Chapter 1

Falconer’s Marine Dictionary, by now well-thumbed and stained with tar, proved prophetic on the subject of winds when Alan referred to it. Running down past Portugal, one hundred leagues offshore, they had reveled in the expected nor’east gales, from 28 degrees to 10 degrees north. Then, with winter waning, they met the southerlies south of 10 degrees north, against which they beat hard to make forward progress. And below that latitude, when the winds did indeed come more easterly, they brought gloom and heavy seas in the region known as The Rains, where Telesto was sometimes becaJmed, sometimes boxing the compass in slight, vexing airs to the fourth degree of north. Then had come stronger easterlies, ferocious gales accompanied by chicken-strangling rainstorms and lightning displays worthy of the first portals of Hell to blow them south.

And once round the Cape of Good Hope, it was hard gales, black clouds and rain like buckshot, Telesto shrinking from fifteen hundred tons or so to the burthen of a rowboat, pitching and swooping like an errant water butt. It was sometimes reassuring that Falconer’s consoled him in Item the Tenth under Winds that

“Between the fouthern latitudes of 10 and 30 degrees in the Indian Ocean, the general trade wind about the S.E. by S. is found to blow all the year long in the fame manner as in the like latitudes in the Ethiopic ocean; and during the fix months from May to December, thefe winds do reach to within two degrees of the Equator; but during the other fix months, from November to June, a N.W. wind blows in the tract lying between the 3^rd and 10^th degree of fouthern latitude, in the meridian of the north end of Madagafcar; and between the 2^nd and 12^th degree of fourth latitude, near the longitude of Sumatra and Java.”

Lewrie was a bit leery, though, of the footnote from Robert’s Navigation, that “the swiftness of the wind in a great storm is not more than 50 to 60 miles in an hour; and a common brisk gale is about 15 miles an hour.” He saw winds greater than that daily.

Once far enough north, they found the tract of wind which Falconer mentioned that ran like a racecourse between Madagascar and the African coast, fresh from the south sou’west, which at the Equator changed to the west sou’west.

And then came the Monsoon winds, which at that season of the year, were out of the sou’west in the Gulf of Bengal, none too gentle, either, as the late-year nor’east Monsoons would be. All in all, it was a horrid voyage for the most part. Captain Ayscough lit a fire under everyone’s tails, and drove Telesto like Jehu drove his chariot, skating the ragged edge of being overpressed by the winds all the way, beating their way southerly along the coast of Africa below the Equator instead of taking the easier way over toward the Brazilian coast, as most Indiamen did.

Duty, sun sights, baking or boiling in tropic heat, shivering by turns in fear and cold, drenched to the skin in easterly gales and the air and water hot as a mug of “flip,” sweltering in tarred tarpaulin foul-weather gear—weary enough to use his fingers to keep his eyes open in the middle watch, which was his by right of being junior-most officer.

“If I ever get back home, I’m going to become a farmer,” he kept telling himself.

* * * *

They smelled it before they could see it, even with a wind up their starboard quarter, in the last few hours of darkness before the sun burst above the horizon like an exploding howitzer shell. For a change, the winds were light, the seas calm and barely ruffled, barely heaving—more like lake sailing. Telesto gurgled and soughed instead of roaring and sloshing, her forefoot and cutwater under her bows parting almost still waters in a continuous, lazy surge.

“What the hell is that?” Lewrie wondered aloud, wiggling his nose like a beagle on a puzzling new trail. After six and a half months, barring the occasional port-call when they broke their passage at Oporto, Madeira and Table Bay at Capetown for hurriedly laden galley fuel, water and cargo, his olfactory senses had been brutalized by the stench of Ship. Tar and salt, fish-room, rancid cheeses and butter, salt-meats fermenting in brine, livestock in the manger, the odors of his fellow travelers below decks.

“Land, sir?” the middle watch quartermaster speculated from the huge double wheel, which now could be held and spun one-handed in the light airs.

