Finally he looked about the room for personal goods. First he folded in a new leather jerkin, then next to it packed a new pair of leather boots. He stared at the boots for a moment, and then removed them while he carefully wrapped two primed pistols and slid one deep into each hollow toe. Next to the boots he packed a case of Spanish brandy he had been saving, for personal use aland. Lastly he took his glistening English lute from its corner berth, held it for a moment, and tested the strings. He adjusted the tuning on one string, then wrapped the lute's melon-shaped body in a silk cloth, and nestled it next to the brandy. As he secured the lock on the chest and pocketed the large brass key, he suddenly asked himself how he would get the chest into India without its being searched. I'm not a genuine ambassador. I'm the captain of a merchantman, with no diplomatic standing. The Company, for all its mercantile wisdom, neglected to consider that small difficulty. So I'll just have to sound like an ambassador. That shouldn't be so hard. Just be impressed with your own importance. And find nothing, food or lodgings, sufficiently extravagant. Then he drew himself erect and unlocked the door of the Great Cabin. Only one thing remained. "Mackintosh!" The quartermaster was in the pinnace now, fitting the tiller, and he glanced up in irritation. "Send the pilot to my cabin." Hawksworth had scarcely seated himself behind the great oak table before the tall chestnut-skinned man appeared in the doorway. Hawksworth examined the face again, expressionless and secure, asking himself its years. Is he thirty; is he fifty? The features seemed cast from an ageless mold, hard and seamless, immune to time. "May I be of service?" "Repeat your name for me." Hawksworth spoke in Turkish. "And tell me again the business of your vessel." "My name is Karim Hasan Ali." The reply came smoothly, but almost too rapidly for Hawksworth to follow. "My ship was the Rahimi, a pilgrim vessel on her return voyage from Mecca, by way of Aden, to our northern port of Diu. We carry Muslim pilgrims outbound from India in the spring, and return after the monsoon. As you assuredly must know, for a thousand years Mecca has been the shrine all followers of Islam must visit once in their life. Our cabins are always full." Hawksworth recalled the vessel, and his astonishment at her size. She had had five masts and was easily twelve hundred tons, over twice the burden of the _Discovery_ and greater than anything he had ever seen before, even the most ambitious Spanish carrack. But when they spotted her, tacking eastward across the Bay of Cambay, she was unarmed and hove to almost before they had fired across her bow. Why unarmed, he had asked himself then, and why strike so readily? Now he understood. "And you were the pilot for the _Rahimi_?" "I am called the _musallim_." A note of formality entered the Indian's voice and he instinctively drew himself more erect.