accentuating his motionlessness.

Alive, the boy’s slack, grey skin must have been bruised gold.

‘Were any items,’ Jacob asks in Japanese, ‘found in his possession?’

The chamberlain produces a tray from a shelf; on it is a British farthing.

‘georgivs iii rex’ reads the obverse; Britannia sits on the reverse.

‘I am in no doubt,’ says Jacob, ‘he was a sailor from the Phoebus.’

‘Sa,’ responds Chamberlain Tomine. ‘But is he an Englishman?’

Only his mother and his Creator could answer, Jacob thinks. He tells Goto, ‘Please inform Tomine-sama that his father was probably European. His mother was probably Negro. Such is my best guess.’

The chamberlain is still not satisfied. ‘But is he English?’

Jacob exchanges a look with Goto: interpreters often have to provide both the answer and the tools to understand it. ‘If I had a son with a Japanese woman,’ Jacob asks Tomine, ‘would he be Dutch or Japanese?’