Yes, there was a hint of coastline: rotting seaweed and the fishy aroma that most people called an ocean smell. But there was something else peeking from beneath that. A hint of cinnamon, pepper, coriander, almost like a Hungary Water that ladies dabbed on—perfume! First a tantalizing fantasy, then a real whiff.

“Flowers!” Alan yelped in glee. “Lots of green plants. And flowers! Ahoy, bow lookouts! See anything?”

“Nothin’, sir!”

“Mister Hogue, leadsmen to the fore-chains. I think we’re in soundings. Boy!” He directed the sleepy cabin servant-ship’s boy on deck to turn the watch glasses on the half-hour bell. “Go aft and inform Captain Ayscough we’re in soundings.”

“Wake ‘im oop, zir?” The boy yawned, stirred from his nap.

“Hell yes, wake him up. Witty, take a telescope and go aloft. It lacks two hours ‘til sunrise, but you might be able to see something even so.”

“A good morrow to you, Mister Lewrie,” a voice called in the darkness. There was but a sliver of moon to see by, but Alan knew Ayscough’s stern tones well by then. “Soundings, is it?”

“Smells hellish like it, sir. I’ve sent a man aloft with a glass, Mister Hogue, the master’s mate, and hands to the forechains with the deep-sea leads. Last cast of the log showed just at five knots.”

Ayscough came close by his side, clad in nightshirt and his watchcoat, his hair tousled by sleep. By the faint glow from the binnacle lanterns Alan could see him close his eyes and sniff deep.

“Patchouli,” Ayscough muttered, smiling fondly. “Perfumed tresses. Perfumed mustaches. Cooking ghee. Jungle forests and a million flowers opening. Charcoal-burners, garbage-middens, sacred cow and elephant dung. Exotic attars and shite. India, at last!”

“Hun-drayed faa-thim!” a leadsman in the chains sang out slowly. “One hunn-drayd faa-thim t’ this liine!”

“Six and a half months,” Alan chuckled. “A damned fine voyage!”

“A dam’ fast voyage, you mean,” Ayscough commented, leaving his pleasant reverie. “T’only joy of it was passing those ‘John Company’ Indiamen like they were anchored fast in the Pool of London! Still, it had its moments. Proper navigation cut weeks off it. One thing I picked up from an evening with Jemmy Trevenen and Captain King of Resistance during the war.”

“I met King once, sir, at Turk’s Island.”

“Did you indeed? Clever men. Most masters would stagger from landfall to landfall, you know,” Ayscough mused. “Way over to here, double the distance of their passage, just ‘cause that’s the way they learned how to do so. But, with a reliable chronometer, the skills at plotting position, one may cut the odd corner now and then, taking the unknown shorter way. Most of ‘em’d be satisfied if they could hug the coast. Like breaking across the Atlantic to the West Indies. Know that ninety percent of the ships still fall as far to the suth’rd as the latitude of Dominica, then cross due west to make their landfall? Just ‘cause Dominica’s peaks are a sure seamark one cannot miss. When the Trades are the same south of Cape Verde, and one could scuttle across diagonally and save a week. A week, sir!”

“As we have, sir,” Alan agreed, toadying a little.

“Hope you learned a little, then, Mister Lewrie. Something to consider on future commissions. Boy, go run and wake the master Mister Brainard,” Ayscough directed. “Tell him, my compliments, and we’re in soundings of the Hooghly Bar. Hundred fathom now, and I desire his expertise before the coast begins shoaling.”

“ ‘Iss, zir,” the boy replied, a trifle dubious he could remember all those “break-teeth” words in one sitting.

“Fiive an’ ninety faa-thim!” a leadsman crowed loud as single rook on a foggy moor morning. “Fiive an’ ninety faa-thim t’ this line! Bott-tim o’ grey mudd!”

