you’re right. Who spotted her?’
‘Pearson, sir.’
‘Triple his rum ration,’ Chase said, then closed the glass, returned it to Sharpe, and slithered back to the deck in a manner that scared Sharpe witless. ‘Boats!’ Chase shouted, running towards the quarterdeck. ‘Boats!’
Hopper followed his captain and Sharpe watched as the ship’s boats were lowered over the side and filled with oarsmen. They were going to tow the ship, not west towards the strange sail, but north in an attempt to get ahead of her.
The men rowed all through the afternoon. They sweated and tugged until their arms were agony. Very slight ripples at the Pucelle’s flank showed that they were making some progress, but not enough, it seemed to Sharpe, to gain any headway on the far sail. The small breaths of wind that had relieved the heat earlier in the day seemed to have died away completely so that the sails hung lifeless and the ship was enveloped in an odd silence. The loudest noises were the footfalls of the officers on the quarterdeck, the shouts of the men urging on the tired oarsmen and the creak of the wheel as it spun backwards and forwards in the lolling swell.
Lady Grace, attended by her maid and carrying a parasol against the hot sun, appeared on the quarter-deck and stared westwards. Captain Chase claimed the strange sail was now visible from the deck, but she could not see it, even with a telescope. ‘They probably haven’t seen us,’ Chase suggested.
‘Why not?’ she asked.
‘Our sails have clouds behind them’ – he gestured to the great cloud range that piled above Africa – ‘and with any luck our canvas just blends into the sky.’
‘You think it’s the Revenant?’
‘I don’t know, milady. She could be a neutral merchantman.’ Chase tried to sound neutral himself, but his suppressed excitement made it plain he believed the far ship was indeed the Revenant.
Braithwaite was standing under the break of the poop, watching to see if Sharpe joined her ladyship, but Sharpe did not move. He looked east and saw cat’s-paws of ripples on the water, the first signs of a freshening wind. The ripples chased and skittered across the long swells, obstinately refusing to come near the Pucelle, but then they seemed to gather together and slide over the sea and suddenly the sails filled, the rigging creaked and the towing lines dipped towards the water.
‘The land wind,’ Chase said, ‘and about time!’ He went to the quartermaster at the wheel who at last had some purchase on the rudder. ‘Can you feel it?’
‘Aye aye, sir.’ The helmsman paused to spit a stream of tobacco juice into a big brass spittoon. ‘Ain’t much though,’ he added, ‘no more than if a little old lady was breathing on the sails, sir.’
The wind faltered, shivering the sails, then lazily caught again and Chase turned to watch the sea. ‘Get the boats in, Mister Haskell!’
‘Aye aye, sir!’
‘Tot of rum for the oarsmen!’
‘Aye aye, sir.’ Haskell, who believed Chase spoiled his men, sounded disapproving.
‘Double tot of rum for the oarsmen,’ Chase said to annoy Haskell, ‘and wind for us and death to the French!’ His spirits had risen in the belief that he had found his quarry. Now he must stalk her. ‘We’ll close the angle on her during the night,’ he told Haskell. ‘Every inch of canvas! And no lights on board. And we’ll wet the sails.’ A canvas hose was rigged to a pump and used to douse the sails with sea water. Chase explained to Sharpe that wet sails caught more of a light wind than dry, and it did seem as if the soaked canvas worked better. The ship moved perceptibly, though below decks, where the gunsmoke lingered, no wind cleared the air.
The wind freshened at dusk and the Pucelle once again heeled to its pressure. Night fell and officers went round the ship to make certain that not a single lantern was alight anywhere on board except for one feeble, red-shielded binnacle lamp that gave the helmsman a glimpse of the compass. The course was changed a few points westwards in hope of closing on the far ship. The wind rose still more so that the sea could be heard coursing down the ship’s black and yellow flanks.
Sharpe slept, woke, slept again. No one disturbed his night. He was up before dawn and found that the rest of the ship’s officers, even those who should have been sleeping, were on the quarterdeck. ‘She’ll see us before we see her,’ Chase said, meaning that the rising sun would silhouette the Pucelle’s topsails against the horizon, and for a few minutes he considered rousting the off-duty watch to help the topmen bring in everything above the mains, but he reckoned the loss of speed would be a worse result and so he kept his canvas aloft. The men with the best eyesight were all high in the rigging. ‘If we’re lucky,’ Chase confided in Sharpe, ‘we may catch her by nightfall.’
‘That soon?’
‘If we’re lucky,’ the captain said again, then reached out and touched the wooden rail.
The eastern sky was grey now, streaked with cloud, but soon a leak of pink, like the dye from a redcoat’s jacket seeping in the rain onto uniform trousers, suffused the grey. The ship quivered to the seas, left a white wake, raced. The pink turned red, and deeper red, glowing like a furnace over Africa. ‘They’ll have seen us by now,’ Chase said, and took a speaking trumpet from the rail. ‘Keep your eyes sharp!’ he called to the lookouts, then flinched. ‘That was unnecessary,’ he chided himself, then corrected the damage by raising the trumpet again and promising a week’s worth of rum ration to the man who first sighted the enemy. ‘He deserves to be dead drunk,’ Chase said.
The east flared to brilliance and became too bright to look at as the sun at last inched above the horizon. Night had gone, the sea was spread naked under the burning sky and the Pucelle was alone.
For the distant sail had vanished.
Captain Llewellyn was angry. Everyone on board was irritated. The loss of the other ship had caused morale to plummet on the Pucelle so that small mistakes were constantly being made. The bosun’s mates were lashing out with their rope ends, officers were snarling, the crew was sullen, but Captain Llewellyn Llewellyn was genuinely angry and apprehensive.
Before the ship sailed from England he had taken aboard a crate of grenades. ‘They’re French ones,’ he told Sharpe, ‘so I’ve no idea what’s in them. Powder, of course, and some kind of fulminate. They’re made of glass. You light it, you throw it and you pray that it kills someone. Devilish things, they are, quite devilish.’
But the grenades were lost. They were supposed to be in the forward magazine deep on the orlop deck, but a search by Llewellyn’s lieutenant and two sergeants had failed to find the devices. To Sharpe the loss of the grenades was just another blow of ill fortune on a day that seemed ill-starred for the Pucelle, but Llewellyn reckoned it was far more serious than that. ‘Some fool might have put them in the hold,’ he said. ‘We bought them from the Viper when she was being refitted. They took them in an action off Antigua and their captain didn’t want them. Reckoned they were too dangerous. If Chase finds them in the hold he’ll crucify me, and I don’t blame him. Their proper place is in a magazine.’
A dozen marines were organized into a search party and Sharpe joined them in the deep hold where the rats ruled and the ship’s stink was foully concentrated. Sharpe had no need to be there, Llewellyn had not even asked him to help, but he preferred to be doing something useful rather than endure the bad-tempered disappointment that
