Sharpe 3-Book Collection 3: Sharpe's Trafalgar, Sharpe's Prey, Sharpe's Rifles (21 page)

‘Amen,’ Braithwaite said, breaking his silence. He had spent most of the meal gazing dumbly at Lady Grace and flinching whenever Sharpe spoke.

‘By God I hope we do see action!’ Chase retorted. ‘We have to stop our German friend and his so-called servant!’

‘Do you think you can catch the
Revenant
?’ Lady Grace asked.

‘I hope so, milady, but it’ll be touch and go. He’s a good seaman, Montmorin, and the
Revenant
’s a quick ship, but her bottom will be a deal more fouled than ours.’

‘It looked clean to me,’ Sharpe said.

‘Clean?’ Chase sounded alarmed.

‘No green copper at the water line, sir. All bright.’

‘Wretched man,’ Chase said, meaning Montmorin. ‘He’s scrubbed his hull, hasn’t he? Which will make him harder to catch. And I made a wager with Mister Haskell that we’d meet with him on my birthday.’

‘And when is that?’ Lady Grace asked.

‘October 21st, ma’am, and by my reckoning we should be somewhere off Portugal by then.’

‘She won’t be off Portugal,’ the first lieutenant suggested, ‘for she won’t be sailing direct to France. She’ll put into Cadiz, sir, and my guess is we’ll catch her during the second week in October, somewhere off Africa.’

‘Ten guineas rides on the result,’ Chase said, ‘and I know I have forsworn gambling, but I shall happily pay you so long as we do catch her. Then we’ll have a rare fight, milady, but let me assure you that you will be safe below the water line.’

Lady Grace smiled. ‘I am to miss all the entertainment aboard, Captain?’

That brought laughter. Sharpe had never seen her ladyship so relaxed in company. The candles glinted off her diamond earrings and necklace, from the jewels on her fingers and from her bright eyes. Her vivacity was captivating the whole table, all except for her husband who wore a slight frown as though he feared his wife had drunk too much of the blackstrap or the Miss Taylor. Sharpe was assailed with the jealous thought that perhaps she was responding to the handsome and genial Chase, but just as he felt that envy she glanced down the table and briefly caught his eye. Braithwaite saw it and stared down at his plate.

‘I have never entirely understood,’ Lord William said, breaking the moment’s mood, ‘why you fellows insist on taking your ships up close to the enemy and battering their hulls. Easier, surely, to stand off and destroy their rigging from a distance?’

‘That’s the French way, my lord,’ Chase said. ‘Bar shot, chain shot and round shot, fired on the uproll and intended to take out our sticks. But once they’ve dismasted us, once we’re lying like a log in the water, they still have to take us.’

‘But if they have masts and sails and you do not,’ Lord William pointed out, ‘why can they not just pour their broadsides into your stern?’

‘You assume, my lord, that while our notional Frenchman is trying to unmast us, we are doing nothing.’ Chase smiled to soften his words. ‘A ship of the line, my lord, is nothing more than a floating artillery battery. Destroy the sails and you still have a gun battery, but dismount the cannons, splinter its decks and kill the gunners and you have denied the ship its very purpose of existence. The French try to give us a long-range haircut, while we get up close and mangle their vitals.’ He turned to Lady Grace. ‘This must be tiresome, milady, men talking of battle.’

‘I have become used to it these past weeks,’ Grace said. ‘There was a Scottish major on the
Calliope
who was ever trying to persuade Mister Sharpe to tell us such tales.’ She turned to Sharpe. ‘You never did tell us, Mister Sharpe, what happened when you saved my cousin’s life.’

‘My wife has become excessively interested in one of her remoter cousins,’ Lord William interrupted, ‘ever since he gained some small notoriety in India. Extraordinary how a dull fellow like Wellesley can rise in the army, isn’t it?’

‘You saved Wellesley’s life, Sharpe?’ Chase asked, ignoring his lordship’s sarcasm.

‘I don’t know about that, sir. I probably just kept him from being captured.’

‘Is that how you got that scar?’ Llewellyn asked.

‘That was at Gawilghur, sir.’ Sharpe wished the conversation would veer away to another subject and he tried desperately to think of something to say which might steer it in a new direction, but his mind was floundering.

‘So what happened?’ Chase demanded.

‘He was unhorsed, sir,’ Sharpe said, reddening, ‘in the enemy ranks.’

‘He was not by himself, surely?’ Lord William asked.

‘He was, sir. Except for me, of course.’

‘Careless of him,’ Lord William suggested.

‘And how many enemy?’ Chase asked.

‘A good few, sir.’

‘And you fought them off?’

Sharpe nodded. ‘Didn’t have much choice really, sir.’

‘Stay out of range!’ the surgeon boomed. ‘That’s my advice! Stay out of range!’

Lord William complimented Captain Chase on the concoction of oranges and Chase boasted of his cook and steward, and that started a general discussion on the problem of reliable servants that only ended when Sharpe, as the junior officer present, was asked to give the loyal toast.