“Grey mud, aye,” Ayscough grunted in familiar pleasure. “Just what I’d expect. Hmm, five knot y’did say, Mister Lewrie? Pipe up to six by sunrise, if I’m any judge of these waters. Have the bosun pipe ‘all-hands’ at the change of watch. We’ll take in t’gallants and feel our way in gently same time’s we scrub decks. Coffee?”

“I’d admire some, yes sir.”

“I’ll send you a mug once my steward’s brewed up a pot for me and Mister Brainard,” Ayscough said as he was leaving. “Good thinking on the leadsmen and the overhead lookout, Mister Lewrie.”

“Thankee, sir,” Alan replied to the departing back. Ayscough was not lavish with his compliments. To earn even that slight, grudging notice was as much approval as most men would get from him in a full three years’ commission. Indeed, a red-letter morning for him!

Low marshes. Swaying oceans of reeds straggling off to dryer ground. And heat. Harsh, crushing, damp heat worthy of a washerwoman’s boiling, steaming tub of laundry water and the fire that stoked it, the sort of fire that could melt iron and forge artillery.

Once past the Hooghly Bar and into the river proper, Lewrie envied the hands aloft, up where the wind still rilled the sails. On deck, it was hot as the hinges of Hell, and the pounded tar between the deck planks softened and ran sluggish and shiny as treacle.

“My God!” he cursed, mopping his face with a sleeve. Under his cocked hat, his hair was plastered to his head with perspiration, and sweat glued his shirt and breeches to his body.

“Serge or broadcloth!” Brainard sniffed, taking a rest from dashing about the decks from one beam to another to take sights on distant spires or landmarks, from tasting and sniffing at what the waxed plumb of the sounding lines brought up. “You dress like you was paradin’ on the Strand in all that heavy clothin’, you’ll be dead as mutton by sundown, mark my words, sir. Think you have to look like an officer all the time? Think the hands wouldn’t recognize your phyz by now? Shuck or die.”

“Gladly,” Alan agreed, doffing his blue wool officer’s coat and serge waist-coat. They collapsed in wet bundles on the baking deck where he threw them—almost left puddles, he imagined. He tore his neck-cloth loose as well. And almost shivered with relief as a puff of wind touched his skin.

“Once we’re anchored, there’s ten thousand good tailors ashore glad to run you up some lighter clothes. Duck or serge de Nimes. I prefer the lightest Madrassi cotton, meself. You and your man hire a darzee. Won’t cost more’n a half a crown for him to run you up a coat. Waist-coat, too, if you really feel you need one. But I tell you I’d not wear one before sunset,” Brainard cautioned.

Twigg and Wythy were on deck, taking their ease in canvas chairs atop the poop, screened from the sun by an awning below the boom of the spanker. The servant Ajit Roy was now bare from the knees down, clad in only a loose pair of pyjammy trousers, a sleeveless white cotton shirt that billowed free round his waist and his turban. He was trotting out fresh lemon-water, while another man they’d hired off a passing native boat, as flimsy an excuse for a craft as Alan had ever seen, worked the rope of a pankah to fan them and keep the flies off.

“We’ve made good progress, even so,” Alan said, unbuttoning his shirt down to his navel to let the light winds play with him.

“Aye,” Brainard sighed, wiping his own face. “Quarter-point to larboard on your helm, quartermaster. ‘Less things have changed much, there’s shoals yonder I’d admire we didn’t strike. Ah, there! D’you see that lump of reddish rock yonder? Looks like a squashed anthill?”

“Aye, sir,” Alan replied, raising a telescope. Just over the tops of the trees, he could barely make out something more substantial than the foetid coastal lowlands and marshes.

“Fort William. Be anchored by sunset, if the wind holds,” the sailing master told him. “Pity the poor Frogs. Their Bengal trading factory is far up-river from ours. Chandernargore. Even worse a sail to get there. It’s a wonder they kept it after the last war.”

“Hello, here comes somebody,” Lewrie said, pointing to a small ship that had appeared in mid-channel, shimmering like a mirage in the heat waves. “On her way down to the sea. What is she, sir? Venetian?”

