“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.
“I don’t know about that, sir. I probably just kept him from being captured.”
“Is that how you got that scar?” Llewellyn asked.
“That was at Gawilghur, sir.” Sharpe wished the conversation would veer away to another subject and he tried desperately to think of something to say which might steer it in a new direction, but his mind was floundering.
“So what happened?” Chase demanded.
“He was unhorsed, sir,” Sharpe said, reddening, “in the enemy ranks.”
“He was not by himself, surely?” Lord William asked.
“He was, sir. Except for me, of course.”
“Careless of him,” Lord William suggested.
“And how many enemy?” Chase asked.
“A good few, sir.”
“And you fought them off?”
Sharpe nodded. “Didn’t have much choice really, sir.”
“Stay out of range!” the surgeon boomed. “That’s my advice! Stay out of range!”
Lord William complimented Captain Chase on the concoction of oranges and Chase boasted of his cook and steward, and that started a general discussion on the problem of reliable servants that only ended when Sharpe, as the junior officer present, was asked to give the loyal toast.
“To King George,” Sharpe said, “God bless him.”
“And damn his enemies,” Chase added, tossing back the glass, “especially Monsieur Vaillard.”
Lady Grace pushed her chair back. Captain Chase tried to stop her retiring, saying that she was most welcome to breathe the cigar smoke that was about to fill the cabin, but she insisted on leaving and so the whole table stood.
“You will not object, Captain, if I walk on your deck for a while?” Lady Grace asked.
“I should be delighted to have it so honored, milady.”
Brandy and cigars were produced, but the company did not stay long. Lord William suggested a hand of whist, but Chase had lost oo much on his first voyage with his lordship and explained he had decided to give up playing cards altogether. Lieutenant Haskell promised a lively game in the wardroom, and Lord William and the others followed him down to the weather deck and then aft. Chase bade his visitors a good night, then invited Sharpe into the day cabin at the stern. “One last brandy, Sharpe.”
“I don’t want to keep you up, sir.”
“I’ll turf you out when I’m tired. Here.” He gave Sharpe a glass, then led the way into the more comfortable day cabin. “Lord, but that William Hale is a bore,” he said, “though I confess I was surprised by his wife. Never seen her so lively! Last time she was aboard I thought she was going to wilt and die.”
“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 inquired 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 westward. 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 westward 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 around 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 westward, he was able to hoist his full laundry again and feel the long hull respond to the wind’s force.