‘To King George,’ Sharpe said, ‘God bless him.’

‘And damn his enemies,’ Chase added, tossing back the glass, ‘especially Monsieur Vaillard.’

Lady Grace pushed her chair back. Captain Chase tried to stop her retiring, saying that she was most welcome to breathe the cigar smoke that was about to fill the cabin, but she insisted on leaving and so the whole table stood.

‘You will not object, Captain, if I walk on your deck for a while?’ Lady Grace asked.

‘I should be delighted to have it so honoured, milady.’

Brandy and cigars were produced, but the company did not stay long. Lord William suggested a hand of whist, but Chase had lost too much on his first voyage with his lordship and explained he had decided to give up playing cards altogether. Lieutenant Haskell promised a lively game in the wardroom, and Lord William and the others followed him down to the weather deck and then aft. Chase bade his visitors a good night, then invited Sharpe into the day cabin at the stern. ‘One last brandy, Sharpe.’

‘I don’t want to keep you up, sir.’

‘I’ll turf you out when I’m tired. Here.’ He gave Sharpe a glass, then led the way into the more comfortable day cabin. ‘Lord, but that William Hale is a bore,’ he said, ‘though I confess I was surprised by his wife. Never seen her so lively! Last time she was aboard I thought she was going to wilt and die.’

‘Maybe it was the wine tonight?’ Sharpe suggested.

‘Maybe, but I hear tales.’

‘Tales?’ Sharpe asked warily.

‘That you not only rescued her cousin, but that you rescued her? To the detriment of one French lieutenant who now sleeps with his ancestors?’

Sharpe nodded, but said nothing.

Chase smiled. ‘She seems the better for the experience. And that secretary of his is a gloomy bird, isn’t he? Scarce a damn word all night and he’s an Oxford man!’ To Sharpe’s relief Chase left the subject of Lady Grace and instead enquired whether Sharpe would consider putting himself under Captain Llewellyn’s command and so become an honorary marine. ‘If we do catch the
Revenant
,’ Chase said, ‘we’ll be trying to capture her. We might hammer her into submission’ – he put out a hand and surreptitiously touched the table – ‘but we still might have to board her. We’ll need fighting men if that happens, so can I count on your help? Good! I’ll tell Llewellyn that you’re now his man. He’s a thoroughly first-rate fellow, despite being a marine and a Welshman, and I doubt he’ll pester you overmuch. Now, I must go on deck and make certain they’re not steering in circles. You’ll come?’

‘I will, sir.’

So Sharpe was now an honorary marine.

The
Pucelle
used every sail that Chase could cram onto her masts. He even rigged extra hawsers to stay the masts so that yet more canvas could be carried aloft and hung from spars that jutted out from the yards. There were studdingsails and skyscrapers, staysails, royals, spritsails and topsails, a cloud of canvas that drove the warship westwards. Chase called it hanging out his laundry, and Sharpe saw how the crew responded to their captain’s enthusiasm. They were as eager as Chase to prove the
Pucelle
the fastest sailor on the sea.

And so they flew westwards until, deep in a dark night, the sea became lumpy and the ship rolled like a drunk and Sharpe was woken by the rush of feet on the deck. The cot, in which he was alone, swung wildly and he fell hard when he rolled out of it. He did not bother to dress, but just put on a boat cloak that Chase had lent him, then let himself out of the door onto the quarterdeck where he could see almost nothing, for clouds were obscuring the moon, yet he could hear orders being bellowed and hear the voices of men high in the rigging above him. Sharpe still did not understand how men could work in the dark, a hundred feet above a pitching deck, clinging to thin lines and hearing the wind’s shriek in their ears. It was a bravery, he reckoned, as great as any that was needed on a battlefield.

‘Is that you, Sharpe?’ Chase’s voice called.

‘Yes, sir.’

‘It’s the Agulhas Current,’ Chase said happily, ‘sweeping us round the tip of Africa! We’re shortening sail. It’ll be rough for a day or two!’

Daylight revealed broken seas being whipped ragged white by the wind. The
Pucelle
pitched into the steep waves, sometimes shattering them into clouds of drenching spray that rose above the foresail and rained down in streams from the canvas, yet still Chase pushed his ship and drove her and talked to her. He still gave suppers in his quarters, for he enjoyed company in the evening, but any shift of wind would drive him from the table onto the quarterdeck. He watched each cast of the log eagerly and jotted down the ship’s speed, and rejoiced when, as the African coast curved westwards, he was able to hoist his full laundry again and feel the long hull respond to the wind’s force.

‘I think we’ll catch her,’ he told Sharpe one day.

‘She can’t be going this fast,’ Sharpe guessed.

‘Oh, she probably is! But my guess is that Montmorin won’t have dared go too close to land. He’ll have been forced far to the south in case he was spotted by our ships out of Cape Town. So we’re cutting the corner on him! Who knows, we may be only a score or so of miles behind him?’

