‘I hardly saw her when she was aboard before,’ Pickering said, ‘but she seems a good deal more lively now. Even so, she’s unwelcome.’
‘Unwelcome?’ Sharpe asked.
‘Monstrous ill luck to have women on board, monstrous ill luck.’ Pickering reached up and superstitiously touched a beam. ‘But I must say she’s decorative. There’ll be some odious things being said in the fo’c’sle tonight, I can tell you. Ah well, we must survive what the good Lord sends us, even if it is a woman. Our captain tells us you are a celebrated soldier, Sharpe!’
‘He does?’ Sharpe asked. Braithwaite had stepped back, signifying he wanted no part in the conversation.
‘First into the breach and all that sort of stuff,’ Pickering said. ‘As for me, my dear fellow, as soon as the guns begin to sound I scamper down to the cockpit where no French shot can reach me. You know what the trick of a long life is, Sharpe? Stay out of range. There! Good medical advice, and free!’
The food at Captain Chase’s table was a great deal better than that which Peculiar Cromwell had supplied. They began with sliced smoked fish, served with lemon and real bread, then ate a roast of mutton which Sharpe suspected was goat, but which nevertheless tasted wonderful in its vinegar sauce, and finished with a concoction of oranges, brandy and syrup. Lord William and Lady Grace sat either side of Chase, while the first lieutenant sat next to her ladyship and tried to persuade her to drink more wine than she wished. The red wine was called blackstrap and was sour, while the insipid white was called Miss Taylor, a name that puzzled Sharpe until he saw the label on one of the bottles: Mistela. Sharpe was at the far end of the table where Captain Llewellyn questioned him closely about the actions he had seen in India. The Welshman was intrigued by the news that Sharpe was going to join the 95th Rifles. ‘The concept of a rifled barrel might work on land,’ Llewellyn said, ‘but it’ll never serve at sea.’
‘Why not?’
‘Accuracy’s no good on a ship! The things are always heaving up and down to spoil your aim. No, the thing to do is to pour a lot of fire onto the enemy’s deck and pray not all of it is wasted. Which reminds me, we’ve got some new toys aboard. Seven-barrel guns! Monstrous things! They spit out seven half-inch balls at once. You must try one.’
‘I’d like that.’
‘I’d like to see some seven-barrel guns in the fighting tops,’ Llewellyn said eagerly. ‘They could do some real damage, Sharpe, real damage!’
Chase had overheard Llewellyn’s last remark, for he intervened from the table’s far end. ‘Nelson won’t allow muskets in the fighting tops, Llewellyn. He says they set the sails on fire.’
‘The man is wrong,’ Llewellyn said, offended, ‘just plain wrong.’
‘You know Lord Nelson?’ Lady Grace asked the captain.
‘I served under him briefly, milady,’ Chase said enthusiastically, ‘too briefly. I had a frigate then, but, alas, I never saw action under his lordship’s command.’
‘I pray God we see no action now,’ Lord William said piously.
‘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.
