The Moghul

by Thomas Hoover

  *

  "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 hourglass. The sand was half gone, and the compass reading still gave their course as due south. Ahead the sea was blind dark but on the left the fires of shore 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 pass 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 God, 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 muffled 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.