Riptide

Hatch shot a surprised glance at the Captain. Just that night, in the galley of the Cerberus, he'd heard that nobody was ever invited below on the Griffin; that nobody, in fact, even knew what it looked like. The Captain, although personable and friendly with his crew, always kept his distance.

'Good thing I didn't start lecturing you on your vices, isn't it?' Hatch said. 'Thanks, I'd love a glass of port.'

He followed Neidelman into the pilothouse, then down the steps and under the low door. Another narrow half- flight of metal stairs, another door, and Hatch found himself in a large, low-ceilinged room. He looked around in wonder. The paneling was a rich, lustrous mahogany, carved in Georgian style and inlaid with mother-of-pearl. Delicate Tiffany stained glass was set into each porthole, and leather banquettes were placed against the walls. At the far end, a small fire glowed, filling the cabin with warmth and the faint, fragrant smell of birch. Glass-fronted library cabinets flanked either side of the mantelpiece; Hatch could see bound calfskin and the gleam of gold stamping. He moved forward to examine the titles: Hakluyt's Voyages, an early copy of Newton's Principia. Here and there, priceless illuminated manuscripts and other incunabula were arranged face outward; Hatch recognized a fine copy of Les Tres Riches Heures du Duc de Berry. There was also a small shelf devoted to original editions of early pirate texts: Lionel Wafer's Batchelor's Delight, Alexander Esquemelion's Bucaniers of America, and A General History of the Robberies and Murders of the most notorious Pyrates, by Charles Johnson. The library alone must have cost a small fortune. Hatch wondered if Neidelman had furnished the boat with earnings from prior salvages.

Beside one of the cabinets was a small seascape in a gilt frame. Hatch moved in for a closer look. Then he drew in his breath sharply.

'My God,' he said. 'This is a Turner, isn't it?'

Neidelman nodded. 'It's a study for his painting, Squall Off Beachy Head, 1874'

'That's the one in the Tate?' Hatch said. 'When I was in London a few years back, I tried sketching it several times.'

'Are you a painter?' Neidelman asked.

'I'm a dabbler. Watercolors, mostly.' Hatch stepped back, glancing around again. The other pictures that hung on the walls were not paintings, but precise copperplate engravings of botanical specimens: heavy flowers, odd grasses, exotic plants.

Neidelman approached a small baize-covered dry sink, laid with cut-glass ship's decanters and small glasses. Pulling two tumblers from their felt-covered moorings, he poured a few fingers of port in each. 'Those engravings,' he said, following Hatch's gaze, 'are by Sir Joseph Banks, the botanist who accompanied Captain Cook on his first voyage around the world. They're plant specimens he collected in Botany Bay, shortly after they discovered Australia. It was the fantastic variety of plant specimens, you know, that caused Banks to give the bay its name.'

'They're beautiful,' murmured Hatch, accepting a glass.

'They're probably the finest copperplate engravings ever made. What a fortunate man he was: a botanist, given the gift of a brand-new continent.'

'Axe you interested in botany?' Hatch asked.

'I'm interested in brand-new continents,' Neidelman said, staring into the fire. 'But I was born a little too late. All those have been snapped up.' He smiled quickly, covering what seemed like a wistful gleam in his eyes.

'But in the Water Pit you have a mystery worthy of attention.'

'Yes,' Neidelman replied. 'Perhaps the only one left. That's why I suppose setbacks such as today's shouldn't dismay me. Great mysteries don't yield up their secrets easily.'

There was a long silence as Hatch sipped his port. Most people, he knew, found silence in a conversation to be uncomfortable. But Neidelman seemed to welcome it.

'I meant to ask you,' the Captain said at last. 'What did you think of our reception in town yesterday?'

'By and large, everyone seems happy with our presence here. We're certainly a boon to local business.'

'Yes,' Neidelman replied. 'But what do you mean, 'by and large'?'

'Well, not everyone's a merchant.' Hatch decided there was no point in being evasive. 'We seem to have aroused the moral opposition of the local minister.'

Neidelman gave a wry smile. 'The minister disapproves, does he? After two thousand years of murder, inquisition, and intolerance, it's a wonder any Christian minister still feels he holds the moral high ground.'

Hatch shifted a little uncomfortably; this was a voluble Neidelman, quite unlike the cold figure that just a few hours before had ordered the pumps run at a critically dangerous level.

'They told Columbus his ship would fall off the earth. And they forced Galileo to publicly repudiate his greatest discovery.'

Neidelman fished his pipe out of his pocket and went through the elaborate ritual of lighting it. 'My father was a Lutheran minister himself,' he said more quietly, shaking out the match. 'I had quite enough to last me a lifetime.'

'You don't believe in God?' Hatch asked.

Neidelman gazed at Hatch in silence. Then he lowered his head. 'To be honest, I've often wished I did. Religion played such a large role in my childhood that being without it now myself sometimes feels like a void. But I'm the kind of person who cannot believe in the absence of proof. It isn't something I have any control over. I must have proof.' He sipped his port. 'Why? Do you have any religious beliefs?'

Hatch turned toward him. 'Well, yes, I do.'

Neidelman waited, smoking.

'But I don't care to discuss them.'