Chapter 1: Page 11: Line 73

 So, with this no doubt well-meant advice finding its way into the midwatch sounds of waves past my sleeping-place, I set sail upon an Engine of Destruction, in the hope that Eastward yet might dwell something of Peace and Godhead, which British Civilization, in venturing Westward, had left behind,— and thus was consternation the least of my feelings when, instead of supernatural Guidance from Lamas old as time, here came Jean Crapaud a-looming,— thirty-four guns' worth of Disaster, and only one Lesson.

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Line 73 Vulgarized:
I soon found myself aboard the 24-gun warship, the Seahorse, alone on my bunk, feeling calm and listening to the sounds of the midnight crew on duty while remembering the bureaucrat's advice. We were headed for India where I hoped I might find some sort of spiritual peace to ease my being, the kind of mystical peace one could no longer find in Great Britain which symbolically, by moving away from this land of peace and spirituality, moved toward strife and war while expanding westward. But before my ship could make its destination, we were beset upon by the pirate Jean Crapaud whose ship outgunned us, certainly to be our doom.

Subtext:
By heading back to India from England, a trip from a younger country to an older one, Cherrycoke symbolically travels back in time. The trip is an analogy for nostalgia in that he's leaving the modern, the present, the place that makes one feel anxious and fearful, where one longs for the ease of the past. He sees India as that place, a society of "Peace and Godhead," much like one views the peacefulness of childhood. It is why Cherrycoke feels no "consternation" as he sets sail. He may not be heading home but he's heading toward what home once meant to him before it betrayed and banished him: peace and tranquility.
    But we all know that saying about not being able to go home again because home isn't the physical space in the present but the memory of the past. And here, Cherrycoke, for a few glorious hours maybe, actually feels maybe he can achieve that quality of homeliness in the East before Crapaud teaches him that "one Lesson." You know the one. The one about home but probably vaguer. More like "Life is hard, buddy!" or "You don't always get what you want" or "Don't count your chickens" or "Life is like a ship of pirates. It's what happens to you when you're dreaming about a nice vacation in India."
    Pynchon might also be comparing moving westward as a kind of loss of innocence. In a way, technology and civilization become more modern, more urban as one move westward. Greater technology and more reliance on city life is less bucolic and therefore less natural and less innocent. City life is sinful. The country is idyllic. And, especially according to Western Civilization itself, moving west means entering more modern territory. It's growing up. It's moving into the future. This is representational of a loss of innocence. And that loss cannot be found again which is why Jean Crapaud has to crap all over Cherrycoke's dreams.