The Nautical Chart

  "That scarcely seems possible, does it?" I continued in the same tone, permitting myself to add a tender touch. "When I see a child coloring in his geography notebook, I think how men have studied land and sea from the beginning of time, calculating triangulations, lunar distances, and planetary eclipses, observing every feature of the terrain and measuring depths, to draw maps of what they have seen. 'The way of reaching here being so arduous,' wrote Martin Cortes, 'it would be difficult to make it understood with words or to write with the pen. The best description the ingenuity of man has devised is to paint it on a chart.' In this way man began to dominate nature, making explorations and voyages possible. With his talent, and with the rudimentary aid of the needle, the astrolabe, the quadrant, the forestafF, and the Alphonsine tables, man began to trace the line of the coasts; he marked their dangers on paper, and set lights and towers in appropriate places." I motioned over my head toward the Tabula Itineraria. It was not a paradigm of exactitude, with all those Roman highways and with geographic rigor sacrificed to military and administrative efficacy, but it was the gesture that counted. 'And it was done with such imagination and efficiency, despite the logical imprecisions, that today satellites beam back landscapes described in almost perfect detail by men who explored and navigated them hundreds of years ago. Men who, above all else, spoke, observed, and thought.

  Do you know the story of Eratosthenes?"

  I told it to them, of course. From a to z, not omitting a single detail. A clever lad, that Cyreniac—director of the library of Alexandria, to give you an idea of who he was. There was a well in Asuan, the bottom of which was touched by the sun's rays only from the 20th to the 22nd of June. That placed the well in the Tropic of Cancer. Furthermore, the city of Alexandria lay to the north of that point, at a distance known to be 5,000 estadia. So Eratosthenes measured the angle of the sun at noon on June 21 and deduced that the resulting arc, approximately seven degrees, was one-fiftieth of earth's meridian. And for that meridian he calculated 250,000 estadia, which is approximately 28,000 miles. You must admit that isn't bad, eh? Considering that the true circumference of the earth is 25,000 miles. An error of less than fourteen percent in relative terms, which was extremely precise for a fellow who lived two centuries before Christ.

  'And that," I concluded, "is why my profession delights me."

  They still did not seem impressed, but I was in my element.

  And it is true that my profession delights me. With that point established, I decided to continue the consultation.

  "Well," I said, after the appropriate calculations. "My congratulations. You have applied my tables correctly. Like you, I obtain a modern longitude of 1°21'west of Greenwich."

  "Then we have a serious problem," Tanger said. "Because there's nothing there."

  I gave her a glance of condolence, again over my glasses, which have an irritating tendency to slip down to the tip of my nose. I also shot a sidelong glance at the sailor. He did not seem upset by the way I had one elbow on my desk, studying the blonde. Possibly his was a simple professional relationship, an unemotional give and take. I gathered hope.

  "I fear, then, that you will have to revise the original position on the Urrutia. Or, as you foresaw, enlarge the search area.

  The ship could have drifted from its last known position, or sailed a bit farther before going down. A storm?"

  "Battle," she said, succinctly. "With a corsair."

  How beautiful, I thought. How classic. And what a slim chance of success those two had. I put on a face befitting the circumstances.

  Gravely, I offered my opinion. "Then between taking their position and reaching the place they went down, many things could have happened. They must have been very busy on board as they took the height of the sun on bearings on land. I believe that places you in a difficult position."

  They must have been aware of that before coming to me, because they seemed no more ruffled by my words than they had been when they arrived. Coy merely looked at her, as if expecting a reaction that did not come. And Tanger kept looking at me the way you do at a doctor who has disgorged only half the diagnosis. I took another look at the chart, hoping to find something good to report. Even a quadriplegic can still whistle a good tune, or paint with the toes of one foot. Or something of that nature.

  "I suppose there is no doubt that the charts they were using were Urrutia's," I commented. 'Any other chart would require accommodations in the theoretical position we are working with."

  "No doubt at all." Listening to her I asked myself if that woman was ever in doubt. "We have the direct testimony of the crew."

  'And you are sure it is the Cadiz meridian?"

  "That's the only one it can be. Paris, Greenwich, Ferrol, Cartagena ... None of them fits the general area of the shipwreck. Only Cadiz."

  "The old meridian, I expect." A professional smile. Mine, m agreement. "You couldn't have made the error, which is more frequent than you might believe, of confusing it with San Fernando?"

  "Naturally not."

  "Right. Cadiz."

  I was giving this serious thought.