“Ha, appears to be! Local built. Good God! Haven’t seen a ship like that in a long time.” Brainard laughed. “Most country ships out here are built outa good, hard teak wood. Lasts forever. Seen a well-cared-for ship last a century out here, whilst good English oak rots away in five years. She’s like an old Venetian caravel, she is. Mighta been felucca or dhow-rigged once. See, below the crossed spars? How she carries fore’n’aft sails on lateeners? Good to windward this time of year. Probably started life as an oared galley God knows how long ago, and got rebuilt over the years.”

“I don’t recognize the flag, though, sir.”

“Ah, hmm. House flag. Part Portugee, part Parsee. Sharp businessmen, they are. Sort of Arabs.” Brainard sighed wistfully.

Old and shabby she might be, Alan thought, but she was definitely exotic. Exotic in the extreme, just like everything they had seen in the last two days on their slow passage up the Hooghly. There were people working in fields in turbans and dhotis. Oxdrawn carts with only one axle and squealing, un-greased wheels one could hear nearly a mile away, with loads piled prodigiously high swaying along slowly. Dak bungalows here and there, a day’s slow bullock-cart travel apart.

Elephants bathing and splashing mud on their broad backs on the river bank, their mahouts watching for snakes and crocodiles. Women in sarees, long head-cloths or cotton shawls out pounding clothing on the banks. Occasionally around some larger town or village, there were men doing the same labor, the dhobees from a prosperous house.

A rare Buddhist priest in a saffron robe and his begging bowl. More often Hindu priests. A local rajah or rich trader with his procession of loaded gharies, his retinue of gaudily dressed mercenary soldiers on horseback. Curtained sedan chairs borne by sweating lower-caste men that might contain a babu, a fat native clerk, or a patchouli-scented courtesan. And once, to Burgess Chiswick’s delight, a column of infantry on the march. Exotic, they were, too, to one used to the sight of an English regiment. Red coats, white pyjammy trousers, white cross-belts, sandals and kurtaa shirts. Brown Bess muskets held at shoulder arms, cocked hats with neck-cloths bouncing against their necks to keep off the fierce sun and not a stitch more of European clothing on their backs. But they were well-closed-up and marching to fifes and drums, their English officers riding stocky native horses with their bearers trotting alongside.

And India did smell, as Ayscough had said: smelled powerfully. Flowers, green sap, perfume and spice—cooking aromas that made the driest mouth water. And rot and corruption, too. There was nothing about the place that could be considered a halfway measure. It was a place of strong, almost violent contrasts, and they hadn’t even set foot ashore yet to discover one percent of them. Try to acclimate on the last stretch of the voyage as they could, the first sight of Calcutta set everyone’s mind into a hopeless spin.

The harbor and the city banks were as busy as the Pool of London, with hundreds of ships anchored, everything from stately “John Company” Indiamen to ancient copies of galleons, from the largest to the smallest riverine trading ships. Hide-built coracles and rowing boats worked in a plague from the ghats built up along the river bank. Warehouses and docks stretched as far as the eye could see, with reddish Fort William brooding over it all, and behind the ghats there were pleasure gardens as gay as Covent Garden or Ranelagh, spacious as St. James’ or Hyde Park, where in one moment rich men rode in their carriages or strolled slowly, and the next, a lower-caste mehtar would dash by carrying his bucket of excrement to be dumped. Behind the European quarter, the cantonment where it was adjudged safe to live, there were native quarters, teeming with life crowded elbow to elbow from sunrise to sunset, except in the hottest parts of the day. Sacred cows strolled oblivious through the greenest, lushest cricket pitch anyone had ever laid eyes on while the players waited for their bearers to shoo them away, gently and without offense. Native markets hummed and buzzed with commerce, and smoke rose from cooking fires, fires where brass and bronzeware was molded and hammered, where hides were tanned or clothes washed. It was all of London crammed into half the area, still huge enough to daunt almost all of them from going ashore into such an exotic alienness.

