It was a monstrous sum: and sicca rupees – gold. It was more than he could possibly be in debt for, unless his standing was much greater than appeared.

Yet it was reasonable enough as a measure of a seth’s – a rich man’s – or a sahoukar’s life and the treasure they must be carrying. Besides, Fairbrother admired the man’s pluck, for one way or another it was his forfeit life that was the stake.

‘Very well. Tell him I’ll pay twenty at once, and the rest when he’s marked the ringleaders at Mattapallee. Have him come back when the sun’s up.’

Next morning the old sipahi rose with the larks, the chandools. They were in good voice, too, so that even in the village Fairbrother heard them. They sounded as they did at the Cape, and in Jamaica, and he wondered how it was that birds sang the same in places so far from each other, yet here a man might go a dozen miles and hear so many languages, each strange to the other. Would it even matter if anyone heard them speaking English; for would they recognize it as English? But their business was discipline, especially now that, at last, the mahseer seemed to be rising to the bait.

Breaking camp was by now a practised affair. They were up, breakfasted and on the move in an hour. They saw no one on the road but the odd bhisti carrying water to the fields for the ryots who’d been up since dawn to till the red earth in their unhurried way. It reminded him of the plantations at home, although here there was no overseer with them.

They reached Mattapallee in an hour and a half. It was not a large place by presidency standards, but because of the ferry there were many more people than its size suggested. On both sides of the river there was a crowd waiting to cross: a hundred, perhaps more, mainly men, and their impedimenta – bullock carts, packhorses and the like – and importuned by every sort of vendor. The Krishna here was three hundred yards wide, at least, but sluggish enough to permit a raft to be roped across by hand. How many could safely be taken aboard was a question Fairbrother had pondered the first time he came here, and was a question still. It looked haphazard in the extreme.

There was no order to the crowd – no system, no queue. He’d seen before how those with the means might be first rather than last. The baboo said there were men who earned a living by never themselves crossing but crowding the landing and taking baksheesh to make way for those willing to pay. But Fairbrother was in no hurry to cross. Rather, he was keen to see the men who would waylay him. So they bought fruit, found a little shade, and settled down to wait.

They were not long at rest when the old sipahi suddenly became agitated. ‘There, in yellow dhoti kurta: he is man who I hear say will rob sahoukars.’