Recognizing the pavilion from the coksen's description, Jodu plunged his oar into the mud and leant on the handle, to hold the dinghy stationary against the river's current. In passing the other estates of Garden Reach, he had come to realize that the problem of finding Putli would not be resolved by locating the house in which she lived: each of these mansions was a small fortress, guarded by servants who were certain to perceive all interlopers as possible competitors against whom their jobs would have to be defended. To Jodu's eye, it seemed that the garden with the green-roofed pavilion was the largest, and most impregnable, of all the neighbouring estates: deployed across its lawn was an army of malis and ghaskatas, some of whom were engaged in digging new beds, while others were weeding or mowing the grass with scythes. Dressed as he was, in a torn lungi and banyan, with a faded gamchha tied around his head, Jodu knew that his chances of penetrating these defences were very small; in all likelihood within moments of setting foot on the grounds, he would be captured and handed over to the chowkidars, to be thrashed as a thief.

Already, the stationary dinghy had attracted the attention of one of the estate's boatmen – evidently a calputtee, for he was busy caulking the bottom of a sleek-looking caique, applying liquid tar with a palm-leaf brush. Now, leaving his brush in the bucket, the caulker turned to frown at Jodu. What's the matter? he shouted. What's your business here?

Jodu gave him a disarming smile. Salam mistry-ji, he said, flattering the calputtee by raising him a rank or two in the grades of artisanship: I was just admiring the house. It must be the biggest around here?

The calputtee nodded: What else? Zaroor. Of course it is.

Jodu decided to chance his luck: It must be a large family that lives in it then?

The calputtee's lips curled into a sneer: Do you think a house like this would belong to the kind of people who'd live in a crowd? No; it's just the Burra Sahib, the Burra BeeBee and the Burra Baby.

That's all? No one else?

There's a young missy-mem, said the caulker, with a dismissive shrug. But she's not a part of the family. Just a charity-case they've taken in, from the goodness of their hearts.

Jodu would have liked to know more, but he saw that it would be imprudent to press the man any further – it might well get Putli into trouble if word got out that a boatman had come looking for her in a dinghy. But how then was he to get a message to her? He was puzzling over this when he noticed a sapling, growing in the shade of the green-tiled pavilion: he recognized it as a chalta tree, which produced fragrant white flowers and a fruit that had an unusual, sour flavour, vaguely reminiscent of unripe apples.

He assumed a voice like that of his rustic half-siblings, who seemed never to be able to walk past a field without asking questions about the crops; in a tone of innocent inquiry, he said to the calputtee: Has that chalta tree been recently planted?

The caulker looked up and frowned. That one? He made a face and shrugged, as if to distance himself from the misbegotten growth. Yes, that's the new missy-mem's handiwork. She's always interfering with the malis in the garden, moving things around.

Jodu made his salams and turned the boat around, to head back the way he had come. He had guessed at once that the sapling had been planted by Putli: she had always craved the mouth-puckering taste of its fruit. At home, in the Botanical Gardens, a chalta tree had stood beside the window of her bedroom and every year, during its brief season, she had gathered handfuls of the fruit, to make into chutneys and pickles. She loved them so much that she even ate them raw, to the disbelief of others. Being thoroughly familiar with Putli's gardening habits, Jodu knew that she would be down to water the sapling early in the morning: if he spent the night somewhere nearby, then he might well be able to catch her before the servants were up and about.

Now, Jodu began to row upstream, watching the shore for a spot that would be at once hidden from view and near enough to habitation to be a discouragement to leopards and jackals. When one such appeared, he hitched up his lungi and waded through a bank of mud to tether the boat to the roots of a gigantic banyan tree. Then, climbing back inside, he washed the mud off his feet and set hungrily upon a pot of stale rice.

At the rear of the dinghy there was a small thatched shelter and this was where he spread his mat after finishing his meagre meal. It was twilight now; the sun was setting on the far bank of the Hooghly, and the shadowed outlines of the trees in the Botanical Gardens were still visible across the water. Although Jodu was very tired, he could not bring himself to close his eyes while the skies were still bright enough to shed light upon the bustling life of the river.

The tide was beginning to sweep in, and the Hooghly had filled with sails, as ships and boats hurried to take their berths or to stand out to mid-channel. From where he lay, on the slats of his gently rocking dinghy, Jodu could imagine that the world had turned itself upside down, so that the river had become the sky, crowded with banks of cloud; if you narrowed your eyes, you might almost think that the ships' masts and spars were bolts of lightning, forking through the billowing sails. And as for thunder, there was that too, booming out of the sheets of canvas, as they flapped, slackened and filled again. The noise never failed to amaze him: the whiplash crack of the sails, the high-pitched shriek of the wind in the rigging, the groan of the timbers and surf-like pounding of the bow-waves: it was as if each ship were a moving tempest and he an eagle, circling close behind to hunt in the ruins of her wake.

Looking across the river Jodu could count the flags of a dozen kingdoms and countries: Genoa, the Two Sicilies, France, Prussia, Holland, America, Venice. He had learnt to recognize them from Putli, who had pointed them out to him as they sailed past the Gardens; even though she herself had never left Bengal, she knew stories about the places from which they came. These tales had played no small part in nurturing his desire to see the roses of Basra and the port of Chin-kalan, where the great Faghfoor of Maha-chin held sway.

On the deck of a nearby three-master, a mate's voice could be heard, calling out in English: 'All hands to quarters, ahoy!' A moment later, the command became a hookum, relayed by a serang: Sab admi apni jagah!

'Fill the main topsails.' – Bhar bara gávi! With a resounding crack the canvas billowed in the wind, and the mate called out: 'Ease the helm!'

Gos daman ja! came the serang's echo, and slowly the vessel's bows began to turn. 'Shiver the foretopsail!' – and almost before the serang had finished issuing the hookum – Bajao tirkat gavi! – the lofty square of canvas had sent its whiplash crack shooting through the wind.

From the silmagoors who sat on the ghats, sewing sails, Jodu had learnt the names of each piece of canvas, in English and in Laskari – that motley tongue, spoken nowhere but on the water, whose words were as varied as the port's traffic, an anarchic medley of Portuguese calaluzes and Kerala pattimars, Arab booms and Bengal paunch-ways, Malay proas and Tamil catamarans, Hindusthani pulwars and English snows – yet beneath the surface of this farrago of sound, meaning flowed as freely as the currents beneath the crowded press of boats.

By listening to the voices that echoed off the decks of ocean-going ships, Jodu had taught himself to recognize the officers' hookums to the point where he could say them aloud, even if only to himself – 'Starboard watch ahoy!' Jamna pori upar ao! – understanding perfectly well the whole, while yet being unable to account for the meaning of the several parts. To shout the commands in earnest, on a ship that had been pushed on her beam-ends by a gale… that day would come, he was sure of it.