By the fourth glass of the morning watch, the water of the basin had turned from foul gray to a flat, oily sheet of pewter.
The sound reached the net-loft before the boat cleared the outer spit: the rhythmic thump of six oars dipping all at once and the metal chirp of brass rowlocks.
Tomas Reed stood by the north window, his left forearm resting on the doorstep. The three iron buckles of his calfskin brace kept his injured flexor tendon from bearing weight as the damp air throbbed in the scar tissue. Behind him, Nessa Vale tilted her dual-cone brass hearing horn toward the open louver. She tracked the stroke rhythm.
“Six oars,” Nessa said without turning. “Varnished ash blades. Thirty strokes a minute. That’s not a harbor patrol yawl. That’s an Admiral’s gig.”
Through the salt-filmed glass, the boat emerged from the fog.
It was a thirty-foot cedar gig varnished like honey, its sheer line picked out in gold leaf. Six ratings in white duck trousers and blue waistcoats pulled at the sweeps. Meanwhile, a marine sergeant stood in the bow with a brass-bound boat-hook.
In the stern sheets, seated upright on blue morocco leather, sat Grand Admiral Garrett Brand.
