Desmond and his six companions now had fourteen prisoners on their hands, and in ordinary circumstances the disproportion would have been fatal.  But the captives, besides having been deprived of all means of offense, had no exact knowledge of the exact number of men who had trapped them.  Their fears and the darkness had a magnifying effect, and, like Falstaff, they would have sworn that their enemies were ten times as many as they actually were.

So deeply engrossed had Desmond been in the capture of the grab that he had forgotten the one serious danger that threatened to turn the tide of accident, hitherto so favorable, completely against him.  He had forgotten the burning gallivats.  But now his attention was recalled to them in a very unpleasant and forcible way.  There was a deafening report, as it seemed from a few yards’ distance, followed immediately by a splash in the water just ahead.  The glare of the burning vessels was dimly lighting up almost the whole harbor mouth, and the runaway gallivat, now clearly seen from the fort, had become a target for its guns.  The gunners had been specially exercised of late in anticipation of an attack from Bombay, and Desmond knew that in his slow-going vessel he could not hope to draw out of range in time to escape a battering.

But his gallivat was among the grabs.  At this moment it must be impossible for the gunners to distinguish between the runaway and the loyal vessels.  If he could only cause them to hold their fire for a time!  Knowing that the Gujarati had a stentorian voice, and that a shout would carry upwards from the water to the parapet, in a flash Desmond saw the possibility of a ruse.  He spoke to Fuzl Khan.  The man at once turned to the fort, and with the full force of his lungs shouted: 

“Comrades, do not fire.  We have caught them!”

Answering shouts came from the walls; the words were indistinguishable, but the trick had succeeded, at any rate for the moment.  No second shot was at this time fired.

Desmond made full use of this period of grace.  He recognized that the gallivat, while short-handed, was too slow to make good the escape; the grab, with the wind contrary, could never be got out of the harbor; the only course open to him was to make use of the one to tow the other until they reached the open sea.  As soon as a hawser could be bent the grab was taken in tow:  its crew was impressed with the other prisoners as rowers, under the charge of the Biluchis; and with Desmond at the helm of the grab and the Gujarati steering the gallivat, the two vessels crept slowly seawards.  They went at a snail’s pace, for it was nearly slack tide; and slow as the progress of the gallivat had been before, it was much slower now that the men had to move two vessels instead of one.

To Desmond, turning every now and again to watch the increasing glare from the burning gallivats, it seemed that he scarcely advanced at all.  The town and the townward part of the fort were minute by minute becoming more brightly illuminated; every detail around the blazing vessels could be distinctly seen; and mingled with the myriad noises from the shore was now the crackle of the flames, and the hiss of burning spars and rigging as they fell into the water.