The destination of this, the first English voyage to challenge Lisbon's control of the India trade, was the port of Surat, twelve leagues inland up the Tapti River, largest of the only two harbors on the Indian subcontinent not controlled by Portugal.
He reached for the second tankard of brandy that had been brought and squinted again toward the mouth of the Tapti, where four armed Portuguese galleons had been anchored earlier that morning.
Damn the Company. No one planned on galleons at the river mouth. Not now, not this early in the season. Did the Portugals somehow learn our destination? . . . And if they knew that, do they know the rest of the Company's plan?
Since the Tapti had been badly silted for decades, navigable only by cargo barge or small craft, he and the merchants must travel upriver to Surat by pinnace, the twenty-foot sailboat lashed amidships on the Discovery's main deck. There the merchants would try to negotiate England's first direct trade with India. And Brian Hawksworth would undertake a separate mission, one the East India Company hoped might someday change the course of trade throughout the Indies.
He remounted the steps to the quarterdeck and paused to study the green shoreline circling their inlet. The low-lying hills undulated in the sun's heat, washing the Discovery in the dense perfume of land. Already India beckoned, the lure even stronger than all the legends told. He smiled to himself and drank again, this time a toast to the first English captain ever to hoist colors off the coast of India.
Then with a weary hand he reached for the telescope, an expensive new Dutch invention, and trained it on his second frigate, the Resolve, anchored a musket shot away. Like the Discovery, she rode easily at anchor, bearing to lee. He noted with relief that her ship's carpenter had finally sealed a patch of oakum and sail in the gash along her portside bow. For a few hours now, the men on the pumps could retire from the sweltering hold.
Finally, he directed the glass toward the remains of two Portuguese galleons aground in the sandy shallows off his starboard quarter, black smoke still streaming from gaps in their planking where explosions had ripped through the hull. And for an instant his stomach tightened, just as it had earlier that morning, when one of those same galleons had laid deep shadows across the Discovery's decks, so close he could almost read the eyes of the infantry poised with grapples to swing down and board. The Portugals will be back, he told himself, and soon. With fireships.
He scanned the river mouth once more. It was deserted now. Even the fishing craft had fled. But upriver would be another matter. Portuguese longboats, launched with boarding parties of infantry, had been stranded when the two galleons were lost. Together they had carried easily a hundred, perhaps two hundred musketmen.
They made for the Tapti, he thought grimly, and they'll be upriver waiting. We have to launch before they can set a blockade. Tonight. On the tide.
He revolved to find Giles Mackintosh, quartermaster of the Discovery, waiting mutely by his side.