Sharpe 3-Book Collection 3: Sharpe's Trafalgar, Sharpe's Prey, Sharpe's Rifles (22 page)

Sharpe equipped himself with a cutlass that suited him far better than the cavalry sabre he had worn ever since the battle of Assaye. The cutlass was straight-bladed, heavy and crude, but it felt like a weapon that could do serious damage. ‘You don’t fence with them,’ Llewellyn advised him, ‘because it ain’t a weapon for the wrist. It’s a full arm blade. Hack the buggers down! Keep your arms strong, Sharpe, eh? Climb the masts every day, do the cutlass drill, keep strong!’

Sharpe did climb the masts. He found it terrifying, for every small motion on deck was magnified as he went higher. At first he did not try to reach the topmost parts of the rigging, but he became adept at clambering up to the maintop, which was a wide platform built where the lower mast was joined to the upper. The sailors reached the maintop by using the futtock shrouds which led to the platform’s outer edge, but Sharpe always wriggled through the small hatchway beside the mast rather than risk the frightening climb up the futtock shrouds where a man must hang upside down from the tarred ropes. Then, a week after they had turned north, on a day when the sea was frustratingly calm and the wind fitful, Sharpe decided to attempt the futtock shrouds and so show that a soldier could do what any midshipman made look simple. He climbed the lower ratlines which were easy for they leaned like a ladder against the mast, but then he came to the place where the futtock shrouds went out and backwards above his head. He would have to climb upside down, but he was determined to do it and so he reached back with his hands and hauled himself upwards. Then, halfway to the maintop’s platform, his feet slipped off the ratlines and he hung there, suspended fifty feet above the deck, and he felt his fingers, hooked like claws, slipping on the wet ropes and he dared not swing his legs for fear of falling and so he stayed, paralysed by fear, until a topman, swinging down through the web of rigging with the agility of a monkey, grabbed his waistband and hauled him into the maintop. ‘Lord, sir, you don’t want to be going that a way. That be for matelots, not lobsters. Use the lubber’s hole, sir, that’s what it be for, lubbers.’

Sharpe was still too scared to speak. All he could think of was the sensation of his fingers slipping over the rough tarred rope, but at last he managed to gasp a thank you and promised to reward the man with a pound of tobacco from his stores.

‘Almost lost you there, Sharpe!’ Chase said cheerfully when Sharpe regained the quarterdeck.

‘Terrifying,’ Sharpe said, and looked at his hands that were scored deep with tar.

Lady Grace had also seen his near fall. She had not been near Sharpe now for the best part of a week, and her distance worried him. She had exchanged glances with him once or twice, and those swift looks had seemed to be filled with a mute appeal, but there had been no chance to talk with her and she had not risked coming to his cabin in the heart of the night. Now she was standing on the lee side of the quarterdeck, close to her husband who was speaking with Malachi Braithwaite, and she seemed to hesitate before approaching Sharpe, but then, with a visible effort, she made herself cross the deck. Malachi Braithwaite watched her, while her husband frowned at a sheaf of papers.

‘We make slow progress today, Captain Chase,’ she said stiffly.

‘We have a current, milady, which invisibly helps us, but I do wish the wind would pipe up.’ Chase frowned at the sails. ‘Some folk believe whistling encourages the wind, but it never seems to work.’ He whistled two bars of ‘Nancy Dawson’, but the wind stayed light. ‘See?’

Lady Grace stared at Chase, apparently at a loss for words, and the captain suddenly sensed that she was in some distress. ‘Milady?’ he enquired with a concerned frown.

‘You could perhaps show me on a chart where we are, Captain?’ she blurted out.

Chase hesitated, confused by the sudden request. ‘It will be a pleasure, milady,’ he said. ‘The charts are in my day cabin. Will his lordship . . .’

‘I shall be quite safe in your cabin, Captain,’ Lady Grace said.

‘The ship’s yours, Mister Peel,’ Chase said to the second lieutenant, then led Lady Grace under the break of the poop to the door on the larboard side which led into the dining cabin. Lord William saw them and frowned, making Chase pause. ‘You wish to see the charts, my lord?’ the captain asked.

‘No, no,’ Lord William said, and returned to the papers.

Braithwaite watched Sharpe, and Sharpe knew he must not arouse the secretary’s suspicions, but he did not believe Lady Grace truly wanted to see the charts and so, ignoring Braithwaite’s hostile gaze, he went to his sleeping cabin which lay beyond the starboard door under the poop deck. He knocked on the farther door, which led from the sleeping cabin into the day cabin, but there was no answer and so he let himself into the big stern cabin. ‘Sharpe!’ Chase showed a small flash of irritation for, friendly as he was, his quarters were sacrosanct and he had not responded to the knock on the door.

