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 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.