“If we are playing with the pirates’ minds, what is the advantage in making the ship’s captain out as a senile poltroon-which, if I may read ‘tween the lines, would appear to be my role? Why not fling open every gunport, run out every cannon, make the hills ring with broadsides, set van Hoek up on the poop waving his hook in the air?”

“We’ll get round to all that later, in all likelihood. For now we must pursue a multilayered bluffing strategy.”

“Why?”

“Because we have more than one group of pirates to contend with.”

“What!?”

“This is why we captured and questioned-”

“ Somewould say tortured-”

“-several pirates before dawn. There are simply too many pirates in this Bay to make sense. Some of them would appear to be mutually hostile. Indeed, we’ve learned that the traditional, honest, hardworking Plymouth Bay pirates-the ones in the small boats-get over, Cap’n, I say! Two paces over to larboard, if you please!”

Dappa’s adverting on something outside the window. Daniel turns round to see a taut manila line dangling vertically just outside-not an unusual sight in and of itself, but it wasn’t there a few seconds ago. The stretched line shudders, tattooing a beat on the window-pane. A pair of blistered hands appears, then a broad-brimmed hat, then a head with a dagger clenched in its teeth. Then behind Daniel a tremendous FOOM while something unsightly happens to the climber’s face-clearly visible through a suddenly absent pane. A gout of smoke roils and rebounds against the panes that are still there, and by the time it’s cleared away the pirate is gone. Dappa’s in the middle of the cabin holding a hot smoky shooting-iron.

He rummages in van Hoek’s chest and pulls out a hook with various straps and stump-cups all a-dangle. “That was one of the sort I was speaking of. Never would’ve tried anything so foolhardy if the newer breed hadn’t brought such hard times down on ’em.”

“What newer breed?”

Dappa, wearing a fastidious and disgusted look, threads the hook out through the missing window-pane and catches the dangling pirate-rope, then draws it inside the cabin and severs it with a smart swing of his cutlass. “Lift your head toward the horizon, Cap’n, and behold the flotilla of coasting craft-sloops and topsail schooners, and a ketch-that is forming up there in Plymouth Bay. Half a dozen or more vessels. Strange information glancing from one to the next embodied in pennants, guns, and flashes of sunlight.”

“It is because of them that the riffraff in the small craft cannot make a living?”

“Just so, Cap’n. Now, if we’d put up a brave front, as you suggested, they’d’ve known their cause was hopeless, and might’ve been tempted to make common cause with Teach.”

“Teach?”

“Cap’n Edward Teach, the Admiral of yonder pirate-fleet. But as it is, these small-timers have spent themselves in a futile try at seizing Minerva before Teach could make sail and form up. Now we can address the Teach matter separately.”

“There was a Teach in the Royal Navy-”

“He is the same fellow. He and his men fought on the Queen’s side in the War, helping themselves to Spanish shipping. Now that the treaty is signed and we are friendly with Spain, these fellows are at loose ends, and have crossed the Atlantic to seek a home port for American piracy.”

“So I ween it’s not our cargo that Teach wants, so much as-”

“If we threw every last bale overboard, still he would come after us. He wants Minerva for his flagship. And a mighty raider she would be.”

There’s been no gunfire recently, so Daniel crosses over to the window and watches sail after sail unfurling, Teach’s fleet developing into a steady cloud on the bay. “They look like fast ships,” he says. “We’ll be seeing Teach soon.”

“He’s easily recognized-according to them we questioned, he’s a master of piratical performances. Wears smoking punks twined about his head, like burning dreadlocks, and, at night, burning tapers in his thick black beard. He’s got half the people in Plymouth convinced he’s the Devil incarnate.”

“What think you, Dappa?”

“I think there never was a Devil so fierce as Cap’n van Hoek, when pirates are after his Lady.”

Sir ROBERT MORAY produced a discourse concerning coffee, written by Dr. GODDARD at the King’s command; which was read, and the author desired to leave a copy of it with the society.

Mr. BOYLE mentioned, that he had been informed, that the much drinking of coffee produced the palsy.

The bishop of Exeter seconded him, and said, that himself had found it dispose to paralytical effects; which however he thought were caused only in hot constitutions, by binding.

Mr. GRAUNT affirmed, that he knew two gentlemen, great drinkers of coffee, very paralytical.

Dr. WHISTLER suggested, that it might be inquired, whether the same persons took much tobacco.

–THEHISTORY OF THEROYALSOCIETY OFLONDON FORIMPROVING OFNATURALKNOWLEDGE, JAN. 18, 1664/5*

HAVING NO DESIREto be either palsied, or paralytical, Daniel avoided the stuff until 1670, when he got his first taste of it at Mrs. Green’s Coffee-House, cunningly sited in the place where the western end of the Strand yawned into Charing Cross. The Church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields lay to the west.*To the east was the New Exchange-this was the nucleus of a whole block of shops. North was Covent Garden, and South, according to rumor and tradition, was the River Thames, a few hundred yards distant-but you couldn’t see it because noble Houses and Palaces formed a solid levee running from the King’s residence (Whitehall Palace) all the way round the river-bend to Fleet Ditch, where the wharves began.

Daniel Waterhouse walked past Mrs. Green’s one summer morning in 1670, a minute after Isaac Newton had done so. It had a little garden in the front, with several tables. Daniel went into it and stood for a moment, checking out his lines of sight. Isaac had risen early, sneaked out of his bedchamber, and taken to the streets without eating any breakfast-not unusual for Isaac. Daniel had followed him out the front door of the (rebuilt, and dramatically enlarged) Waterhouse residence; across Lincoln’s Inn Fields, where a few fashionable early risers were walking dogs, or huddling in mysterious conferences; and (coincidentally) right past the very place at Drury Lane and Long Acre where those two Frenchmen had died of the Black Death six years earlier, inaugurating the memorable Plague Years. Thence into the dangerous chasm of flying earth and loose paving-stones that was St. Martin’s Lane-for John Comstock, Earl of Epsom, acting in his capacity as Commissioner of Sewers, had decreed that this meandering country cow-path must be paved, and made over into a city street-the axis of a whole new London.

Daniel had been keeping his distance so that Isaac wouldn’t notice him if he turned around-though you never knew with Isaac, who had better senses than most wild animals. St. Martin’s Lane was crowded with heavy stone-carts drawn by teams of mighty horses, just barely under the control of their teamsters, and Daniel was forced to dodge wagons, and to scurry around and over piles of dirt and cobbles, in order to keep sight of Isaac.

Once they had reached the open spaces of Charing Cross, and the adjoining Yard where Kings of Scotland had once come to humble themselves before their liege-lord in Whitehall, Daniel could afford to maintain more distance-Isaac’s silver hair was easy to pick out in a crowd. And if Isaac’s destination was one of the shops, coffee-houses, livery stables, gardens, markets, or noblemen’s houses lining the great Intersection, why, Daniel could sit down right about here and spy on him at leisure.