Thomas Hoover - The Moghul

"You may act as you choose. I have witnessed many vain boasts of English bravery during my brief service aboard your ship. But an Indian captain would choose prudence at such a time. Strike colors and offer to pay for a license. Otherwise you will be handled as a pirate."

"No Englishman will ever pay a Portugal or a Spaniard for a license to trade. Or a permit to piss." Hawksworth turned away, trying to ignore the cold sweat beading on his chest. "We never have. We never will."

The pilot watched him for a moment, and then smiled.

"You are in the seas off India now, Captain. Here the Portuguese have been masters for a hundred years." His voice betrayed a trace of annoyance at Hawksworth's seeming preoccupation, and he moved closer. "You would do well to hear me out. We know the Portuguese very well. Better perhaps than you. Their cruelties here began a full century ago, when the barbarous captain Vasco de Gama first discovered our Malabar Coast, near the southern tip of India. He had the Portuguese nose for others' wealth, and when he returned again with twenty ships, our merchants rose against him. But he butchered their fleet, and took prisoners by the thousand. He did not, however, simply execute them. First he cut away their ears, noses, and hands and sent these to the local raja, recommending he make a curry. Next a Portuguese captain named Albuquerque came with more warships to ravage our trade in the north, that on the Red Sea. And when servants of Islam again rose up to defend what is ours, Allah the Merciful once more chose to turn his face from them, leaving all to defeat. Soon the infidel Portuguese came with many fleets, and in a span no more than a male child reaching manhood, had seized our ocean and stolen our trade."

The pilot's face remained blandly expressionless as he continued, but he reached out and caught Hawksworth's sleeve. "Next they needed a Portuguese trading station, so they bribed pirates to help storm our coastal fortress at Goa, an island citadel with a deep port. And this place they made the collection point for all the pepper, spices, jewels, dyes, silver, and gold they have plundered from us. They lacked the courage to invade India herself, as the Moghuls did soon after, so they made our sea their infidel empire. It is theirs, from the coast of Africa, to the Gulf of Persia, to the Molucca Islands. And they seek not merely conquest, or enforced commerce, but also our conversion to their religion of cruelty. They have flooded our ports with ignorant priests. To them this is a crusade against Islam, against the one True Faith, a crusade that has triumphed-for a time-where barbarous Christian land assaults on our holy Mecca have always failed."

Then the pilot turned directly to Hawksworth and a smile flickered momentarily across his lips. "And now you English have come to challenge them by sea. You must pardon me if I smile. Even if you prevail today, which I must tell you I doubt, and even if one day more of your warships follow and drive them from our seas entirely-even if all this should take place, you will find your victory hollow. As theirs has been. For we have already destroyed them. The way India consumes all who come with arms. The ancient way. They have robbed our wealth, but in return we have consumed their spirit. Until at last they are left with nothing but empty commodity. It will be no different for you, English captain. You will never have India. It is India who will have you."

He paused and looked again toward the galleons, their sails swelling on the horizon. "But today I think the Portuguese will spare us the trouble."

Hawksworth examined the pilot, struggling to decipher his words. "Let me tell you something about England. All we ask is trade, for you and for us, and we don't have any priests to send. Only Catholic traders do that. And if you think we'll not stand well today, you know even less about the English. The thing we do best is fight at sea. Our sea dogs destroyed the entire navy of Spain twenty years ago, when they sent their Armada to invade England, and even to this day the Spaniards and Portugals have never understood our simple strategy. They still think a warship's merely a land fortress afloat. All they know to do is throw infantry against a ship and try to board her. The English know sea battles are won with cannon and maneuverability, not soldiers."

Hawksworth directed the pilot's gaze down the Discovery. The ship was of the new English "race-built" class, low in the water and swift. Absent were the bulky superstructures on bow and stern that weighed down a galleon, the "castles" that Spanish and Portuguese commanders used to stage infantry for boarding an enemy vessel. A full thirty years before, the English seaman and explorer John Hawkins had scoffed at these, as had Francis Drake and Walter Raleigh. They saw clearly that the galleons' towering bow and stem, their forecastle and poop, slow them, since the bluff beamy hull needed to support their weight wouldn't bite the water. A superstructure above decks serves only to spoil a warship's handling in a breeze, they declared, and to lend a better target to an English gunner.

"Your ships assuredly are smaller than Portuguese galleons, I agree," the pilot volunteered after a pause, "but I see no advantage in this."

"You'll see soon enough. The Discovery may be low, but she'll sail within six points of the wind, and she's quicker on the helm than anything afloat."

Hawksworth raised the glass and studied the galleons again. As he expected they were beating to windward, laboring under a full head of canvas.

Good. Now the Resolve can make her move.

The longboat was returning, its prow biting the trough of each swell, while on the Resolve seamen swarmed the shrouds and rigging. Hawksworth watched with satisfaction as his sister ship's main course swiveled precisely into the breeze and her sprits'l bellied for a run down the wind. Her orders were to steer to leeward, skirting the edge of the galleons' cannon range.

And if I know the Portugals, he told himself, they'll be impatient enough to start loosing round after round of shot at her, even from a quarter mile off. It takes courage to hold fire till you're under an enemy's guns, but only then do you have accuracy. Noise and smoke are battle enough for most Portugals, but the main result is to overheat and immobilize their cannon.

As the Discovery lay hove to, biding time, the Resolve cut directly down the leeward side of the galleons, laboring under full press of sail, masts straining against the load. The Indian pilot watched the frigate in growing astonishment, then turned to Hawksworth.

"Your English frigates may be swift, but your English strategy is unworthy of a common mahout, who commands an old she-elephant with greater cunning. Your sister frigate has now forfeited the windward position. Why give over your only advantage?"

Even as he spoke the four Portuguese warships, caught beating to windward, began to shorten sail and pay off to leeward to intercept the Resolve, their bows slowly crossing the wind as they turned.

"I've made a gamble, something a Portugal would never do," Hawksworth replied. "And now I have to do something no Englishman would ever do. Unless outgunned and forced to." Before the pilot could respond, Hawksworth was gone, heading for the gun deck.

The ring of his boots on the oak ladder leading to the lower deck was lost in the grind of wooden trucks, as seamen threw their weight against the heavy ropes and tackles, slowly hauling out the guns. The Discovery was armed with two rows of truck-mounted cast-iron culverin, and she had sailed with twenty-two barrels of powder and almost four hundred round shot. Hawksworth had also stowed a supply of crossbar shot and deadly langrel-thin casings filled with iron fragments-for use against enemy rigging and sail at close quarters.