Mackintosh watched as the last grains of red marble sand slipped through the two-foot-high hourglass by the binnacle and then he mechanically flipped it over. The moon now cast the shadow of the mainmast yard precisely across the waist of the ship, and the tide had begun to flow in rapidly. The men of the new watch were silently working their way up the shrouds.
"Midnight. The tide's up. There's nae need to wait more." He turned to Captain Kerridge, who stood beside him on the quarterdeck of the Resolve. George Elkington stood directly behind Kerridge.
"Let's get under sail." Elkington tapped out his pipe on the railing. Then he turned to Kerridge. "Did you remember to douse the stern lantern?"
"I give the orders, Mr. Elkington. And you can save your questions for the pilot." Captain Jonathan Kerridge was a small, weasel-faced man with no chin and large bulging eyes. He signaled the Resolve’s quartermaster and the anchor chain began to rattle slowly up the side. Then the mainsail dropped, hung slack for a moment, and bellied against the wind, sending a groan through the mast. They were underway. The only light on board was a small, shielded lantern by the binnacle, for reading the large boxed compass.
The needle showed their course to be almost due south, toward the bar at the mouth of the Tapti. On their right was the empty bay and on their left the glimmer of occasional fires from the shoreline. The whipstaff had been taken by the Indian pilot, a wrinkled nut-brown man the Shahbandar had introduced as Ahmet. He spoke a smattering of Portuguese and had succeeded in explaining that he could reliably cover the eight-mile stretch south from Swalley to the unloading bar at the Tapti river mouth in one turn of the hourglass, if Allah willed. With high tide, he had also managed to explain, there were only two sandbars they would have to avoid.
And there would be no hostiles abroad this night. Even the Portuguese trading frigates were safely at anchor off the river mouth, for this evening their captains had been honored by an invitation to attend the gathering at Mirza Nuruddin's estate.