Who are they, Ma? Kabutri asked, in a low whisper.

I don't know – prisoners maybe?

No, said Kalua immediately, pointing to the presence of a few women and children among the marchers. They were still speculating when one of the guards stopped the cart and told Kalua that their leader and duffadar, Ramsaran-ji, had hurt his foot, and would need to be driven to the nearby river-ghat. The duffadar appeared as the guard was speaking, and Deeti and Kabutri were quick to make room for him: he was an imposing man, tall and full-bellied, dressed in immaculate white, with leather shoes. He carried a heavy stick in one hand and wore a huge dome of a turban on his head.

At first they were too frightened to speak and it was Ramsaranji who broke the silence: Where've you come from? he said to Kalua. Kahwãa se áwela?

From a nearby village, malik; parosé ka gaõ se áwat baní.

Deeti and Kabutri had been straining their ears, and when they heard the duffadar speaking their own Bhojpuri tongue, they edged towards him, so as to be able to overhear all that was said.

At length, Kalua plucked up the courage to ask: Malik, who are these people who are marching?

They are girmitiyas, said Ramsaran-ji, and at the sound of that word Deeti uttered an audible gasp – for suddenly she understood. It was a few years now since the rumours had begun to circulate in the villages around Ghazipur: although she had never seen a girmitiya before, she had heard them being spoken of. They were so called because, in exchange for money, their names were entered on 'girmits' – agreements written on pieces of paper. The silver that was paid for them went to their families, and they were taken away, never to be seen again: they vanished, as if into the netherworld.

Where are they going, malik? said Kalua, in a hushed voice, as if he were speaking of the living dead.

A boat will take them to Patna and then to Calcutta, said the guard. And from there they'll go to a place called Mareech.

Unable to restrain herself any longer, Deeti joined in the conversation, asking, from the shelter of her sari's ghungta: Where is this Mareech? Is it near Dilli?

Ramsaran-ji laughed. No, he said scornfully. It's an island in the sea – like Lanka, but farther away.

The mention of Lanka, with its evocation of Ravana and his demon-legions, made Deeti flinch. How was it possible that the marchers could stay on their feet, knowing what lay ahead? She tried to imagine what it would be like to be in their place, to know that you were forever an outcaste; to know that you would never again enter your father's house; that you would never throw your arms around your mother; never eat a meal with your sisters and brothers; never feel the cleansing touch of the Ganga. And to know also that for the rest of your days you would eke out a living on some wild, demon-plagued island?

Deeti shivered. And how will they get to that place? she asked Ramsaran-ji.

A ship will be waiting for them at Calcutta, said the duffadar, a jaház, much larger than any you've ever seen: with many masts and sails; a ship large enough to hold hundreds of people…

Hái Rám! So that was what it was? Deeti clapped a hand over her mouth as she recalled the ship she had seen while standing in the Ganga. But why had the apparition been visited upon her, Deeti, who had nothing to do with these people? What could it possibly mean?

Kabutri was quick to guess what was on her mother's mind. She said: Wasn't that the kind of ship you saw? The one like a bird? Strange that it showed itself to you.

Don't say that! Deeti cried, throwing her arms around the girl. A tremor of dread went through her and she hugged her daughter to her chest.

Moments after Mr Doughty had announced his arrival, Benjamin Burnham's boots landed on the deck of the Ibis with a weighty thud: the shipowner's fawn breeches and dark jacket were dusty after the journey from Calcutta, and his knee-length riding boots were flecked with mud – but the ride had clearly invigorated him, for there was no trace of fatigue on his glowing face.

Benjamin Burnham was a man of imposing height and stately girth, with a full curly beard that cloaked the upper half of his chest like a plate of glossy chainmail. A few years short of fifty, his step had not lost the bounce of youth and his eyes still had the brilliant, well-focused sparkle that comes from never looking in any direction other than ahead. The skin of his face was leathery and deeply tanned, a legacy of many years of energetic activity in the sun. Now, standing erect on deck, he hooked his thumb in the lapel of his jacket and ran a quizzical eye over the schooner's crew before stepping aside with Mr Doughty. The two men conferred for a while and then Mr Burnham went up to Zachary and extended a hand. 'Mr Reid?'

'Yes, sir.' Zachary stepped up to shake his hand.

The shipowner looked him up and down, in approval. 'Doughty says for a rank griffin, you're a pucka sort of chap.'

'I hope he's right, sir,' said Zachary, uncertainly.

The shipowner smiled, baring a set of large, sparkling teeth. 'Well, do you feel up to giving me a tour of my new vessel?'

In Benjamin Burnham's bearing there was that special kind of authority that suggests an upbringing of wealth and privilege – but this was misleading, Zachary knew, for the shipowner was a tradesman's son and prided himself on being a self-made man. Over the last two days, courtesy of Mr Doughty, Zachary had learnt a great deal about the 'Burra Sahib': he knew, for example, that for all his familiarity with Asia, Benjamin Burnham was not 'country-born' – 'that's to say he's not like those of us sahibs who drew our first breath in the East.' He was the son of a Liverpool timber merchant, but had spent no more than a scant ten years 'at home' – 'and that means Blatty, my boy, not just any damned place you happen to be living in.'

As a child, the pilot said, young Ben was a 'right shaytan': a brawler, trouble-maker and general hurremzad who was clearly destined for a lifetime's journey through penitentiaries and houses of correction: it was to save him from his kismet that his family had shipped him out as a 'guinea-pig' – 'that's what you called a cabin-boy on an Indiaman in the old days – because they were everyone's to step on and do with as they willed.'

But even the discipline of an East India Company tea-wagon had proved insufficient to tame the lad: 'A quartermaster lured the boy into the ship's store with a mind to trying a bit of udlee-budlee. But chota as he was, young Benjamin didn't lack for bawhawdery – set upon the old launderbuzz with a belaying-pin and beat him with such a will that his life-line was all but unrove.'

For his own safety Benjamin Burnham was sent off the ship at its next port of call, which happened to be the British penal colony of Port Blair, on the Andaman Islands. 'Best thing that could happen to a wild young chuckeroo: nothing like a jail-connah to tame a junglee.' At Port Blair, Ben Burnham found employment with the prison's chaplain: here, under a regime that was both punitive and forgiving, he acquired faith as well as an education. 'Oh those preachers have hard hands, my boy; they'll put the Lord's Word in your mouth even if they have to knock out your teeth to do it.' When sufficiently reformed, the boy drifted Atlantic-wards and spent some time on a blackbirder, sailing between America, Africa and England. Then, at the age of nineteen he found himself sailing China-wards on a ship that was carrying a well-known Protestant missionary. The accidental acquaintance between Ben Burnham and the English Reverend was to strengthen and deepen into a lasting friendship. 'That's how it goes in those parts,' said the pilot. ' Canton is a place where you get to know your friends. The Chinamen keep the Fanqui-devils penned inside the foreign factories, outside the town walls. No Fanqui can leave their little strip of shore; can't pass the city gates. Nowhere to go; no place to walk, no course to ride. Even to take a little hong-boat out on the river, you have to get an official chop. No mems allowed; nothing to do but listen to your shroffs counting their taels. Man can get as lonely as a butcher on banyan-day. There's some who just can't take it and have to be sent home. There's some who go down to Hog Lane, to puckrow a buy-em-dear or get must on shamshoo wine. But not Ben Burnham: when he wasn't selling opium, he was with the missionaries. More often than not you'd find him at the American factory – the Yankees were more to his taste than his Company colleagues, being more churchy-like.'