Weh and Philander return with the bottles of Rhenish.

‘A most edifying history,’ says Lacy. ‘I salute your courage, Mr Fischer.’

‘The passage where you ate the maggots,’ remarks Marinus, ‘rather over-egged the brûlée.’

‘The doctor’s disbelief,’ Fischer addresses the senior officers, ‘is caused by his sentimental attitudes to savages, I am very sorry to say.’

‘The doctor’s disbelief,’ Marinus peers at the label on the Rhenish, ‘is a natural reaction to vainglorious piffle.’

‘Your accusations,’ Fischer retorts, ‘deserve no reply.’

Jacob finds an island chain of mosquito bites across his hand.

‘Slavery may be an injustice to some,’ says van Cleef, ‘but no one can deny that all Empires are founded upon the institution.’

‘Then may the Devil,’ Marinus twists in the corkscrew, ‘take all Empires.’

‘What an extraordinary utterance,’ declares Lacy, ‘to hear from the mouth of a colonial officer!’

‘Extraordinary,’ agrees Fischer, ‘and revealing, not to say Jacobinical.’

‘I am no “colonial officer”: I am a physician, scholar and traveller.’

‘You hunt for your fortune,’ says Lacy, ‘courtesy of the Dutch Empire.’

‘My treasure is botanical.’ The cork pops. ‘The fortunes I leave to you.’

‘How very “Enlightened”, outré and French, which nation, by the by, learnt the perils of abolishing slavery. Anarchy set the Caribbean alight; plantations were pillaged; men strung up from trees; and by the time Paris had its Negroes back in chains, Hispaniola was lost.’

‘Yet the British Empire,’ Jacob says, ‘is embracing abolition.’

Vorstenbosch looks at his one-time protégé like an evaluator.

‘The British,’ Lacy warns, ‘are engaged in some trickery or other: as time shall tell.’

‘And those citizens in your own northern states,’ says Marinus, ‘who recognise-’

‘Those Yankee leeches,’ Captain Lacy wags his knife, ‘grow fat on our taxes!’

‘In the animal kingdom,’ says van Cleef, ‘the vanquished are eaten by those more favoured by Nature. Slavery is merciful by comparison: the lesser races keep their lives in exchange for their labour.’

‘What use,’ the Doctor pours himself a glass of wine, ‘is an eaten slave?’

The grandfather clock in the State Room strikes ten times.

‘Displeased as I am,’ Vorstenbosch arrives at a decision, ‘about the events in the crate store, Fischer, I accept that you and Gerritszoon acted in self-defence.’

‘I swear, sir,’ Fischer tilts his head, ‘we had no other choice.’

Marinus grimaces at his glass of Rhenish. ‘Atrocious aftertaste.’

Lacy brushes his moustache. ‘What about your slave, Doctor?’

‘Eelattu, sir, is no more a slave than your first mate. I found him in Jaffna five years ago, beaten and left for dead by a gang of Portuguese whalers. During his recovery, the boy’s quickness of mind persuaded me to offer him employ as my chirurgical assistant, for pay, from my own pocket. He may quit his post when he wishes, with wages and character. Can any man on the Shenandoah say as much?’

‘Indians, I’ll admit,’ Lacy walks over to the chamber pot, ‘ape civilised manners well enough; and I’ve entered Pacific Islanders and Chinamen into the Shenandoah’s books, so I know of what I speak. But for Africans…’ the Captain unbuttons his breeches and urinates into the pot ‘… slavery’s the best life: were they ever turned loose, they’d starve before the week was out, without they murdered White families for their larders. They know only the present moment: they cannot plan, farm, invent or imagine.’ He shakes free the last drops of urine and tucks his shirt into his breeches. ‘To condemn slavery,’ Captain Lacy scratches beneath his collar, ‘is, moreover, to condemn Holy Scripture. Blacks are descended from Noah’s bestial son Ham, who bedded his own mother: Ham’s lineage were thereby accursed. It’s there in the ninth book of Genesis, plain as day. “Cursed be Canaan; a servant of servants shall he be to his brethren.” The White race, however, is descended from Japheth: “God shall enlarge Japheth, and Canaan shall be his servant.” Or do I lie, Mr de Zoet?’