‘Captain,’ Lady Grace said, laying a hand on his arm, ‘please.’

Chase, who had been unrolling a chart, looked from her to Sharpe and from Sharpe back to Lady Grace again. He let the chart roll up with a snap. ‘I clean forgot to wind the chronometers this morning,’ he said. ‘Would you forgive me?’ He went past Sharpe into the dining cabin, ostentatiously closing the door with a deliberately loud click.

‘Oh God, Richard.’ Lady Grace ran to him and hugged him. ‘Oh, God!’

‘What’s the matter?’

For a few seconds she did not speak, but then realized she had little time if tongues were not to wag about herself and the captain. ‘It’s my husband’s secretary,’ she said.

‘I know all about him.’

‘You do?’ She stared at him wide-eyed.

‘He’s blackmailing you?’ Sharpe guessed.

She nodded. ‘And he watches me.’

Sharpe kissed her. ‘Leave him to me. Now go, before anyone starts a rumour.’

She kissed him fiercely, then went back onto the deck scarce two minutes after she had left it. Sharpe waited until Chase, who had wound his chronometers at dawn as he always did, came back to the day cabin. Chase rubbed his face tiredly, then looked at Sharpe. ‘Well, I never,’ he said, then sat in his deep armchair. ‘It’s called playing with fire, Sharpe.’

‘I know, sir.’ Sharpe was blushing.

‘Not that I blame you,’ Chase said. ‘Good Lord, don’t think that! I was a dog myself until I met Florence. A dear woman! A good marriage tends a man to steadiness, Sharpe.’

‘Is that advice, sir?’

‘No,’ Chase smiled, ‘it’s a boast.’ He paused, thinking now of his ship rather than of Sharpe and Lady Grace. ‘This thing isn’t going to explode, is it?’

‘No,’ Sharpe said.

‘It’s just that ships are oddly fragile, Sharpe. You can have the people content and working hard, but it doesn’t take much to start dissent and rancour.’

‘It won’t explode, sir.’

‘Of course not. You said so. Well! Dear me! You do surprise me. Or maybe you don’t. She’s a beauty, I’ll say that, and he’s a very cold fish. I think, if I wasn’t so securely married, I’d be envious of you. Positively envious.’

‘We’re just acquaintances,’ Sharpe said.

‘Of course you are, my dear fellow, of course you are!’ Chase smiled. ‘But her husband might be affronted by a mere’ – he paused – ‘acquaintanceship?’

‘I think that’s safe to say, sir.’

‘Then make sure nothing happens to him, for he’s my responsibility.’ Chase spoke those words in a harsh voice, then smiled. ‘Other than that, Richard, enjoy yourself. But quietly, I beg you, quietly.’ Chase said the last few words in a whisper, then stood and went back to the quarterdeck.

Sharpe waited a half-hour before leaving the stern quarters, doing his best to allay any suspicions that Braithwaite must inevitably have, but the secretary had left the quarterdeck by the time Sharpe reappeared, and that perhaps was a good thing for Sharpe was in a cold fury.

And Malachi Braithwaite had made himself an enemy.

The wind was still low the next morning and the
Pucelle
seemed hardly to be moving in a greasy sea that slid in long low swells from the west. It was hot again, so that the seamen went bare-chested, some showing the livid cross-hatching of scars where their backs had been subjected to the lash. ‘Some wear it as a badge of pride,’ Chase told Sharpe, ‘though I hope not on this ship.’

‘You don’t flog?’

‘I must,’ Chase said, ‘but rarely, rarely. Maybe twice since I took command? That’s twice in three years. The first was for theft and the other was for striking a petty officer who probably deserved to be struck, but discipline is discipline. Lieutenant Haskell would like me to flog more, he thinks it would make us more efficient, but I don’t think it needful.’ He stared morosely at the sails. ‘No damn wind, no damn wind! What the hell does God think he’s doing?’

If God would not send a wind, Chase would practise the guns. Like many naval captains he carried extra powder and shot, bought at his own expense, so that his crew could practise. All morning he had the guns going, every port open, even the ones in his great cabin, so that the ship was constantly surrounded by a pungent white-grey smoke through which it moved with a painful slowness.

‘This could mean bad luck,’ Peel, the second lieutenant, told Sharpe. He was a friendly man, round-faced, round-waisted and invariably cheerful. He was also untidy, a fact that irritated the first lieutenant, and the bad blood between Peel and Haskell made the wardroom a tense and unhappy place. Sharpe sensed the unhappiness, knew that it upset Chase and was aware of the ship’s preference for Peel, who was far more easy-going than the tall, unsmiling Haskell.

