The water was warm, and a few minutes’ steady swimming brought them within twenty or thirty yards of the light.  The hulls of the gallivats and their tall raking spars could now be seen looming up out of the blackness.  Desmond perceived that the light was on the outermost of the line, and, treading water for a moment, he caught the low hum of voices coming from the after part of the gallivat.  Striking out to the left, still followed by the Gujarati, he swam along past the sterns of the lashed vessels until he came under the side of the one nearest the shore.  He caught at the hempen cable, swarmed up it, and, the gallivat having but little freeboard, soon reached the bulwark.

There he paused to recover his breath and to listen.  Hearing nothing, he quietly slipped over the side and lay on the main deck.  In a few seconds he was joined by his companion.  In the shadow of the bulwarks the two groped their way cautiously along the deck.  Presently Desmond, who was in front, struck his foot against some object invisible to him.  There was a grunt beneath him.

The two paused, Fuzl Khan nervously fingering the knife he had taken from the sentinel on the bastion.  The grunt was repeated; but the intruders remained still as death, and with a sleepy grumble the man who had been disturbed turned over on his charpoy, placed transversely across the deck, and fell asleep.

All was quiet.  Once more the two moved forward.  They came to the ropes by which the vessel was lashed to the next in the line.  For a moment Desmond stood irresolute; then he led the way swiftly and silently to the deck of the adjacent gallivat, crossed it without mishap, and so across the third.  Fortunately both were sailors, accustomed to finding their way on shipboard in the night, as much by sense of touch as by sight.  Being barefooted, only the sharpest ears, deliberately on the alert, could have detected them.

They had now reached the fourth of the line of vessels.  It was by far the largest of the fleet, and for this reason Desmond had guessed that it would have been chosen for his quarters by the serang {head of a crew} in charge of the watch.  If he could secure this man he felt that his hazardous enterprise would be half accomplished.  This was indeed the pivot on which the whole scheme turned, for in no other way would it be possible to seize the ten men on board the gallivats without raising such an alarm as must shock fort, city, and harbor to instant activity.  And it was necessary to Desmond’s plan, not only to secure the serang, but to secure him alive.

The gallivat was Angria’s own vessel, used in his visits up river to his country house, and, during calm weather, in occasional excursions to Suwarndrug and the other forts on the sea coast.  As Desmond was aware, it boasted a large state cabin aft, and he thought it very probable that the serang had appropriated this for his watch below.