The Confusion

The results were none too encouraging. In Diu there was no Worshipful Company of Glass Sellers, as in London. Indeed, it seemed that glass-making was one of the few arts and crafts that Christians did better than anyone else. There had, according to Vrej, been many brilliant glassworkers in Damascus three hundred years ago, but then Tamerlane had sacked the place and carried them all off to Samarkand, and they had not been heard from since. There was no time just now to send a delegation to Samarkand and make inquiries. So they had to make do with what glass could be collected from the diverse Portuguese chapter-houses, factories, and fortifications around Diu. For the bubbling-vessel, Vrej procured a single windowpane about a hand-span on a side. Jack put his coppersmiths to work letting a hole into the side of the vessel, and van Hoek used his caulking acumen to seal the pane into place so that not too much water would leak out around the edges. All of which took a while. But it required upwards of a fortnight for a given bucket of piss to reach the point where it was ready to be used, and so the hurry was not great. And Arlanc had been kept busy for some while procuring charcoal from the wooded hills in the north. This had to be prepared by locals making countless small batches in countless tan-doors, then collected and gathered and shipped. Capital ran low. Vessels came across from Surat bearing news, or at least rumors, that this or that Banyan was readying a caravan and a puissant force of mercenaries to punch through the Maratha blockade along the Narmada; and each such message sent Surendranath into an ecstasy of rage, and caused him to run about the compound (weaving carefully between urine-receptacles) flinging his turban on the ground and then picking it up so that he could fling it down again, while wondering aloud to the gods why he had ever chosen to take up with all of these crazy ferangs. For a week, it seemed that all they had to show for their efforts was a sea of putrescent urine; a lot of copper, beaten to outlandish shapes and stuck together with solder and with tar; and a few patches of dirt where dusk seemed to linger even after black night had covered the rest of Hindoostan.

But then finally a cart-train came down out of the north laden with charcoal and with firewood, and Vrej Esphahnian unveiled a wooden crate containing a gross of glass bottles (smoky brown, striated, and bubbly, but more or less transparent), and they were ready to go. Jack had mentioned to them, and Padraig had demonstrated beyond all question, that the apparatus would destroy itself in a spitting storm of white fire shortly after they were finished using it; they had, in other words, one and only one chance.

At last one morning Jack and van Hoek and some local representatives of the chamber-pot-handling caste wrapped cloths around their mouths and noses and set about lugging the vast motley collection of kegs, urns, and pots of f?tid urine up to the great kettle and dumping them in. At the same time, the largest and hottest possible bonfire was kindled beneath. It took some time for the fire to take hold, for the piss had grown chilly sitting out overnight. But when it did, all fled the compound, and many fled the neighborhood. They would have fled screaming, if they’d had the power to draw breath. Not that they were any strangers to the stench of old piss, by this point; but what the kettle exhaled was of an altogether different order. The broad rim of that kettle might as well have been the maw of Jupiter-Ammon himself, striking mortals dead, not with thunderbolts from on high, but with burning exhalations drawn up from Hell. It made the air shiver as it came on, and made birds fold their wings and smack their little heads into the ground. Men could do nothing but hide their eyes in the crooks of their arms, plug their noses, and bump into one another until they found a way out. When they had escaped to a radius where it was possible to draw breath, they turned inwards and watched the kettle through sheets of burning tears. From time to time someone would draw in a deep breath and hold it while he sprinted back to the hell-mouth to shove a few more pieces of cord-wood into the fire.