‘Why bad luck?’

‘Guns lull the wind,’ Peel explained seriously. He was wearing a blue uniform coat far more threadbare than Sharpe’s red jacket, though the second lieutenant was rumoured to be wealthy. ‘It is an unexplained phenomenon,’ Peel said, ‘that gunfire depletes wind.’ He pointed at the vast red ensign at the gaff as proof and, sure enough, it hung limp. The flag was not hoisted every day, but at times like this, when the wind was lazily tired, Chase reckoned that an ensign served to show small variations in the breeze.

‘Why is it red?’ Sharpe asked. ‘That sloop we saw had a blue one.’

‘It depends which admiral you serve,’ Peel explained. ‘We take orders from a rear admiral of the red, but if he was blue we’d fly blue and if he was white, white, and if he was yellow he wouldn’t command any ships anyway. Simple, really.’ He grinned. The red flag, which had the union flag in its upper corner, stirred sluggishly as a rare gust of warm air disturbed its folds. Off to the east, where the gust came from, there were heaps of clouds which Peel said were over Africa. ‘And you’ll note the water’s discoloured,’ he added, pointing over the side to a muddy brown sea, ‘which means we’re off a river mouth.’

Chase timed the gun crews, promising an extra tot of rum to the fastest men. The sound of the guns was astonishing. It pounded the eardrums and shivered the ship before fading slowly into the immensity of sea and sky. The gunners tied scarves about their ears to diminish the shock of the noise, but many of them were still prematurely deaf. Sharpe, curious, went down to the lower deck where the big thirty-two-pounders lurked and he stood in wonder as the guns were fired. He had his fingers in his ears, yet, even so, the whole dark space, punctuated with bright shafts of smoky sunlight which pierced through the open gunports, reverberated with each gun’s firing. The sound seemed to punch him in the abdomen, it rang in his head, it filled the world. One after the other, the guns hammered back. Each barrel was close to ten feet long and each gun weighed nearly three tons, and each shot strained the gun’s breeching rope taut as an iron bar. The breeching rope was a great cable, fixed with eyebolts to the ship’s ribs, that looped through a ring at the gun’s breech. Half-naked gunners, sweat glistening on their skins, leaped to sponge out the vast barrels while the gun’s chief stopped the venthole with a leather-encased thumb. Men put in powder bags and shot, rammed them home, then hauled the weapon’s muzzle out through the gun-port with the rope-and-pulley tackles fixed on either side of the carriage.

‘You’re not aiming at anything!’ Sharpe had to shout to the fifth lieutenant who commanded one group of guns.

‘We ain’t marksmen,’ the lieutenant, who was called Holderby, shouted back. ‘If it comes to battle we’ll be so close to the bastards that we can’t miss! Twenty paces at most, and usually less.’ Holderby paced down the gundeck, ducking under beams, touching men’s shoulders at random. ‘You’re dead!’ he shouted. ‘You’re dead!’ The chosen men grinned and sat gratefully on the shot gratings. Holderby was thinning the crews, as they would be thinned by battle, and watching how well the ‘survivors’ manned their big guns.

The guns, like those on the
Calliope
, were all fired by flintlocks. The army’s field artillery, none of it so big as these guns, was fired with a linstock, a slow match that glowed red as it burned, but no naval captain would dare have a glowing red-hot linstock lying loose on a gundeck where so much powder lay waiting to explode. Instead the guns had flintlocks, though, if the flintlock failed, a linstock was suspended in a nearby tub half-filled with water. The flintlock’s trigger was a lanyard which the gunner would twitch, the flint would fall, the spark flash and then the powder-packed reed in the touch-hole hissed and a four- or five-inch flame leaped upwards before the world was consumed by noise as another flame, twice as long as the gun’s barrel, seared into the instant cloud of smoke as the gun crashed back.

Sharpe climbed to the deck, and from the deck to the maintop, for only from there could he see beyond the massive bank of smoke to where the shots fell. They fell ragged, some seemingly going as much as a mile before they splashed into the sullen sea, others ripping the surface into spray only a hundred yards from the ship. Chase, as the lieutenant had said, was not training his men to be marksmen, but to be fast. There were gunners aboard who boasted they could lay a ball onto a floating target tub at half a mile, but the secret of battle, Chase insisted, was getting close and releasing a storm of shot. ‘It doesn’t have to be aimed,’ he had told Sharpe. ‘I use the ship to aim the guns. I lay the guns alongside the enemy and let them massacre the bastard. Speed, speed, speed, Sharpe. Speed wins battles.’