"But how'm I to conduct affairs 'mongst the Moors without a gentleman's fittings?" He reviewed Hawksworth's leather jerkin and seaboots with disdain. Before Hawksworth could reply, Elkington was pulling himself erect, wincing at the gout as his eyes blazed. "Spencer, you've enough to do just mindin' the accounts, which thus far you've shown scant aptness for." He turned and spat into the scuppers. "Your father'd have me make you a merchant, but methinks I'd sooner school an ape to sing. 'Tis tradin' we're here for, not to preen like a damn'd coxcomb. Now look to it." "You'll accompany us, Spencer, as is your charge." Hawksworth walked past the young clerk, headed for the fo'c'sle. "The only 'fittings' you'll need are a sword and musket, which I dearly hope you know enough to use. Now prepare to board." As Hawksworth passed the mainmast, bosun's mate John Garway dropped the bundle he was holding and stepped forward, beaming a toothless smile. "Beggin' your pardon, Cap'n. Might I be havin' a word?" "What is it, Garway." "Would you ask the heathen, sir, for the men? We've been wonderin' if there's like to be an alehouse or such in this place we're goin'. An' a few o' the kindly sex what might be friendly disposed, if you follow my reckonin', sir." Hawksworth looked up and saw Karim waiting by the fo'c'sle, his effects rolled in a small woven tapestry under his arm. When the question was translated, the pilot laid aside the bundle and stepped toward the group of waiting seamen, who had all stopped work to listen. He studied them for a moment--ragged and rank with sweat, their faces blotched with scurvy and their hair matted with grease and lice--and smiled with expressionless eyes. "Your men will find they can purchase _arak_, a local liquor as potent as any I have seen from Europe. And the public women of Surat are masters of all refinements of the senses. They are exquisite, worthy even of the Moghul himself. Accomplished women of pleasure have been brought here from all civilized parts of the world, even Egypt and Persia. I'm sure your seamen will find the accommodations of Surat worthy of their expectations." Hawksworth translated the reply and a cheer rose from the men. "Hear that, mates?" Master's mate Thomas Davies turned to the crowd, his face a haggard leer. "Let the rottin' Portugals swab cannon in hell. I'll be aswim in grog an' snuffin' my wick with a willin' wench. Heathen or no, 'tis all one, what say?" A confirming hurrah lifted from the decks and the men resumed their labor with spirits noticeably replenished. Hawksworth turned and ascended the companionway ladder to the quarterdeck, leaving behind the tense bravado. As he surveyed the deck below from his new vantage, he suddenly sensed an eerie light enveloping the chip, a curious glow that seemed almost to heighten the pensive lament of the boards and the lulling melody of wind through the rigging. Then he realized why. The moon!