Thomas Hoover - The Moghul

Hawksworth listened as Huyghen continued, his stories of the Indies a mixture of ale and dreams. After a time he signaled another round for them both. It was many empty tankards later when they parted.

But Huyghen's words stayed. And that night Brian Hawksworth walked alone on the quay beside the Thames, bundled against the wet autumn wind, and watched the ferry lanterns ply through the fog and heard the muffled harangues of streetwalkers and cabmen from the muddy street above. He thought about Huyghen, and about the man named Roger Symmes, and about the voyage to India.

And he thought too about Maggie, who wanted him out of London before her rich widower discovered the truth. Or before she admitted the truth to herself. But either way it no longer seemed to matter.

That night he decided to accept the commission…

The Discovery rolled heavily and Hawksworth glanced instinctively toward the pulley lines that secured the two bronze cannon. Then he remembered why he had left the quarterdeck, and he unlocked the top drawer of the desk and removed the ship's log. He leafed one more time through its pages, admiring his own script-strong but with an occasional flourish.

Someday this could be the most valuable book in England, he told himself. If we return. This will be the first log in England to describe what the voyage to India is really like. The Company will have a full account of the weather and sea, recorded by estimated longitude, the distance traveled east.

He congratulated himself again on the care with which he had taken their daily speed and used it to estimate longitude every morning since the Cape, the last location where it was known exactly. And as he studied the pages of the log, he realized how exact Huyghen's prediction had been. The old man had been eerily correct about the winds and the sea. They had caught the "tail o' the monsoon" precisely.

"August 27. Course N.E. ft E.; The wind at W.S., with gusts and rain. Made 36 leagues today. Estimated longitude from the Cape 42° 50' E.

"August 28. Course N.E.; The wind at west, a fresh gale, with gusts and rain this 24 hours. Leagues 35. Estimated longitude from the Cape, 44° 10' E."

The late August westerly Huyghen had foretold was carrying them a good hundred land miles a day. They rode the monsoon's tail, and it was still angry, but there was no longer a question that English frigates could weather the passage.

As August drew to a close, however, scurvy had finally grown epidemic on his sister ship, the Resolve. The men's teeth loosened, their gums bled, and they began to complain of aching and burning in their limbs. It was all the more tragic for the fact that this timeless scourge of ocean travelers might at long last be preventable. Lancaster, on the very first voyage of the East India Company, had stumbled onto an historic Discovery. As a test, he'd shipped bottles of the juice of lemons on his flagship and ordered every seaman to take three spoonfuls a day. And his had been the only vessel of the three to withstand scurvy.

Hawksworth had argued with Captain Kerridge of the Resolve, insisting they both stow lemon juice as a preventative. But Kerridge had always resented Lancaster, particularly the fact he'd been knighted on return from a voyage that showed almost no profit. He refused to credit Lancaster's findings.

"No connection. By my thinkin' Lancaster just had a run o' sea-dog luck. Then he goes about claimin' salt meat brings on the scurvy. A pack o' damn'd foolishness. I say salt meat's fine for the lads. Boil it up with a mess o' dried peas and I'll have it myself. The Resolve' ll be provision'd like always. Sea biscuit, salt pork, Hollander cheese. Any fool knows scurvy comes from men sleepin' in the night dews off the sea. Secure your gunports by night and you'll ne'er see the damn'd scurvy."

Hawksworth had suspected Kerridge's real reason was the cost: lemon juice was imported and expensive. When the Company rejected his own request for an allowance, he had provisioned the Discovery out of his own advance. Kerridge had called him a fool. And when they sailed in late February, the Resolve was unprovided.

Just as Hawksworth had feared, the Resolve's crew had been plagued by scurvy throughout the voyage, even though both vessels had put in for fresh provisions at Zanzibar in late June. Six weeks ago, he had had no choice but to order half his own remaining store of lemon juice transferred to the sister ship, even though this meant reducing the Discovery's ration to a spoon a day, not enough.

By the first week of September, they were so near India they could almost smell land, but he dared not try for landfall. Not yet. Not without an Indian pilot to guide them past the notorious sandbars and shoals that lined the coast like giant submerged claws. The monsoon winds were dying. Indian shipping surely would begin soon. So they hove to, waiting.

And as they waited, they watched the last kegs of water choke with green slime, the wax candles melt in the heat, and the remaining biscuit all but disappear to weevils. Hungry seamen set a price on the rats that ran the shrouds. How long could they last?

Hawksworth reached the last entry in the log. Yesterday. The day they had waited for.

"Sept. 12. Laid by the lee. Estimated longitude from the Cape, 50° 10' E. Latitude observed 20°30'. At 7 in the morning we command a large ship from the country to heave to, by shooting four pieces across her bow. Took from this ship an Indian pilot, paying in Spanish rials of eight. First offered English gold sovereigns, but these refused as unknown coin. Also purchased 6 casks water, some baskets lemons, melons, plantains."

The provisions had scarcely lasted out the day, spread over twice a hundred hungry seamen. But with a pilot they could at last make landfall.

And landfall they had made, at a terrible price. Yet even this anchorage could not be kept. It was too exposed and vulnerable. He had expected it to be so, and he had been right. But he also knew where they might find safety.

The previous night he had ordered the Indian pilot to sketch a chart of the coastline on both sides of the Tapti River delta. He did not tell him why. And on the map he had spotted a cove five leagues to the north, called Swalley, that looked to be shallow and was also shielded by hills screening it from the sea. Even if the Portuguese discovered them, the deep draft of Portuguese galleons would hold them at sea. The most they could do would be send boarding parties by pinnace, or fireships. The cove would buy time, time to replenish stores, perhaps even to set the men ashore and attend the sick. The longer the anchorage could be kept secret, the better their chances. He had already prepared sealed orders for Captain Kerridge, directing him to steer both frigates there after dark, when their movement could not be followed by the hidden eyes along the coast.

He took a deep breath and flipped forward to a blank page in the log.

And realized this was the moment he had been dreading, been postponing: the last entry for the voyage out. Perhaps his last ever-if events in India turned against him. He swabbed more sweat from his face and glanced one last time at the glistening face of the lute, wondering what he would be doing now, at this moment, if he still were in London, penniless but on his own.

Then he wiped off the quill lying neatly alongside the leather-bound volume, inked it, and shoved back the sleeve of his doublet to write.

The events of that morning were almost too improbable to be described. After taking on the Indian pilot, Hawksworth's plan had been to make landfall immediately, then launch a pinnace for Surat, there to negotiate trade for their goods and safe conduct to the capital at Agra for himself. If things went as planned, the goods would be exchanged and he would be on his way to the Moghul capital long before word of their arrival could reach Goa and the Portuguese.