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 lord-ships 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!’
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