  "I realize," I said after a few seconds, "that you are telling me only what you feel free to tell me, and I understand that. I am familiar with circumstances such as these." Tanger maintained eye contact with supreme sangfroid. "However, perhaps you can tell me a little more about the ship."

  "She was a brigantine sailing from the coast of Andalusia. Heading, northeast."

  "Spanish flag?"

  "Yes."

  'And who was her owner?"

  I saw that she was hesitant. If everything had stopped there, I would not have continued to question her, but would have bid them good-bye with all that courtesy I previously referred to. You cannot come to squeeze a master cartographer dry in exchange for only a pretty face, and on top of that, hide with one hand what you imply you are revealing in the other. She must have read that last thought in my face, because she started to say something. But it was Coy, from his chair, who spoke the magic words.

  "She was a Jesuit ship."

  I looked at him with affection. He was a good lad, that sailor. I suppose that this was the precise moment when he won me over to his cause. I looked at the woman. She nodded, with a slight, enigmatic smile, halfway between guilt and complicity. Only beautiful women dare smile that way when you are about to catch them in a fib.

  "Jesuit," I repeated.

  Then I nodded a couple of times, savoring the information. This was good. This was even stupendous. I imagine one becomes a cartographer to revel in moments like this. Taking my time, I studied the chart spread out on my desk, conscious of the two pairs of eyes on me. Mentally, I counted out half a minute.

  "Invite me to dinner," I said finally, when I reached thirty. "I believe I have just earned a bottle of good wine and a stupendous meal."

  I TOOK them to the Pequena Taberna, a restaurant with Huerta cuisine, behind the San Juan arch near the river. I was luxuriating in the situation, like a torero with all the time in the world, relishing their eagerness to hear what I had to say, and doling it out with an eyedropper. Aperitif, a more than reasonable bottle of Marques de Riscal gran reserva, a lovely pisto, a fresh vegetable omelette, blood sausage fried with onion, and broiled vegetables. They tasted scarcely a bite, but I did honor to the place and the menu.

  "That ship," I said, once the proper time had gone by, "cannot be found at 37°32' latitude and i°2i' longitude west of Cadiz, for the simple reason that it was never there."

  I asked for more pisto. It was delicious, and it made your mouth water to see it on the counter, displayed in large glazed earthenware tureens. It was also delicious to see their faces as I spun out my story.

  "The Jesuits had a long tradition as cartographers," I continued, dipping bread in my sauce. "Urrutia himself counted on their technical aid in compiling his nautical charts After all, the scientific-hydrographic tradition of the Church goes back to antiquity. The first reference to a nautical instrumen
t is found in the Acts of the Apostles: And dropping the lead, they found twenty fathoms.'"

  That erudite touch did not have much effect. They were growing impatient, naturally. He made no attempt to hide it; his hands were planted on either side of his plate and he was looking at me with that when-is-this-imbecile-gomg-to-stop-dancing-around-the-mulberry-bush look. She was listening with an apparent calm that I dare qualify as professional That cost her, I have no doubt. She showed little sign of anything other than extreme attentiveness, as if each of my meanderings was pure gold. She knew how to handle men. Later I learned just how well.

  "The fact is," I continued, between mouthfuls and swallows of the gran reserva—"some of the most important cartographers were members of the Sodety of Jesus. Ricd, Martini, Georges Fournier, author of the Hydrographie— They had their systems, their missions in Asia, their settlements in the Americas, their own routes, their fiefs of all kinds. Ships, captains, navigators. Blasco Ibatiez wrote a novel about them titled La arana negra, and in a sense he was right in referring to black spiders."

  I continued with my meal and the details, still reserving the final tightning bolt. The Jesuits, I added, had their schools of cosmography, cartography, and navigation. They knew how important precise geographic knowledge was, and right from the time of Ignatio de Loyola they were charged with gathering on their voyages all information useful to the Society. Even the Marques de la Ensenada—I underlined my point with the asparagus impaled on my fork—during the reign of Philip V commissioned a modern and detailed map of Spain from them that was never published because of the minister's fall. I also recounted the Society's dose relationship with Jorge Juan and Antonio de Ulloa, knights of Punto Fijo, who measured the degree of the meridian in Peru. In matters of science, in short, the Jesuits were the parsley in every dressing. They had their friends and their enemies, naturally. Which is why they took precautions. In the course of my studies, I myself have come across documents that at times were difficult and occasionally impossible to interpret Those men had a whole infrastructure devoted to what today—I smiled—we would call counterespionage.

  "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 t
o 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.