Thomas Hoover - The Moghul

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"And what about the Discovery? I want to see her too."

"That you will, sir. She's in our shipyard down at Deptford. Might be well if I just had Huyghen see you there. By all means look her over." He beamed. "And a lovelier sight you're ne'er like to meet." Then, remembering himself, he quickly turned aside. "Unless, of course, 'twould be my Margaret here."…

As agreed, Hawksworth was taken to Deptford the next day, the Company's carriage inching through London's teeming streets for what seemed a lifetime. His first sight of the shipyard was a confused tangle of planking, ropes, and workmen, but he knew at a glance the Discovery was destined to be handsome. The keel had been laid weeks before, and he could already tell her fo'c'sle would be low and rakish. She was a hundred and thirty feet from the red lion of her beakhead to the taffrail at her stern-where gilding already was being applied to the ornate quarter galleries. She was five hundred tons burden, each ton some six hundred cubic feet of cargo space, and she would carry a hundred and twenty men when fully crewed. Over her swarmed an army of carpenters, painters, coopers, riggers, and joiners, while skilled artisans were busy attaching newly gilded sculptures to her bow and stern.

That day they were completing the installation of the hull chain-plates that would secure deadeyes for the shrouds, and he moved closer to watch. Stories had circulated the docks that less than a month into the Company's last voyage the mainmast yard of a vessel had split, and the shipbuilder, William Benten, and his foreman, Edward Chandler, had narrowly escaped charges of lining their pockets by substituting cheap, uncured wood.

He noticed that barrels of beer had been stationed around the yard for the workmen, to blunt the lure of nearby alehouses, and as he stood watching he saw Chandler seize a grizzled old bystander who had helped himself to a tot of beer and begin forcibly evicting him from the yard. As they passed, he heard the old man-clad in a worn leather jerkin, his face ravaged by decades of salt wind and hard drink- reviling the Company.

"What does the rottin' East India Company know o' the Indies. You'll ne'er double the Cape in that pissin' shallop. 'Twould scarce serve to ferry the Thames." The old man struggled weakly to loosen Chandler's grasp on his jerkin. "But I can tell you th' Portugals've got carracks that'll do it full easy, thousand-ton bottoms that'd hold this skiff in the orlop deck and leave air for a hundred barrel o' biscuit. An' I've shipped 'em. By all the saints, where's the man standin' that knows the Indies better?"

Hawksworth realized he must be Huyghen. He intercepted him at the edge of the yard and invited him to a tavern, but the old Englishman-turned-Dutchman bitterly declined.

"I'll ha' none o' your fancy taverns, lad, aswarm wi' pox-faced gentry fingerin' their meat pies. They'll ne'er take in the likes o' me." Then he examined Hawksworth and flashed a toothless grin. "But there's an alehouse right down the way where a man wi' salt in his veins can still taste a drop in peace."

They went and Hawksworth had ordered the first round. When the tankards arrived, Huyghen attacked his thirstily, maintaining a cynical silence as Hawksworth began describing the Company's planned voyage, then asked him what he knew of the passage east and north of the Cape. As soon as his first tankard was dry, the old man spoke.

"Aye, I made the passage once, wi' Portugals. Back in'83. To Goa. An' I've been to the Indies many a time since, wi' Dutchmen. But ne'er again to that pissin' sinkhole."

"But what about the passage north, through the Indian Ocean?"

"I'll tell you this, lad, 'tis a sight different from shootin' down to Java, like the Company's done before. 'Tis the roughest passage you're e'er like to ship. Portugals post bottoms twice the burden o' the Company's damn'd little frigates and still lose a hundred men e'ery voyage out. When scurvy don't take 'em all. E'en the Dutchmen are scared o' it."

Then Huyghen returned to his stories of Goa. Something in the experience seemed to preoccupy his mind. Hawksworth found the digression irritating, and he impatiently pressed forward.

