‘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 susc
eptible 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!’
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.
CHAPTER 7
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.