An unnamed man from Florence, Italy, travels through India past a lake that looks like “a sea of molten gold” (5). He rides on “a bullock cart” (6), and the cart’s driver wonders whether the strange man is a rogue or a noble. The stranger says that he is a man with “a secret which only the emperor’s ears may hear” (7). He knows that his mission is dangerous and that, if he does not earn the emperor’s trust, he will “quickly die” (8). As the caravanserai arrives in Sikri, a city larger than any the stranger has ever visited, he thinks about how he has “crossed the world” (10) to arrive in this place. During this time, he has “picked up languages the way most sailors pick up diseases” (12). In the market, he searches for women and alcohol to satisfy his urges.

Some time before, the stranger stows away on a Scottish ship named Scathach. The “languid Florentine stowaway” (15) is soon discovered and he is saved from punishment by performing elaborate magic tricks for the crew. He introduces himself to Captain George Louis Hauksbank as “Uccello di Firenze, enchanter and scholar” (16). Both men know that this is a pseudonym: “Uccello” is an Italian slang word for penis as well as the word for bird, which Uccello selected because “birds are the greatest travelers of all” (17).