Page:Early English adventurers in the East (1917).djvu/93

Rh The favour of a tyrant so capricious as Jehangir showed himself to be was a slender reed on which an isolated Englishman could lean at that juncture, and the day came when Hawkins discovered that the intrigues of Makarrab Khan and of his close associates, the Portuguese, were having effect on the imperial mind to his disadvantage. He strove manfully to resist the insidious influences and, for a time, seemed to have conquered, but at length "the King went again from his word, esteeming a few toys which the fathers had promised him more than his honour."

Hawkins made yet another effort to obtain the licence to trade for the Company, which was the bone of contention, but Jehangir informed him that he had finally decided to withhold it.

"Thus," says Hawkins, "was I tossed and tumbled in the kind of a rich merchant adventuring all he had in one bottom, and by casualtie of stormes or pirates lost it all at once."

The rebuff here administered was the beginning of the end. Presently, Hawkins was told that he was not to enter within the red rails where he had stood near the Emperor during the two years of his service. The intimation was a hint not to be disregarded with impunity. He commenced to make preparations for departure. His first thought was to obtain a safe conduct to Goa for himself and his wife, but he was spared the humiliation of making an application in this quarter by the news which reached Agra at the juncture of the arrival of three English ships under Sir Henry Middleton at Surat. Without loss of time he made his way to the coast and was soon once more, to his great joy, on the deck of an English ship.

Hawkins' subsequent career belongs to a somewhat