“There’s your target!” Captain Cromwell called and Sharpe, standing on the gun carriage, saw an impossibly small cask bobbing on the distant waves. He had no idea what the range was, and all he could do was wait until the cask floated into line then pause until a wave rolled the ship upward when he skipped smartly aside and jerked the lanyard. The flintlock snapped forward and a small jet of fire whipped up from the touch-hole, then the gun hammered back on its small wheels and its smoke billowed halfway up the mainsail as the powder flame licked and curled in the pungent white cloud. The big breeching rope quivered, scattering more flecks of paint, and Mister Binns called excitedly from the poop, “A hit, sir, a hit! A hit! Plumb, sir! A hit!”
“We heard you the first time, Mister Binns,” Cromwell growled.
“But it’s a hit, sir!” Binns protested, thinking that no one believed him.
“Up to the main cap!” Cromwell snapped at Binns. “I told you to be quiet. If you cannot learn to curb your tongue, boy, then go and shriek at the clouds. Up!” He pointed to the very top of the mainmast. “And you will stay there until I can abide your malodorous presence again.”
Mathilde was applauding enthusiastically from the quarterdeck. Lady Grace was also there and Sharpe had been acutely aware of her presence as he aimed the gun. “That was bleeding luck,” the old seaman said.
“Pure luck,” Sharpe agreed.
“And you’ve cost the captain ten guineas,” the old man chuckled.
“I have?”
“He has a wager with Mister Tufnell that no one would ever hit the target.”
“I thought gambling was forbidden on board.”
“There’s lots that’s forbidden, sir, but that don’t mean it don’t happen.”
Sharpe’s ears were ringing from the terrible sound of the gun as he stepped away from the smoking weapon. Tufnell, the first lieutenant, insisted on shaking his hand and refused to countenance Sharpe’s insistence that the shot had been pure luck, then Tufnell stepped aside for Captain Cromwell had come down from the quarterdeck and was advancing on Sharpe. “Have you fired a cannon before?” the captain inquired fiercely.
“No, sir.”
Cromwell peered up into the rigging, then looked for his first officer. “Mister Tufnell!”
“Sir?”
“A broken horse! There, on the main topsail!” Cromwell pointed. Sharpe followed the captain’s finger and saw that one of the footropes that the topmen would stand on when they were furling the sail had parted. “I will not command a ragged ship, Mister Tufnell,” Cromwell snarled. “This ain’t a Thames hay barge, Mister Tufnell, but an Indiaman! Have it spliced, man, have it spliced!”
Tufnell sent two seamen aloft to mend the broken line, while Cromwell paused to glower at the next crew firing the gun. The cannon recoiled, the smoke blossomed, and the ball skipped across the waves a good hundred yards from the bobbing cask.
“A miss!” Binns shouted from the top of the mainmast.
“I have an eye for an irregularity,” Cromwell said in his harsh, low voice, “as I’ve no doubt you do, Mister Sharpe. You see a hundred men on parade and doubtless your eye goes to the one sloven with a dirty musket. Am I right?”
“I hope so, sir.”
“A broken horse can kill a man. It can tumble him to the deck, putting misery into a mother’s heart. Her son put his foot down and there was nothing beneath him but void. Do you want your mother to have a broken heart, Mister Sharpe?”
Sharpe decided this was no time to explain that he had long been orphaned. “No, sir.”
Cromwell glared around the main deck which was crowded with the men who formed the gun crews. “What is it that you notice about these men, Mister Sharpe?”
“Notice, sir?”
“They are in shirtsleeves, Mister Sharpe. All except you and me are in shirtsleeves. I keep my coat on, Sharpe, because I am captain of this ship and it is meet and right that a captain should appear formally dressed before his crew. But why, I ask myself, does Mister Sharpe keep on his wool jacket on a hot day? Do you believe you are captain of this scow?”
“I just feel the cold, sir,” Sharpe lied.
“Cold?” Cromwell sneered. He put his right foot on a crack between the deck planks and, when he lifted the shoe, a string of melting tar adhered to his sole. “You are not cold, Mister Sharpe, you are sweating. Sweating! So come with me, Mister Sharpe.” The captain turned and led Sharpe up to the quarterdeck. The passengers watching the gunnery made way for the two men and Sharpe was suddenly conscious of Lady Grace’s perfume, then he followed Cromwell down the companion-way into the great cabin where the captain had his quarters. Cromwell unlocked his door, pushed it open and gestured that Sharpe should go inside. “My home,” the captain grunted.
Sharpe had expected that the captain would have one of the stern cabins with their big wide windows, but it was more profitable to sell such accommodation to passengers and Cromwell was content with a smaller cabin on the larboard side. It was still a comfortable home. A bunk bed was built into a wall of bookshelves while a table, hinged to the bulkhead, was smothered in unrolled charts that were weighted down with three lanterns and a pair of long-barreled pistols. The daylight streamed in through an opened porthole, above which the sea’s reflection rippled on the white painted ceiling. Cromwell unlocked a small cupboard to reveal a barometer and, beside it, what appeared to be a fat pocket watch hanging from a hook. “Three hundred and twenty-nine guineas,” Cromwell told Sharpe, tapping the timepiece.
“I’ve never owned a watch,” Sharpe said.
“It is not a watch, Mister Sharpe,” Cromwell said in disgust, “but a chronometer. A marvel of science. Between here and Britain I doubt it will lose more than two seconds. It is that machine, Mister Sharpe, that tells us where we are.” He blew a fleck of dust from the chronometer’s face, tapped the barometer, then carefully closed and locked the cupboard. “I keep my treasures safe, Mister Sharpe. You, on the other hand, flaunt yours.”
Sharpe said nothing, and the captain waved at the cabin’s only chair. “Sit down, Mister Sharpe. Do you wonder about my name?”
Sharpe sat uneasily. “Your name?” He shrugged. “It’s unusual, sir.”
“It is peculiar,” Peculiar Cromwell said, then gave a harsh laugh that betrayed no amusement. “My people, Mister Sharpe, were fervent Christians and they named me from the Bible. ‘The Lord has chosen thee to be a peculiar people unto himself,’ the book of Deuteronomy, chapter fourteen, verse two. It is not easy, Mister Sharpe, living with such a name. It invites ridicule. In its time that name has made me a laughing stock!” He said these last words with extraordinary force, as though resenting all the folk who had ever mocked him, but Sharpe, perched on the edge of the chair, could not imagine anyone mocking the harsh-voiced, heavy-faced Peculiar Cromwell.
Cromwell sat on his bunk bed, placed his elbows on the charts and fixed his eyes on Sharpe. “I was put aside for God, Mister Sharpe, and it makes for a lonely life. I was denied a proper education. Other men go to Oxford or Cambridge, they are immersed in knowledge, but I was sent to sea for my parents believed I would be beyond earthly temptation if I was far from any shore. But I taught myself, Mister Sharpe. I learned from books”—he waved at the shelves—”and discovered that I am well named. I am peculiar, Mister Sharpe, in my opinions, apprehensions and conclusions.” He shook his head sadly, rippling his long hair which rested on the shoulders of his heavy blue coat. “All around me I espy educated men, rational men, conventional men and, above all, sociable men, but I have discovered that no such creature ever did a great thing. It is among the lonely, Mister Sharpe, that true greatness occurs.” He scowled, as though that burden was almost too heavy to bear. “You too, I think, are a peculiar man,” Cromwell went on. “You have been plucked by destiny from your natural place among the dregs of society and have been translated into an officer. And that”—he leaned forward and jabbed a finger at Sharpe—”must make for loneliness.”