All the assembled eyes turn to the nephew of the parsonage.

‘Those particular verses are problematical,’ says Jacob.

‘So the clerk calls God’s word,’ taunts Peter Fischer, ‘ “problematical”?’

‘The world would be happier without slavery,’ replies Jacob, ‘and-’

‘The world would be happier,’ sniffs van Cleef, ‘if golden apples grew on trees.’

‘Dear Mr Vorstenbosch,’ Captain Lacy raises his glass, ‘this Rhenish is a superlative vintage. Its aftertaste is the purest nectar.’

Before the typhoon of the 19th October, 1799

The noises of battening, nailing and herding are gusted in through the warehouse doors. Hanzaburo stands on the threshold, watching the darkening sky. At the table, Ogawa Uzaemon is translating the Japanese version of Shipping Document 99b from the trading season of 1797, relating to a consignment of camphor crystals. Jacob records the gaping discrepancies in prices and quantities between it and its Dutch counterpart. The signature verifying the document as ‘An Honest and True Record of the Consignment’ is Acting-Deputy Melchior van Cleef’s: the deputy’s twenty-seventh falsified entry Jacob has so far uncovered. The clerk has told Vorstenbosch of this growing list, but the Chief Resident’s zeal as a reformer of Dejima is dimming by the day. Vorstenbosch’s metaphors have changed from ‘excising the cancer of corruption’ to ‘best employing what tools we have to hand’ and, perhaps the clearest indicator of the Chief’s attitude, Arie Grote is busier and more cheerful by the day.

‘It is soon too dark,’ says Ogawa Uzaemon, ‘to see clear.’

‘How long do we have,’ Jacob asks, ‘before we should stop working?’

‘One more hour, with oil in lantern. Then I should leave.’

Jacob writes a short note asking Ouwehand to give Hanzaburo a jar of oil from the office store, and Ogawa instructs him in Japanese. The boy leaves, his clothes tugged by the wind.

‘Last typhoons of season,’ says Ogawa, ‘can attack Hizen Domain worst. We think, Gods save Nagasaki from bad typhoon this year, and then…’ Ogawa mimes a battering ram with his hands.

‘Autumn gales in Zeeland, too, are quite notorious.’

‘Pardon me,’ Ogawa opens his notebook, ‘but what is “notorious”?’

‘Something that is notorious is “famous for being bad”.’

‘Mr de Zoet say,’ recalls Ogawa, ‘home island is below level of sea.’

‘ Walcheren? So it is, so it is. We Dutch live beneath the fishes.’

‘To stop the sea to flood the land,’ Ogawa imagines, ‘is ancient war.’

‘ “War” is the word, and we lose battles sometimes…’ Jacob notices dirt underneath his thumbnail from his last hour in Dr Marinus’s garden this morning ‘… and dikes break. Yet whilst the sea is the Dutchman’s enemy, it is also his provider and the – the “shaper” of his ingenuity. Had Nature blessed us with high, fertile ground like our neighbours, what need to invent the Amsterdam Bourse, the Joint Stock Company and our empire of middle-men?’

Carpenters lash the timbers of the half-built Warehouse Lelie.

Jacob decides to broach a delicate subject before Hanzaburo returns. ‘Mr Ogawa, when you searched my books, on my first morning ashore, you saw my dictionary, I believe?’

‘New Dictionary of Dutch Language. Very fine and rare book.’

‘It would, I assume, be of use to a Japanese scholar of Dutch?’

‘Dutch dictionary is magic key to open many lock doors.’

‘I desire, then…’ Jacob hesitates ‘… to present it to Miss Aibagawa.’

Wind-harried voices reach them like echoes from a deep well.

Ogawa’s face is stern and unreadable.

‘How do you think,’ probes Jacob, ‘she might respond to such a gift?’