How many days from home? One year and eleven months and two days. That's what you were trained for-to sail the unknown sea, to chart it and come home again. For a month now outcrops had threatened them, but never a sight of land. He saw the spire of another reef far on the starboard quarter but that told him nothing. Not a fleck of seaweed or splash of color to give a hint of a sanding shelf. He searched the ocean but it was dull gray and angry. And so many deaths to win them.ДЄgain he tasted the wind and smelled it, but there was no hint of land. Yes, the first-and first pilot ever to sail these Asian waters, apart from a few bastard Portuguese or motherless Spaniards who still think they own the world. I always will.ДЇirst English pilot ever to get through Magellan's Pass. I've set myself against the sea all my life and I've always won. There's more storm there, Blackthorne told himself, and more reefs and more shoals. Even so the tide and the storm bore her strongly toward the darkening horizon. She was riding under bare poles but for storm tops'ls. The wind freshened even more and the ship lurched. England, their only allies, the first country in Christendom to break with the Papal Court at Rome and become Protestant some seventy-odd years ago, had also been warring on Spain for the last twenty years, and openly allied with the Dutch for a decade. The Netherlands, sometimes called Holland, Dutchland, or the Low Countries, were still legally part of the Spanish Empire. Protestant Netherlands had been at war with Catholic Spain for more than four decades, struggling to throw off the yoke of their hated Spanish masters. Their orders: to plunder Spanish and Portuguese possessions in the New World and put them to the torch to open up permanent trading concessions to discover new islands in the Pacific Ocean that could serve as permanent bases and to claim the territory for the Netherlands and, within three years, to come home again. All Dutch except for three Englishmen-two pilots, one officer. Four hundred and ninety-six men, all volunteers. The first Dutch ships ever to breach the secrets of the Strait of Magellan. She was the Erasmus, two hundred and sixty tons, a three-masted trader-warship out of Rotterdam, armed with twenty cannon and sole survivor of the first expeditionary force sent from the Netherlands to ravage the enemy in the New World. The ship heeled in a sudden squall and Blackthorne held on to the arm of the seachair that was lashed near the wheel on the quarterdeck until she righted, timbers squealing. His name was John Blackthorne and he was alone on deck but for the bowsprit lookout-Salamon the mute-who huddled in the lee, searching the sea ahead. No food, almost no water and what there is, brackish and foul. One ship left out of five-eight and twenty men from a crew of one hundred and seven and now only ten can walk and the rest near death and our Captain-General one of them. Too many deaths on this voyage, he thought, I'm Pilot-Major of a dead fleet. The gale tore at him and he felt its bite deep within and he knew that if they did not make landfall in three days they would all be dead. Who loved their ships more than their womenДЄUTHORвЂ™S NOTE I would like to thank all those here, in Asia, and in Europe-the living and the dead-who helped to make this novel possible. Manufactured in the United States of America Japan-History-Tokugawa period, 1600вЂ“1868-Fiction. Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication DataДЎ. The trademark Delacore PressВ® is registered in the U.S. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the Publisher, except where permitted by law. Noble HouseД«antan Doubleday Day Publishing Group, Inc.ДЄll rights reserved.

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