Sharpe 3-Book Collection 3: Sharpe’s Trafalgar, Sharpe’s Prey, Sharpe’s Rifles

‘Be quiet, Braithwaite, be quiet and sit down,’ his lordship snapped, disdaining Sharpe’s assistance.

Not that Sharpe wanted to help Lord William, but his wife was another matter and it was for her benefit that Sharpe drew his pistol and cocked the flint. ‘Row on!’ he ordered the Indian, who answered by spitting overboard.

‘What in God’s name are you doing?’ Lord William at last acknowledged Sharpe. ‘My wife’s aboard! Have a care with that gun, you fool! Who the devil are you?’

‘We were introduced not an hour ago, my lord,’ Sharpe said. ‘Richard Sharpe is the name.’ He fired and the pistol ball splintered a timber of the boat just on the water line between the recalcitrant skipper and his passengers. Lady Grace put a hand to her mouth in alarm, but the ball had harmed no one, merely holed the boat so that the Indian had to stoop to plug the damage with a thumb. Sharpe began to reload. ‘Row on, you bastard!’ he shouted.

The Indian glanced behind as if judging the distance to the shore, but Hopper ordered his crew to back water and the barge slowly moved behind the two boats, cutting them off from land. Lord William seemed too astonished to speak, but just stared indignantly as Sharpe rammed a second bullet down the short barrel.

The Indian did not want another ball cracking into his boat and so he suddenly sat and shouted at his men who began pulling hard on their oars. Hopper nodded approvingly. ‘Twixt wind and water, sir. Captain Chase would be proud of you.’

‘Between wind and water?’ Sharpe asked.

‘You holed the bastard on the water line, sir. It’ll sink him if he doesn’t keep it stopped up.’

Sharpe gazed at her ladyship who, at last, turned to look at her rescuer. She had huge eyes, and perhaps they were the feature that made her seem so sad, but Sharpe was still astonished by her beauty and he could not resist giving her a wink. She looked quickly away. ‘She’ll remember my name now,’ he said.

‘Is that why you did it?’ Hopper asked, then laughed when Sharpe did not answer.

Lord William’s boat drew up to the Calliope first. The servants, who were in the second boat, were expected to scramble up the ship’s side as best they could while seamen hauled the baggage up in nets, but Lord William and his wife stepped from their boat onto a floating platform from which they climbed a gangway to the ship’s waist. Sharpe, waiting his turn, could smell bilge water, salt and tar. A stream of dirty water emerged from a hole high up in the hull. ‘Pumping his bottoms, sir,’ Hopper said.

‘You mean she leaks?’

‘All ships leak, sir. Nature of ships, sir.’

Another launch had gone alongside the Calliope’s bows and sailors were hoisting nets filled with struggling goats and crates of protesting hens. ‘Milk and eggs,’ Hopper said cheerfully, then barked at his crew to lay to their oars so Sharpe could be put alongside. ‘I wish you a fast, safe voyage, sir,’ the bosun said. ‘Back to old England, eh?’

‘Back to England,’ Sharpe said, and watched as the oars were raised straight up as Hopper used the last of the barge’s momentum to lay her sweetly alongside the floating platform. Sharpe gave Hopper a coin, touched his hat to Mister Collier, thanked the boat’s crew and stepped up onto the platform from where he climbed to the main deck past an open gunport in which a polished cannon muzzle showed.

An officer waited just inside the entry port. ‘Your name?’ he asked peremptorily.

‘Richard Sharpe.’

The officer peered at a list. ‘Your baggage is already aboard, Mister Sharpe, and this is for you.’ He took a folded sheet of paper from a pocket and gave it to Sharpe. ‘Rules of the ship. Read, mark, learn and explicitly obey. Your action station is gun number five.’

‘My what?’ Sharpe asked.

‘Every male passenger is expected to help defend the ship, Mister Sharpe. Gun number five.’ The officer waved across the deck which was so heaped with baggage that none of the guns on the farther side could be seen. ‘Mister Binns!’

A very young officer hurried through the piled baggage. ‘Sir?’

‘Show Mister Sharpe to the lower-deck steerage. One of the seven by sixes, Mister Binns, seven by six. Mallet and nails, look lively, now!’

‘This way, sir,’ Binns said to Sharpe, darting aft. ‘I’ve got the mallet and nails, sir.’

‘The what?’ Sharpe asked.

‘Mallet and nails, sir, so you can nail your furniture to the deck. We don’t want it sliding topsy-turvy if we gets rough weather, sir, which we shouldn’t, sir, not till we reach the Madagascar Straits and it can be lumpy there, sir, very lumpy.’ Binns hurried on, vanishing down a dark companionway like a rabbit down its burrow.

Sharpe followed, but before he reached the companionway he was accosted by Lord William Hale who stepped from behind a pile of boxes. The young man in the sepulchral clothes stood behind his lordship. ‘Your name?’ Hale demanded.

