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the blackamoors and the others, the fair-skinned ones, the lords and masters who lie here in these baths. If they be not Hindus, and I think they are not, then Portugals is what they must be.” He laughed and pulled the women against himself and rubbed his hands over their breasts as though they were fruits on a vine. “Is that not what you are, you little naked shameless Papist wenches? A pair of Portugals, eh?”
    They giggled, but did not answer.
    “No,” Phillips said. “This is India, but not the India you think you know. And these women are not Portuguese.”
    “Not Portuguese?” Willoughby said, baffled.
    “No more so than you. I’m quite certain of that.”
    Willoughby stroked his beard. “I do admit I found them very odd, for Portugals. I have heard not a syllable of their Portugee speech on their lips. And it is strange also that they run naked as Adam and Eve in these baths, and allow me free plunder of their women, which is not the way of Portugals at home, God wot. But I thought me, this is India, they choose to live in another fashion here—”
    “No,” Phillips said. “I tell you, these are not Portuguese, nor any other people of Europe who are known to you.”
    “Prithee, who are they, then?”
    Do it delicately, now, Phillips warned himself. Delicately.
    He said, “It is not far wrong to think of them as spirits of some kind—demons, even. Or sorcerers who have magicked us out of our proper places in the world.” He paused, groping for some means to share with Willoughby, in a way that Willoughby might grasp, this mystery that had enfolded them. He drew a deep breath. “They’ve taken us not only across the sea,” he said, “but across the years as well. We have both been hauled, you and I, far into the days that are to come.”
    Willoughby gave him a look of blank bewilderment.
    “Days that are to come? Times yet unborn, d’ye mean? Why, I comprehend none of that!”
    “Try to understand. We’re both castaways in the same boat, man! But there’s no way we can help each other if I can’t make you see—”
    Shaking his head, Willoughby muttered, “In faith, good friend, I find your words the merest folly. Today is today, and tomorrow is tomorrow, and how can a man step from one to t’other until tomorrow be turned into today?”
    “I have no idea,” said Phillips. Struggle was apparent on Willoughby’s face; but plainly he could perceive no more than the haziest outline of what Phillips was driving at, if that much. “But this I know,” he went on. “That your world and all that was in it is dead and gone. And so is mine, though I was born four hundred years after you, in the time of the second Elizabeth.”
    Willoughby snorted scornfully. “Four hundred—”
    “You must believe me!”
    “Nay! Nay!”
    “It’s the truth. Your time is only history to me. And mine and yours are history to them—ancient history. They call us visitors, but what we are is captives.” Phillips felt himself quivering in the intensity of his effort. He was aware how insane this must sound to Willoughby. It was beginning to sound insane to him. “They’ve stolen us out of our proper times—seizing us like gypsies in the night—”
    “Fie, man! You rave with lunacy!”
    Phillips shook his head. He reached out and seized Willoughby tightly by the wrist. “I beg you, listen to me!” The citizen-women were watching closely, whispering to one another behind their hands, laughing. “Ask them!” Phillips cried. “Make them tell you what century this is! The sixteenth, do you think? Ask them!”
    “What century could it be, but the sixteenth of our Lord?”
    “They will tell you it is the fiftieth.”
    Willoughby looked at him pityingly. “Man, man, what a sorry thing thou art! The fiftieth, indeed!” He laughed. “Fellow, listen to me, now. There is but one Elizabeth, safe upon her throne in Westminster. This is India. The year is Anno 1591. Come, let us you and I steal a ship from