本书摘录:
Book 1
Book 1 - Prologue
_ BOOK I PROLOGUE
"For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world and lose his own soul? or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?"
At Surat, by a window of his private office in the East India Company‘s factory, a middle-aged man stared out upon the broad river and the wharves below. Business in the factory had ceased for the day: clerks and porters had gone about their own affairs, and had left the great building strangely cool and empty and silent. The wharves, too, were deserted--all but one, where a Hindu sat in the shade of a pile of luggage, and the top of a boat‘s mast wavered like the index of a balance above the edge of the landing-stairs.
The luggage belonged to the middle-aged man at the window: the boat was to carry him down the river to the _Albemarle_, East Indiaman, anchored in the roads with her Surat cargo aboard. She would sail that night for Bombay and thence away for England.
He was ready
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