In any event there was a pause while the accounts of Edmund de Ath and Elizabeth de Obregon were sent by express to Mexico City, and (presumably) pondered by important people, and orders sent back by express. This ended up taking sixteen days. Van Hoek never once came ashore, but remained aboard his ship, doing sums in his cabin or pacing the poop deck with a spyglass, scanning the horizon for armadas. Vrej Esphahnian ventured into Acapulco to procure the wood and other items needed to repair Minerva ’s foremast. He ended up being absent for two nights and a day, and van Hoek was getting ready to send out a rescue party when a barge emerged from Acapulco Harbor’s broad southeastern entrance and came their way, laden with what they wanted. Vrej was posed insouciantly on a new foremast, and explained the delay by informing them that Acapulco was that rarest of places, an important trade-port without a single Armenian, and so he had been forced to deal with slower minds.