"But what about the passage? How do they steer north from the Cape? The Company has no charts, no rutters by pilots who've made the passage."

"An' how could they?" Huyghen evaluated Hawksworth's purse lying on the wooden table and discreetly signaled another round. "The Portugals know the trick, lad, but you'll ne'er find one o' the whoremasters who'll give it out."

"But is there a trade wind you can ride? Like the westerly to the Americas?"

"Nothin' o' the sort, lad. But there's a wind sure enough. Only she shifts about month by month. Give me that chart an' I'll show you." Huyghen stretched for the parchment Hawksworth had brought, the new Map of the World published by John Davis in 1600. He spread it over the table, oblivious to the grease and encrusted ale, and stared at it for a moment in groggy disbelief. Then he turned on Hawksworth. "Who drew up this map?"

"It was assembled by an English navigator, from charts he made on his voyages."

"He's the lyin' son of a Spaniard's whore. I made this chart o' the Indies wi' my own hand, years ago, for the Dutchmen. But what's the difference? He copied it right." Huyghen spat on the floor and then stabbed the east coast of Africa with a stubby finger. "Now you come out o' the Mozambique Channel and into the Indian Ocean too early in the summer, and you'll be the only bottom fool enough to be out o' port. The monsoon'll batter you to plankin'. Get there too late, say past the middle o' September, and you're fightin' a head wind all the way. She's already turn'd on you. But come north round by Sokatra near the end o' August and you'll ride a steady gale right into North India. That's the tail o' the monsoon, lad, just before the winds switch about. Two weeks, three at most, that's all you'll get. But steer it true an' you'll make landfall just as India's ports reopen for the autumn tradin' season."

Huyghen's voice trailed off as he morosely inspected the bottom of his tankard. Hawksworth motioned for a third round, and as the old man drew on the ale his eyes mellowed.

"Aye, you might make it. There's a look about you tells me you can work a ship. But why would you want to be goin'? T'will swallow you up, lad. I've only been to Goa, mind you, down on India's west coastline, but that was near enough. I ne'er saw a man come back once he went in India proper. Somethin' about it keeps 'em there. Portugals says she always changes a man. He loses touch wi' what he was. Nothin' we know about counts for anything there, lad."

"What do you mean? How different could it be? I saw plenty of Moors in Tunis."

Huyghen laughed bitterly. "If you're thinkin' 'tis the same as Tunis, then you're e'en a bigger fool than I took you for. Nay, lad, the Moor part's the very least o' it." He drew on his tankard slowly, deliberately. "I've thought on't a considerable time, an' I think I've decipher'd what 'tis. But 'tis not a thing easy to spell out."

Huyghen was beginning to drift now, his eyes glazed in warm forgetfulness from the ale. But still he continued. "You know, lad, I actually saw some Englishmen go into India once before. Back in '83. Year I was in Goa. An' they were ne'er heard from since."

Hawksworth stared at the old man a moment, and suddenly the name clicked, and the date-1583. Huyghen must have been the Dutch Catholic, the one said to speak fluent English, who'd intervened for the English scouting party imprisoned in Goa that year by the Portuguese. He tried to still his pulse.

"Do you remember the Englishmen's names?"

"Seem to recall they were led by a man nam'd Symmes. But 'twas a long time past, lad. Aye, Goa was quite the place then. Lucky I escap'd when I did. E'en there, you stay awhile an' somethin' starts to hold you. Too much o' India about the place. After a while all this"-Huyghen gestured fondly about the alehouse, where sweat-soaked laborers and seamen were drinking, quarreling, swearing as they bargained with a scattering of weary prostitutes in dirty, tattered shifts-"all this seems…" He took a deep draft of ale, attempting vainly to formulate his thoughts. "I've ne'er been one wi' words. But don't do it, lad. You go in, go all the way in to India, an' I'll wager you'll ne'er be heard from more. I've seen it happen."

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