"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.
"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 God 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.