The
Pucelle
was seeing other ships now. Most were small native trading vessels, but they also passed two British merchantmen, an American whaler and a Royal Navy sloop with which there was a brisk exchange of signals. Connors, the third lieutenant who had the responsibility of looking after the ship’s signals, ordered a man to haul a string of brightly coloured flags up into the rigging, then put a telescope to his eye and called out the sloop’s answering message. ‘She’s the
Hirondelle
, sir, out of Cape Town.’

‘Ask if she’s seen any other ships of the line.’

The flags were found, sorted and hoisted, and the answer came back no. Chase then sent a long message telling the
Hirondelle
’s captain that the
Pucelle
was pursuing the
Revenant
into the Atlantic. In time that news would reach the admiral in Bombay who must already have been wondering what had happened to his precious seventy-four.

Land was spotted the next day, but it was distant and obscured by a squall of rain that rattled on the sails and bounced from the decks which were scrubbed clean every morning by grinding sand into the timber beneath blocks of stone the size of bibles. Holy-stoning, the men called it. Still the
Pucelle
drove on with every last scrap of canvas hoisted, sailing as though the devil himself was on her tail. The wind stayed strong, but for long days it brought stinging rain so that everything below deck became damp and greasy. Then, on another day of driving rain and gusting wind, they passed Cape Town, though Sharpe could see nothing of the place except a misty glimpse of a great flat-topped mountain half shrouded in cloud.

Captain Chase ordered new charts spread on the big table in his day cabin. ‘I have a choice now,’ he told Sharpe. ‘Either I head west into the Atlantic, or ride the current up the African coast until we find the southeast trades.’

The choice seemed obvious to Sharpe: ride the current, but he was no sailor. ‘I take a risk,’ Chase explained, ‘if I stay inshore. I get the land breezes and I have the current, but I also risk fog and I might get a westerly gale. Then we’re on a lee shore.’

‘And a lee shore means?’ Sharpe asked.

‘We’re dead,’ Chase said shortly, and let the chart roll itself up with a snap. ‘Which is why the Sailing Directions insist we go west,’ he added, ‘but if we do then we risk being becalmed.’

‘Where do you think the
Revenant
is?’

‘She’s out west. She’s avoiding land. At least I hope she is.’ Chase stared out of the stern window at the white-fretted wake. He looked tired now, and older, because his natural ebullience had been drained from him by days and nights of broken sleep and unbroken worry. ‘Maybe she stayed inshore?’ he mused. ‘She could have hoisted false colours. But the
Hirondelle
didn’t see her. Mind you, in these damned squalls a fleet could go within a couple of miles of us and we wouldn’t see a thing.’ He pulled on his tarpaulin coat, ready to go back on deck. ‘Up the coast, I think.’ He spoke to himself. ‘Up the coast and God help us if there’s a blow out of the west.’ He picked up his hat. ‘God help us anyway if we don’t find the
Revenant
. Their lordships of the Admiralty don’t look mercifully on captains who abandon their station to chase wild geese halfway round the world. And God help us if we do find it and that fellow really is a Swiss servant and not Vaillard after all! And the first lieutenant’s right. He won’t be sailing to France, but making for Cadiz. It’s closer. Much closer.’ He shrugged. ‘I’m sorry, Sharpe, I’m not very good company for you.’

‘I’m having a better time than I ever dared expect when I embarked on the
Calliope
.’

‘Good,’ Chase said, going to the door, ‘good. And time to turn north.’

Sharpe was busy enough. In the morning he paraded with the marines, and then there was practice, endless practice, for Captain Llewellyn feared his men would become stale if they were not busy. They fired their muskets in all weathers, learning how to shield their locks from the rain. They fired from the decks and from the upperworks, and Sharpe fired with them, using one of the Sea Service muskets which was similar to the weapon he had fired when he was a private, but with a slightly shorter barrel and an old-fashioned flat lock which looked crude, but, as Llewellyn explained, was easier to repair at sea. The weapons were susceptible to salt air and the marines spent hours cleaning and oiling the guns, and more hours practising with bayonets and cutlasses. Llewellyn also insisted that Sharpe try his new toys, the seven-barrel guns, and so Sharpe fired one into the sea from the forecastle and thought his shoulder must be broken, so violent was the kick of the seven half-inch barrels. It took over two minutes to reload, but the marine captain would not see that as a disadvantage. ‘Fire one of those down onto a Frog deck, Sharpe, and we’re making some proper misery!’ Most of all, Llewellyn wanted to board the
Revenant
and could not wait to launch his red-coated men onto the enemy’s deck. ‘Which is why the men have to stay spry, Sharpe,’ he would say, then he would order groups to race from the forecastle to the quarterdeck, back to the forecastle, then up the forward mast by the larboard ratlines and down by the starboard ones. ‘If the Frogs board us,’ he said, ‘we have to be able to get round the ship quickly. Don’t dawdle, Hawkins! Hurry, man, hurry! You’re a marine, not a slug!’