210 FIRST SETTLEMENTS ON THE BOMBAY COAST It was this talent of isolated groups of Englishmen for making their power felt in distant regions, that car- ried the Company through the dark days of Charles I. They turned their factory at Surat into a sea-defence of the Moghul Empire, convoyed noble and imperial devotees to the Persian Gulf on their way to Mecca, and guarded the pilgrim route. Their Dutch rivals, although much stronger in men and ships in Asiatic waters, found themselves on the Gujarat coast in the grip of the Moghul power. Nor did the Hollanders, secure of the Spice Archipelago, care so much to come to terms with the Indian Portuguese. But while our Surat factors thus secured a strong position and earned large profits for their masters, they also, in spite of their masters, did a lucrative trade on their own account. The Company viewed with mixed emotions the rising power of its servants in the East. It had seen its president at Surat commission a squad- ron in 1628 to wage open war on the Portuguese. But for a local factory to make a treaty on its own account with an independent European power was a dangerous audacity. Yet, in 1636, in spite of the home directors' alarm and half-heartedness, this convention of the Goa viceroy with the president at Surat became the basis of the settlement of the Indies. Even Holland began to realize that, notwithstanding her Spice Island supremacy, the English understood the greater game of Indian politics better than her own servants in the East. The Dutch factors at Surat con- trasted their insignificance with the strong position
