It took another couple of years, but eventually they boarded a ship and sailed south. They could have left earlier, but by now Mina was heavily pregnant for the first time, and they waited for the child to be born before taking ship. Sailing with a newborn could have been an awful experience, but the infant seemed to take the rolling world of the ocean without anxiety, as if Neptune himself rocked him to sleep.
South they sailed, and as the child slept, Jacobus taught his wife the contents of the manuscript, lest something happen to him and she had to take over the Project. They had been calling it the Project for some time now, the initial capital pregnant with conspiracy.
‘Can it be true, Jacobus?’ Mina asked as he coached her, and she heard the contents of the book for the first time. ‘Can this miracle really take place?’
‘Yes, my dear, it can be true. It is true.’
He said it with faith, though he could still not be sure. He had not been able to follow the instructions which had been set out in the manuscript. He needed the right environment and conditions, and he believed he had found them on the island. He had spoken to several men who had visited it, and they told him about its rocky fastness and its isolation. It seemed perfect.
But now, seeing it for the first time, he felt that certainty slip, disturbed by the high rollers of the ocean beneath him.
‘My days,’ said Mina, holding little Jacobus in her arms. ‘It looks like a prison.’
And it did. The island was encased in walls of rock, and it stood alone in the blue-green ocean. They approached from the south, the only direction which the wind would allow, and sailed around to the north side where the only reliable landing place could be found. As they went, Jacobus caught sight of men working on one of the headlands.
‘Look, my love!’ he shouted, excitement conquering his dismay at the initial sight of the place. ‘They are building our fort!’
He found her hand with his, and they held the baby together as the South Atlantic winds moved them around the island which was to be their home.