"But who should I seek out when we reach Surat?"
At that moment two bells sounded on the quarterdeck, and with them a ray from the fading sun pierced the stern window, glancing off the oak boards of the table. A twilight silence seemed to settle uneasily over the Discovery, amplifying the creaking of her boards.
"Captain, I have already told you more than most foreigners know. You would be wise to prepare now to meet the Shahbandar." Karim rose abruptly and bowed, palms together, hands at his brow. "You must forgive me. In Islam we pray at sunset."
Hawksworth stared after him in perplexity as Karim turned and vanished into the darkened companionway.
Not yet even aland, and already I sense trouble. He fears the Shahbandar, that's clear enough, but I'm not sure it's for the usual reasons. Is there some intrigue underway that we're about to be drawn into, God help us?
He took a deep breath and, fighting the ache in his leg, made his way out to the quarter gallery on the stern. A lone flying fish, marooned in the bay from its home in the open sea, burst from the almost placid waters, glinting the orange sun off its body and settling with a splash, annoying the seabirds that squabbled over gallery scraps along the port side. Seamen carrying rations of salt pork and biscuit were clambering down the companionway and through the hatch leading to the lower deck and their hammocks. Hawksworth listened to them curse the close, humid air below, and then he turned to inhale again the land breeze, permeated with a green perfume of almost palpable intensity.
Following the direction of the sweetened air, he turned and examined the darkening shore one last time. India now seemed vaguely obscured, as through a light mist. Or was it merely encroaching darkness? And through this veil the land seemed somehow to brood? Or did it beckon?
It's my imagination, he told himself. India is there all right, solid ground, and scarcely a cannon shot away. India, the place of fable and mystery to Englishmen for centuries. And also the place where a certain party of English travelers disappeared so many years ago.
That should have been a warning, he told himself. It's almost too ironic that you're the next man to try to go in. You, of all the men in England. Are you destined to repeat their tragedy?
He recalled again the story he knew all too well. The man financing those English travelers almost three decades past