“What is your authority to be here?” Panjit demanded. The crowd, most of whom did not understand English, watched the sailors nervously, but Panjit’s bodyguards, who outnumbered Chase’s men and were just as well armed, seemed eager to be loosed on the seamen.

“My authority,” Chase said grandly, “is my empty purse.” He smiled. “You surely do not wish me to use force?”

“Use force, Captain Chase,” Panjit answered just as grandly, “and I shall have you in front of a magistrate by dawn.”

“I shall happily appear in court,” Chase said, “so long as Nana Rao is beside me.”

Panjit shook his hands as if he was shooing Chase and his men away from his courtyard. “You will leave, Captain. You will leave my house now.”

“I think not,” Chase said.

“Go! Or I will summon authority!” Panjit insisted.

Chase turned to the huge tattooed man. “Nana Rao’s the bugger with the mustache and the red silk robe, Bosun. Get him.”

The British seamen charged forward, relishing the chance of a scrap, but Panjit’s bodyguards were no less eager and the two groups met in the courtyard’s center with a sickening crash of staves, skulls and fists. The seamen had the best of it at first, for they had charged with a ferocity that drove the bodyguards back to the foot of the steps, but Panjit’s men were both more numerous and more accustomed to fighting with the long clubs. They rallied at the steps, then used their staves like spears to tangle the sailors’ legs and, one by one, the pigtailed men were tripped and beaten down. The bosun and the Negro were the last to fall. They tried to protect their captain who was using his fists handily, but the British sailors had woefully underestimated the opposition and were doomed.