The Moghul Part 36

A servant

barked the numbers and the crowd pressed forward as one to watch.

"Fifteen fathom and falling." The bosun leaned back from the railing and shouted toward the quarterdeck. In disbelief he quickly drew the line in over the gunwale at the waist of the _Resolve_ and fed it out again.

"Now she reads thirteen fathom."

Kerridge glanced at the hourgla.s.s. The sand was half gone, and the compa.s.s reading still gave their course as due south. Ahead the sea was blind dark but on the left the fires of sh.o.r.e still flickered, now perhaps even brighter than he had remembered them. Then he realized a cloud had drifted momentarily over the moon, and he told himself this was why. The pilot held the whipstaff on a steady course.

"I'd reef the foresail a notch, Cap'n, and ease her two points to starboard. I'll lay a hundred sovereigns the current's chang'd on us." Mackintosh ventured to break protocol and speak, his concern growing.

I dinna like the feel of this, he told himself. We're driftin'

too fast. I can feel it.

"Eight fathoms, sir." The bosun's voice again cut the dark.

"Jesus, Cap'n," Mackintosh erupted. "Take her about. The pox- rotted current's . .."

"She'll ride in three fathom. I've sailed the James, six hundred ton, in less. Let her run." He turned to Elkington. "Ask the Moor how much longer to the river mouth."

George Elkington turned and shot a stream of questions rapidly at the pilot, whose eyes glazed in his partial comprehension. He shook his head in a way that seemed to mean both yes and no simultaneously and then pointed into the dark and shrugged, emitting fragments of Portuguese.

"_Em frente Sahib. Diretamente em frente._"

Then he gestured toward the waist of the ship and seemed to be asking the depth reading.

As though in answer, the bosun's voice came again, trembling.

"Five fathom, Cap'n, and still dropping."

"Cinco." Elkington translated, but his concerned tone was

a question. What does it mean?

The pilot shouted an alarm in Gujarati and threw his fragile weight against the whipstaff. The _Resolve_ pitched and shuddered, groaning like some mourning animal at tether, but it no longer seemed to respond to the rudder.

Kerridge glared at the pilot in dismay.

"Tell the blathering heathen steady as she goes. She'll take--"

The deck tipped crazily sideways, and a low grind seemed to pa.s.s up through its timbers. Then the whipstaff kicked to port, strained against its rope, and with a snap from somewhere below, drifted free.

The _Resolve _careened dangerously into the wind, while a wave caught the waist of the ship and swept the bosun and his sounding line into the dark.

"Whorin' Mary, Mother of G.o.d, we've lost the rudder." Mackintosh lunged down the companionway toward the main deck, drawing a heavy knife from his belt. As the frightened seamen clung to the tilting deck and braced themselves against the shrouds, he began slashing the lines securing the main sail.

Another wave seemed to catch the _Resolve_ somewhere beneath her stern quarter gallery and lifted her again. She poised in midair for a long moment, then groaned farther into the sand. As the frigate tipped, Mackintosh felt a rumble from the deck below and at that instant he knew with perfect certainty the _Resolve _was doomed to go down. A cannon had snapped its securing lines and jumped its blocks. He grabbed a shroud and braced himself.

Then it came, the m.u.f.fled sound of splintering as the cannon bore directly through the hull, well below the waterline of the heeling frigate.

"Takin' water in the hold." A frightened shout trailed out through the scuttles.

The seamen on decks still clung to the shrouds, wedging themselves against the gunwales.

"Man the pumps in the well, you fatherless pimps." Mackintosh shouted at the paralyzed seamen, knowing it was already too late, and then he began to sever the moorings of the longboat lashed to the mainmast.

Elkington was clinging to the lateen mast, winding a safety line about his waist and bellowing unintelligible instructions into the dark for hoisting the chests of silver bullion from the hold.

No one on the quarterdeck had noticed when its railing splintered, sending Captain Kerridge and the Indian pilot into the dark sea.

"The strumpet luck seems to have switched her men tonight, Captain Hawksworth, like a _nautch_ girl when her _karwa_'s rupees are spent."

Mirza Nuruddin signaled for his hookah to be relighted. He had just thrown another row of three sixes, and was now near to taking the seventh game, giving him six to Hawksworth's one. All betting on Hawksworth had stopped after the fourth game. "But the infinite will of G.o.d is always mysterious, mercifully granting us what we need more often than what we want."

Hawksworth had studied the last throw carefully, through the haze of brandy, and he suddenly realized Mirza Nuruddin had been cheating.

By Jesus, the dice are weighted. He sets them up somehow in the cup, then slides them quickly across the carpet. d.a.m.n me if he's not a thief. But why bother to cheat me? I only laid five sovereigns on the game.

He pushed aside the confusion and reflected again on the astounding genius who sat before him now, cheating at dice.

His plan was masterful. Host a gathering for the captains at the bar the night we will unload. Even the Portuguese. No one in command of a ship will be at the river mouth, no one who could possibly interfere.

All our wool's already been unladed and brought overland to Surat. Then we transferred the ironwork and lead on the _Discovery _to the _Resolve_. So all the lead and ironwork in cargo will be unladed by moonlight tonight and on its way upriver by morning, before the Portugals here even sleep off their liquor.

And the _Resolve _will be underway again by dawn, back to Swalley with no one to challenge her. Not even the Portuguese trading frigatta, with their laughable eight-pound stern chasers. The _Discovery _is almost laded with cotton. Another couple of days should finish her. And then the _Resolve_. Another two week at most, and they'll be underway.

The East India Company, the Worshipful d.a.m.ned East India Company, will earn a fortune on this voyage. And a certain captain named Brian Hawksworth will be toasted the length of Cheapside as the man who did what Lancaster couldn't. The man who sent the East India Company's frigates home with a cargo of the cheapest pepper in history. The b.u.t.terbox Hollanders will be buying pepper from the East India Company next year and cursing Captain Brian Hawksworth.

Or will it be Sir Brian Hawksworth?

He tried the name on his tongue as he swirled the dice for one last throw. This time he tried to duplicate the Shahbandar's technique.

Easy swirls and then just let them slide onto the carpet as you make some distracting remark.

"Perhaps it's Allah's will that a man make his own luck. Is that written somewhere?" The dice slid onto the carpet and Hawksworth reached for his brandy.

Three sixes.

Mirza Nuruddin studied the three ivories indifferently as he drew on his hookah. But traces of a smile showed at the corner of his lips and his foggy eyes sparkled for an instant.

"You see, Captain Hawksworth, you never know the hand of fortune till you play to the end." He motioned to a servant. "Refresh the English captain's gla.s.s. I think he's starting to learn our game."

The longboat sc.r.a.ped crazily across the deck and into the surf. Then another wave washed over the deck, chilling the half-naked seamen who struggled to secure the longboat's line. Two chests of silver bullion, newly hoisted from the hold, were now wedged against the mainmast.

Elkington clung to their handles, shouting between waves for the seamen to lower them into the longboat.

Mackintosh ignored him.