Sharpe bristled. The sensible course was to knuckle under, for Hale was evidently a formidable man in London, but Sharpe had acquired an acute dislike of his lordship. ‘The same as it was ten minutes ago,’ he answered curtly.

Lord William looked into Sharpe’s face which was sunburned, hard and slashed by the wicked scar. ‘You are impertinent,’ Lord William said, ‘and I do not abide impertinence.’ He glanced at the grubby white facings on Sharpe’s jacket. ‘The 74th? I am acquainted with Colonel Wallace and I shall let him know of your insubordination.’ So far Lord William had not raised his voice which was chilling enough anyway, but now a note of indignation did creep in. ‘You could have killed me with that pistol!’

‘Killed you?’ Sharpe asked. ‘No, I couldn’t. I wasn’t aiming at you.’

‘You will write to Colonel Wallace now, Braithwaite,’ Lord William said to the young man in the black clothes, ‘and make sure the letter goes ashore before we sail.’

‘Of course, my lord. At once, my lord,’ Braithwaite said. He was evidently Lord William’s secretary and he shot Sharpe a look of pitying condescension, suggesting that the ensign had come up against forces far too strong for him.

Lord William stepped aside, allowing Sharpe to catch up with the young Binns who had been watching the confrontation from the companionway.

Sharpe was not worried by Lord William’s threat. His lordship could write a thousand letters to Colonel Wallace and much good it would do him for Sharpe was no longer in the 74th. He wore the uniform for he had no other clothes to wear, but once he was back in Britain he would join the 95th with its odd new uniform of a green jacket. He did not like the idea of wearing green. He had always worn red.

Binns waited at the foot of the companionway. ‘Lower deck, sir,’ he said, then pushed through a canvas screen into a dark, humid and foul-smelling space. ‘This is steerage, sir.’

‘Why’s it called steerage?’

‘They used to steer the boats from here, sir, in the old days, before there was wheels. Gangs of men hauling on ropes, sir, must have been hell.’ It still looked hellish. A few lanterns guttered, struggling against the gloom in which a score of sailors were nailing up canvas screens to divide the foetid space into a maze of small rooms. ‘One seven by six,’ Binns shouted, and a sailor gestured to the starboard side where the screens were already in place. ‘Take your pick, sir,’ Binns said, ‘as you’re one of the first gentlemen aboard, but if you wants my advice I’d be as near aft as you can go, and it’s best not to share with a gun, sir.’ He gestured at an eighteen-pounder cannon that half filled one cabin. The weapon was lashed to the deck and pointed at a closed gunport. Binns ushered Sharpe into the empty cubicle next door where he dropped a linen bag on the floor. ‘That’s a mallet and nails, sir, and as soon as your dunnage is delivered you can secure everything shipshape.’ He tied back one side of the canvas box, thus allowing a little dim lantern light to seep into the cabin, then tapped the deck with his foot. ‘All the money’s down below, sir,’ he said cheerfully.

‘The money?’ Sharpe asked.

‘A cargo of indigo, sir, saltpetre, silver bars and silk. Enough to make us all rich a thousand times over.’ He grinned, then left Sharpe to contemplate the tiny space that would be his home for the next four months.

The rear wall of his cabin was the curving side of the ship. The ceiling was low, and crossed by heavy black beams in which some hooks rusted. The floor was the deck, thickly scarred with old nail-holes where previous passengers had hammered down their chests. The remaining three walls were made of dirty canvas, but it was a heaven compared to the accommodation he had been given when he had sailed from Britain to India. Then, a private, he had been content with a hammock and fourteen inches of space in which to swing it.

He squatted in the cabin’s entrance, where a lantern offered some light, and unfolded the ship’s rules. They were printed, though some additions had been inked in afterwards. He was forbidden to go on the quarterdeck unless invited by the ship’s captain or the officer of the watch, and to that prohibition someone had added the warning that, even if he was so invited, he was never to come between the captain and the weather rail. Sharpe did not even know what the weather rail was. Upon going on deck he was required to touch his hat to the quarterdeck, even if the captain was not in sight. Gambling was forbidden. The purser would hold divine service, weather permitting, each Sunday and passengers were required to attend unless excused by the ship’s surgeon. Breakfast would be supplied at eight o’clock in the morning, dinner at midday, tea would be served at four o’clock and supper at eight. All male passengers were required to acquaint themselves with the quarter bill which allocated their action stations. No unshielded flames were to be lit below decks and all lanterns must be extinguished by nine o’clock at night. Smoking was forbidden because of the danger of fire, and passengers who chewed tobacco were to use the spittoons. Spitting on the deck was strictly forbidden. No passenger was to climb the rigging without permission of a ship’s officer. Passengers in steerage, like Sharpe, were prohibited from entering the great cabin or the roundhouse unless invited. There would be no foul language aboard.

