He remounted the steps to the quarterdeck and paused to study the green shoreline circling their inlet. The low-lying hills undulated in the sun's heat, washing the _Discovery _in the dense perfume of land. Already India beckoned, the lure even stronger than all the legends told. He smiled to himself and drank again, this time a toast to the first English captain ever to hoist colors off the coast of India. Then with a weary hand he reached for the telescope, an expensive new Dutch invention, and trained it on his second frigate, the _Resolve_, anchored a musket shot away. Like the _Discovery_, she rode easily at anchor, bearing to lee. He noted with relief that her ship's carpenter had finally sealed a patch of oakum and sail in the gash along her portside bow. For a few hours now, the men on the pumps could retire from the sweltering hold. Finally, he directed the glass toward the remains of two Portuguese galleons aground in the sandy shallows off his starboard quarter, black smoke still streaming from gaps in their planking where explosions had ripped through the hull. And for an instant his stomach tightened, just as it had earlier that morning, when one of those same galleons had laid deep shadows across the _Discovery's _decks, so close he could almost read the eyes of the infantry poised with grapples to swing down and board. The Portugals will be back, he told himself, and soon. With fireships. He scanned the river mouth once more. It was deserted now. Even the fishing craft had fled. But upriver would be another matter. Portuguese longboats, launched with boarding parties of infantry, had been stranded when the two galleons were lost. Together they had carried easily a hundred, perhaps two hundred musketmen. They made for the Tapti, he thought grimly, and they'll be upriver waiting. We have to launch before they can set a blockade. Tonight. On the tide. He revolved to find Giles Mackintosh, quartermaster of the _Discovery_, waiting mutely by his side. "Mackintosh, start outfitting the pinnace. We launch at sunset, before the last dog watch." The quartermaster pulled at his matted red curls in silence as he studied the tree-lined river mouth. Then he turned abruptly to Hawksworth. "Takin' the pinnace upriver'll be a death sentence, Cap'n, I warrant you. Portugals'll be layin' for us, thicker'n whores at a Tyburn hangin'." He paused deliberately and knotted the string holding back hair from his smoke-darkened cheeks. "I say we weigh at the tide and ease the frigates straight up their hell-bound river. She's wide as the Thames at Woolwich. We'll run out the guns and hand the pox-rotted Papists another taste o' English courtesy." "Can you navigate the sandbars?" "I've seen nae sign of bars." "The Indian pilot we took on yesterday claims there's shallows upriver."