the Armagaum roads, and receiving his colleagues' farewells. His
garb is that of a substantial merchant in the days of King Charles I.
It has none of the extravagances that were the fashionable
affectations of gay Cavaliers, but its sobriety makes it none the less
smart. He wears a purple doublet and hose, a broad white collar edged
with lace, and a gracefully-short black-velvet cloak. Curly hair
falls beneath his broad-brimmed black hat, but not in long and scented
ringlets such as were trained to fall below the shoulders of
fashionable gallants at King Charles's court. He is in every way a
fitting representative of the Honourable Company.

The bo'sun has piped his whistle, and the last good-byes have been
said. The anchor's weighed, and the white sails are spread to the
breeze. Master Day waves his hand to his colleagues in the surf-boat
which is taking them shoreward, and the ship is headed to the south.
The expedition is important--yes, and it was much more important than
Master Day imagined; for something more serious than profits on muslin
and brocade was on the anvil of fate.

CHAPTER II

THE BEGINNING

Mr. Francis Day was not sailing southward without definite plans. As
the result of enquiries for a promising spot for a new settlement, it
was his purpose to see if there was a favourable site in the
neighbourhood of the old established Portuguese settlement at
Mylapore. The Portuguese authorities at Mylapore, with whom Mr. Day
seems to have corresponded, were not unwilling to have English
neighbours. The ill-success of the English merchants at Masulipatam
had probably allayed any fears that they would be formidable rivals to
Portuguese trade at Mylapore; and furthermore the Portuguese welcomed
the idea of European neighbours who would be at one with them in
opposition to the forceful Dutchmen at Pulicat, up the coast, who
showed no respect, not even of a ceremonious kind, for any vested
interests--commercial or administrative--to which the Portuguese laid
claim.

So Mr. Francis Day's vessel, standing no doubt well out to sea as it
sailed past the foreshore of the Pulicat lagoon with its unfriendly
Dutchmen, kept its course till the Mylapore churches were sighted and
showed that the place where the first inquiries were to be made had
been reached. The sails were furled and the anchors were dropped, and
we may imagine that a salute was fired in honour of the King of
Portugal, and was duly acknowledge