‘Christ all-bloody-mighty,’ a sailor grumbled as he struggled with Sharpe’s barrel of arrack. Two other seamen were carrying his bed and another pair were bringing his chest. ‘Got any rope, sir?’ one of them asked.

‘No.’

The sailor produced a length of hemp rope and showed Sharpe how to secure the wooden chest and the heavy hogshead which virtually filled the small space. Sharpe gave the sailor a rupee as thanks, then hammered the nails through the chest’s corners into the deck and roped the barrel to one of the beams on the ship’s side. The bed was a wooden cot, the size of a coffin, which he hung from the hooks in the beams. He suspended the bucket alongside. ‘It’s best to piss through the after gunport when it ain’t underwater,’ the sailor had told him, ‘and save your bucket for solids, if you sees my meaning, sir. Or go on deck and use the heads which are forrard, but not in heavy seas, sir, for you’re likely to go overboard and no one will be any the wiser. Specially at night, sir. Many a good man has gone to see the angels through being caught short on a bad night.’

A woman was protesting loudly at the accommodation on the deck’s far side, while her husband was meekly asserting that they could afford no better. Two small children, hot and sweating, were bawling. A dog barked until it was silenced by a kick. Dust sifted from the overhead beam as a passenger in the main-deck steerage hammered in a staple or a nail. Goats bleated. The bilge pump clattered and sucked and gulped and spat filthy water into the sea.

Sharpe sat on the chest. There was just enough light for him to read the paper that Captain Chase had pressed on him. It was a letter of introduction to Chase’s wife at the captain’s house near Topsham in Devon. ‘Lord knows when I’ll see Florence and the children again,’ Chase had said, ‘but if you’re in the west country, Sharpe, do go and introduce yourself. The house ain’t much. A dozen acres, run-down stable block and a couple of barns, but Florence will make you welcome.’

No one else would, Sharpe thought, for no one waited for him in England; no hearth would blaze for his return and no family would greet him. But it was home. And, like it or not, he was going there.

CHAPTER TWO

That evening, when the last boats had delivered their passengers and baggage to the convoy, the Calliope’s bosun shouted for the topmen to go aloft. Thirty other seamen came to the lower deck and shipped the capstan bars, then began to trudge round and round, inching up the great anchor cable that came through the hawsehole, along the lower deck and down into the ship’s belly. The cable seeped a foul-smelling mud that two seamen ineffectually tried to wash overboard with pails of water, but much of the diluted mud swilled aft into the steerage compartments. The topsails were dropped, then the headsails were unfurled as the anchor came clear of the bottom and the ship’s head swung away from land as the mainsails were dropped. The steerage passengers were not allowed to leave their quarters until the sails were hoisted and Sharpe sat on his trunk listening to the rush of feet overhead, the scraping of ropes along the deck and the creak of the ship’s timbers. It was a half-hour after the anchor had been hauled that Binns, the young officer, shouted that the deck was clear, and Sharpe could go up the stairs to see that the ship had still not cleared the harbour. A red swollen sun, streaked by black clouds, hovered above the roofs and palm trees of Bombay. The scent of the land came strong. Sharpe leaned on the gunwale and stared at India. He doubted he would see it again and was sad to be leaving. The rigging creaked and the water gurgled down the ship’s side. On the quarterdeck, where the richer passengers took the air, a woman waved to the distant shore. The ship tilted to a stronger gust of wind and a cannon near Sharpe scraped on the deck until it was checked by its lashings.

The channel veered nearer the shore, taking the ship close to a temple with a brightly coloured tower carved with monkeys, gods and elephants. The big driver sail on the mizzen was just being loosed and its canvas slapped and cracked, then bellied with the wind to lean the ship further over. Behind the Calliope the other great ships of the convoy were turning away from the anchorage, showing white water at their stems and filling their high masts and tangled rigging with creamy yellow sails. An East India Company frigate that would escort the convoy as far as the Cape of Good Hope sailed just ahead of the Calliope. The frigate’s bright ensign, thirteen stripes of red and white with the union flag in the upper staff quadrant, streamed bright in the sun’s red glow. Sharpe looked for Captain Joel Chase’s ship, but the only Royal Navy vessel he could see was a small schooner with four cannon.

The Calliope’s seamen tidied the deck, stowing the loose sheets in wooden tubs and checking the lashings of the ship’s boats that were stored on the spare spars which ran like vast rafters between the quarterdeck and the forecastle. A dark-skinned man in a fishing canoe paddled out of the ship’s way, then gaped up at the great black and white wall that roared past him. The temple was fading now, lost in the glare of the sun, but Sharpe stared at the tower’s black outline and wished again that he was not leaving. He had liked India, finding it a playground for warriors, princes, rogues and adventurers. He had found wealth there, been commissioned there, fought in its hills and on its ancient battlements. He was leaving friends and lovers there, and more than one enemy in his grave, but for what? For Britain? Where no one waited for him and no adventurers rode from the hills and no tyrants lurked behind red battlements.