The Moghul Part 4

"This is your first test. Officers of the Moghul's army are doubtless at the sh.o.r.e, observing. What will you do?"

"What do you think we'll do? We'll stand the b.a.s.t.a.r.ds. And with Malloyre's gunners I think we can . . ."

"Then permit me an observation. A modest thought, but possibly useful.

Do you see, there"--he pulled erect and pointed toward the sh.o.r.e--"hard by the galleons, there where the seabirds swirl in a dark cloud? That is the river mouth. And on either side are many sandbars, borne there from the river's delta. Along the coast beyond these, though you cannot see them now, are channels, too shallow for the draft of a galleon but perhaps safe for these frigates. Reach them and you will be beyond range of all Portuguese ordnance save their stern demi-culverin. Then they will be forced to try boarding you by longboat, something their infantry does poorly and with great reluctance."

"Are there channels on both sides of the river mouth? To windward and to leeward?"

"Certainly, my _feringhi _ captain." He examined Hawksworth with a puzzled stare. "But only a fool would not hold to port, to windward."

Hawksworth studied the sh.o.r.eline with the gla.s.s, and an audacious gamble began to take form in his mind. Why try to keep both frigates to windward? That's what they'll expect, and any moment now they'll weigh and beat to windward also. And from their position, they'll probably gain the weather gage, forcing us to leeward, downwind where we can't maneuver. That means an open fight--when the _Resolve_ can barely muster a watch. How can she crew the gun deck and man the sheets? But maybe she won't have to. Maybe there's another way.

"Mackintosh." The quartermaster was mounting the quarterdeck companionway. "Order the mains'l and fores'l reefed. And the tops'ls shortened. We'll heave to while we run out the guns. And signal the _Resolve_ while I prepare orders for Kerridge."

The grizzled Scotsman stood listening in dismay, and Hawksworth read his thoughts precisely in his eyes. There's nae time to heave to. And for wha'? We strike an inch o' canvas an' the fornicatin' Portugals'll take the weather gage sure. Ha' you nae stomach for a fight? Why na just haul down colors and ha' done with it?

But he said nothing. He turned automatically and bellowed orders aloft.

Hawksworth felt out the morning breeze, tasting its cut, while he watched the seamen begin swinging themselves up the shrouds, warming the morning air with oaths as the _Discovery _pitched and heeled in the chop. And then he turned and strode down the quarterdeck companionway toward the Great Cabin to prepare orders for the _Resolve_. As he pa.s.sed along the main deck, half a dozen crewmen were already unlashing the longboat from its berth amidships.

And when he emerged again on deck with the oilskin- wrapped dispatch, after what seemed only moments, the longboat was already launched, oarsmen at station. He pa.s.sed the packet to Mackintosh without a word, then mounted the companionway ladder back to the quarterdeck.

The Indian pilot stood against the banister, shaded by the lateen sail, calmly studying the galleons.

"Three of these I know very well." His accented Turki was almost lost in a roll of spray off the stern. "They are the _St. Sebastian_, the _Bon Jesus_, and the _Bon Ventura_. They arrived new from Lisbon last year, after the monsoon, to patrol our shipping lanes, to enforce the regulation that all Indian vessels purchase a trading license from authorities in Goa."

"And what of the fourth?"

"It is said she berthed in Goa only this spring. I do not know her name. There were rumors she brought the new Viceroy, but early, before his four-year term began. I have never before seen her north, in these waters."

My G.o.d. Hawksworth looked at the warships in dismay. Is this the course of the Company's fortune? A voyage depending on secrecy blunders across a fleet bearing the incoming Viceroy of Goa. The most powerful Portuguese in the Indies.

"They are invincible," the pilot continued, his voice still matter-of- fact. "The galleons own our waters. They have two decks of guns. No Indian vessel, even the reckless corsairs along our southern coast of Malabar, dare meet them in the open sea. Owners who refuse to submit and buy a Portuguese trading license must sail hundreds of leagues off course to avoid their patrol."

"And what do you propose? That we heave to and strike our colors?

Without even a fight?" Hawksworth was astonished by the pilot's casual unconcern. Is he owned by the Portugals too?

"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 p.i.s.s." 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 a.s.saults 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" cla.s.s, 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 p.o.o.p, 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 a.s.suredly 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 gla.s.s 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.

Shafts of dusty light from the gunports and overhead scuttles relieved the lantern-lit gloom, illuminating the ma.s.sive beams supporting the decks above. Sleeping hammocks were lashed away, but the s.p.a.ce was airless, already sultry from the morning sun, and the rancid tang of sweat mixed with fresh saltpeter from the gunpowder caught in Hawksworth's mouth, bittersweet.

He walked down the deck, alert to the details that could spell victory or loss. First he checked the wooden tubs of vinegared urine and the long swabs stationed between the cannon, used for cleaning burning fragments of metal from the smoking barrels after each round. Fail to swab a barrel and there could be an unplanned detonation when the next powder charge was tamped into place. Then he counted the budge-barrels of powder, now swathed in water-soaked blankets to fend off sparks, and watched as Edward Malloyre, the man some called the best master gunner in England, inspected each cannon's touchhole as its lead plate was removed, a.s.suring himself it had not corroded from the gases expelled during their last gunnery practice, in the Mozambique Channel.

"Master Malloyre."

"Aye, sir, all's in order. We'll hand the Spanish b.a.s.t.a.r.ds a taste o'

English iron." Malloyre, who had never troubled to differentiate Portugal from Spain, was built like a bear, with short bowed legs and a tree-stump frame. He drew himself erect, his balding pate easily clearing the rugged overhead beams, and searched the gloom. "The Worshipful Company may ha' signed on a sorry lot o' pimpin' apple squires, but, by Jesus, I've made Englishmen o' them. My sovereign to your shilling we hole the pox-rotted Papists wi' the first round."