“Pull together!” Aguirrez shouted, his dark eyes blazing. “You're rowing like a bunch of Spanish whores.”

The oars churned the calm water into a sudsy foam. The ship shuddered and creaked, and finally it began to inch forward. Aguir- rez roared his encouragement and dashed back to the stern. He leaned on the rail and put his eye to his spyglass. Through the lens, he saw a tall, thin man in the bow platform of the lead galley look- ing back at him through a telescope.

'El Brasero' Aguirrez whispered with unveiled contempt.

Ignatius Martinez saw Aguirrez looking at him and curled his thick voluptuary's lips in a snarl of triumph. His pitiless yellow eyes burned with fanaticism in their deep-set sockets. The long aristocratic nose was lifted in the air as if it had encountered a bad smell.

“Captain Blackthorne,” he purred to the red-bearded man at his side, “spread the word among the rowers. Tell them they will be free if we catch our prey.”

The captain shrugged and carried out the order, knowing that Martinez had no intention of keeping his promise, that it was merely a cruel deception.

El Brasero was Spanish for brazier. Martinez had earned his nick- name for his zeal in roasting heretics at the auto de fe, as the public spectacles of punishment were called. He was a familiar figure at the quemerdo, or place of burning, where he used every means, includ- ing bribery, to make sure that he had the honor of lighting the pyre. Although his official title was Public Prosecutor and Advisor to the Inquisition, he had persuaded his higher-ups to appoint him as the Inquisitor in charge of prosecuting the Basques. The prosecution of the Basques was extremely profitable. The Inquisition immediately confiscated the property of the accused. The stolen wealth of its vic- tims financed the Inquisition's prisons, secret police, torture cham- bers, army and bureaucracy, and it made rich men of the Inquisitors.

Basques had brought the arts of navigation and shipbuilding to unheard-of levels of expertise. Aguirrez had sailed to the secret fish- ing grounds across the Western Sea dozens of times on whaling or cod-fishing trips. Basques were natural capitalists, and many, like Aguirrez, had become rich selling whale products and cod. His busy shipyard on the Nervion River built vessels of every type and size. Aguirrez had been aware of the Inquisition and its excesses, but he was too busy running his various enterprises and enjoying the infre- quent company of his beautiful wife and two children to give it much thought. It was on his return from one trip that he had learned first- hand that Martinez and the Inquisition were malevolent forces that could not be ignored.