They found a safe anchorage where Telesto would have room to moor, and dropped the best bower anchor. The sails were clewed up to the yards, then brailed up and secured with harbor gaskets for the first time since Capetown. Yards lowered slowly, and squared away Navy fashion. A stream anchor was lowered from the stern and rowed out to keep her from swinging afoul of another ship. The sun awnings were rigged across the decks, and, unlike Navy fashion, would be left deployed day and night, instead of being taken in each day at sundown, for they provided some protection from the rains that would come during this season.

“Very well, Mister Choate. Dismiss the hands,” Ayscough said after the last bit of tidying and straightening had been ,done to his, the bosun’s and the first officer’s satisfaction.

“Um, the matter of shore leave, sir,” Choate ventured. “Firewood and water first, Mister Choate. Ready the ship for sea should it become necessary, then we’ll consider it,” the captain grunted, though his own nose was twitching to get ashore.

* * * *

“Bosun, watering party!” Choate yelled.

“Excuse me if I suggest something,” Twigg interrupted, coming down from his regal perch on the poop deck with his servant in tow. “You’ll want to rinse out the ship’s water barrels, of course. I’d suggest boiling water for that.”

“Er, they are a bit foul, sir, even being sluiced at Capetown not so long ago,” the purser chuckled. “A bit on the tan side, our water is.”

“Yes, see to it. And from my prior experience, all the water we take aboard should be boiled first. Else it’ll come out of this river,” Ayscough harrumphed. They had all seen the garbage floating in the Hooghly, the excrement dumped, thankfully downstream from the city and their anchorage.

“You read my mind, sir,” Twigg replied with a slight bow and a twitch of those tight lips of his. “Further, though. It is my experience in Asian waters that thin gauze should be procured for insect netting, if not for each hand to swath about his hammock, then at least for the hatches that lead below. I do not know why, nor do any physicians of my past acquaintance, but the incidence of malaria is much reduced if this is done.”

“As long as it does not come out of ship’s funds, though ...” the purser objected. “Why, the Navy Board’s ...”

“Silence,” Twigg snapped, raising a hand in warning. “And I tire of reminding you, sir, that I and Mister Wythy are funding this vessel? You may not care about the health of the men in your charge, but I do. If only for the inability to find trained seamen enough in India to replace the ones who die. And die they will, in job lots, no matter what precautions we may take.”

“I merely meant ...” the purser stammered on, red-faced.

“I’ll speak to you in my cabins later, Mister Abernathy,” the captain snapped. “Do what ... our owners suggest.”

After witnessing that entertaining exchange at the expense of “Mr. Nip-cheese,” as Abernathy and most pursers were termed, Lewrie went to the larboard bulwarks to stare at the ghats that led down to the river in terraced steps. He’d seen insect netting used before in the West Indies, and sickly as that region was, he’d expected nothing less of the East Indies. Besides, he consoled himself, I’ve had the Yellow Jack once before, and everyone said back on Antigua that once you survived it, you couldn’t get it again. He rubbed the top of his left arm where the family surgeon had punctured him over and over and made him howl with pain and terror even before he was out of nappies, to inoculate him against the smallpox. There were two major risks of the tropics taken care of. As for the rest, he was young, healthy as a rutting yearling bull, wasn’t he? He was well-off financially, an established English gentleman—his kind was bloody immortal!

As for other diseases, he’d sleep with the nets, drink nothing but imported wine or ale, make sure his water was boiled first should he be forced to drink such a dull beverage—perhaps nothing but tea, he speculated. One had to boil tea-water if one wanted a decent pot.

Food could be washed in boiled water, he supposed, and anyway, there was salt-meat to fall back on. And he would take his sheep-gut condom ashore with him, should he ever be allowed ashore. Twigg and Wythy hadn’t snarled at him in the last two months, so he supposed he had outlasted their anger at him. He’d not been allowed ashore at Oporto, Madeira or Capetown. Surely, he’d touch land—and a few other softer things—here in Calcutta!