Harper had stunned a man who tried to intervene, and now stooped and took that man’s knife for himself. The other seamen backed away. Balin groaned horribly, and Sharpe felt a good deal better as well as a good deal safer. From now on, he knew, he and Harper would be treated with respect. They might have made enemies, but those enemies would be exceedingly cautious from now on.
That night, as the frigate’s bows slathered into the great rollers and exploded spray past the galley and down to the guns in the ship’s waist, Sharpe and Harper sat by the beakhead and watched the clouds shred past the stars. “Do you think that shithead Bautista invented the letter?” Harper asked.
“No.”
“So it was Boney who wrote it?” Harper sounded disappointed.
“It had to be.” Sharpe was fiddling with the locket of Napoleon’s hair that still hung around his neck. “Strange.”
“Being in code, you mean?”
Sharpe nodded. It probably made sense for Bautista to assume that the message had come from London, and had merely been hidden inside the Emperor’s portrait, but Sharpe knew better. That coded message had come from Longwood, from the Emperor himself. Napoleon had claimed that Lieutenant Colonel Charles was a stranger, a mere admirer, but no one replied to such a man in code. The letter suggested a longstanding and sinister intrigue, but Sharpe could make no other sense of it. “Unless this Colonel Charles is supposed to organize a rescue?” he guessed.
And why not? Napoleon was a young man, scarcely fifty, and could expect to campaign for at least another twenty years. Twenty more years of battle and blood, of glory and horror. “God spare us,” Sharpe murmured as he realized that the coded letter might mean that the Emperor would be loose again, rampaging about Europe. What had Bonaparte said? That all over the world there were embers, men like Charles, and Cochrane, even General Calvet in Louisiana, who only needed to be gathered together to cause a great searing blaze of heat and light. Was that what the coded message had been intended to achieve? Then maybe, Sharpe thought, it was just as well that Bautista had intercepted the hidden letter. “But why use us as messengers?” he wondered aloud.
“Boney can’t meet that many people on their way to Chile,” Harper observed sagely. “He’d have to use anyone he could find! Mind you, if I was him, I wouldn’t rely on just one messenger getting through. I’d send as many copies of the letter as I could.”
Dear God, Sharpe thought, but that could mean Charles already had his message and the escape could already be under way. He groaned at the thought of all that nonsense being repeated. The last time Bonaparte had escaped from an island it had driven Sharpe and Lucille from their Norman home. Their return had been difficult, for they had to live beside families whose sons and husbands had died at Waterloo, yet Sharpe had gone back and he had won his neighbors’ trust again, but he could not bear to think that the whole horrid business would have to be endured a second time.
Except that now, in a ship which was being swallowed in the immensity of the Pacific under a sky of strange southern stars, there was nothing Sharpe could do. The Emperor’s plot would unfold without Sharpe, Don Blas would rot in his stinking grave, and Sharpe, pressed as a seaman, would go home.
PART II
COCHRANE
The Espiritu Santo’s crew, like their Captain, were eager to meet Lord Cochrane. They called him a devil, and crossed themselves when they spoke of him, yet they reckoned they could match this devil gun for gun and cutlass for cutlass and still beat him hollow. The crew might grumble when they were woken to an unexpected gun practice, or to rehearse repelling boarders, but they boasted of what their hardened skills would do to the devilish Cochrane if he dared attack the Espiritu Santo. They also boasted of the prize money they would win. Cochrane had captured his fifty-gun flagship, now called the O’Higgins, from the Spanish Navy which, stung by the defeat, had promised a fortune to whichever ship recaptured the lost vessel. Ardiles’s men wanted that prize, and were willing to sweat as they practiced for it. Sharpe and Harper, deemed to be unskilled men, were allocated pikes and told that their job would be to stand on deck and be prepared to kill any man foolhardy enough to board the frigate. “Though perhaps it would be better if you did not carry weapons at all?” Captain Ardiles suggested when he heard that Sharpe and Harper were expected to be among the pikemen.
Ardiles, who was so reluctant to show himself to his passengers, proved to be a frequent visitor to the lower decks. He liked to inspect the guns and to smell the powder smoke which soured the ship with its stench after every practice session. He liked to talk with his men, who returned his interest with a genuine loyalty and devotion. Ardiles, the crew told Sharpe and Harper, was a proper seaman, not some gold-assed officer too high and mighty to duck his head under the beams of the lowest decks.
Ardiles, on one of his very first tours of inspection of the voyage, had taken Sharpe and Harper aside. “I hear you made your mark?” he asked drily.
“You mean Balin?” Sharpe asked.
“I do indeed, so watch your backs in a fight.” Ardiles did not seem in the least upset that one of his prime seamen had been hammered, but he warned Sharpe and Harper that others on board might not be so sanguine. “Balin’s a popular man, and he may have put a price on your heads.” It was just after delivering that warning that Ardiles had wondered aloud whether Sharpe and Harper could be trusted to carry weapons in any fight against Lord Cochrane.
Sharpe ignored the question and Ardiles, who seemed amused at Sharpe’s silent equivocation, perched himself on one of the tables that folded down between the guns. “Not that it’s very likely your loyalty will be put to the test,” Ardiles went on. “Cochrane doesn’t usually sail this far south, so every hour makes it less likely that we’ll meet him. Nevertheless, there’s hope. We’ve assiduously spread rumors about gold, hoping to attract his attention.”
“You mean there isn’t gold on board?” Sharpe asked in astonishment.
“Sir,” Ardiles chided Sharpe softly. So far the Spanish Captain had allowed Sharpe to treat him with a scant respect, but now he suddenly insisted on being addressed properly. Sharpe, prickly with hurt pride, did not instantly respond and Ardiles shrugged, as though the use of the honorific did not really matter to him personally, even though he was going to insist on it. “You’ve been a commanding officer, Sharpe,” Ardiles spoke softly so that only Sharpe and Harper could hear him, “and you would have demanded the respect of your men, even those who were reluctant to be under your authority, and I demand the same. You might be a Lieutenant-Colonel on land, but here you’re an unskilled seaman and I can have respect thrashed into you at a rope’s end. Unlike General Bautista I’m not fond of witnessing punishment, so I’d rather you volunteered the word.”
“Sir,” Sharpe said.
Ardiles nodded acknowledgment of the reluctant courtesy. “No, there isn’t gold on board. Any gold that we might have been taking home has probably been stolen by Bautista, but we went through the routine of loading boxes filled with rock from the citadel’s wharf. I just hope that charade and the rumors it undoubtedly encouraged are sufficient to persuade Cochrane that we are stuffed with riches, for then he might come south and fight us. We hear that the rebel government owes him money. Much money! So perhaps he’ll try to collect it from me. I’d like that. We’d all like that, wouldn’t we?” Ardiles turned and asked the question of his crewmen who, hanging back in the gundeck’s gloom, now cheered their Captain.
Ardiles, pleased with their enthusiasm, slid his rump off the table, then went back to his earlier question. “So can you be trusted, Sharpe?”
“What I was hoping for, sir,” Sharpe did not reply directly, “was that you might put me aboard a fishing boat?” The Espiritu Santo had passed a score of boats that had come far out to sea to search for big tunny fish, and Sharpe had concocted the idea that perhaps one of the boats might carry him back to Chile where, in alliance with the rebels, he might yet retrieve Doña Louisa’s money, exhume Blas Vivar
’s body and restore his own pride.
“No,” Ardiles said calmly, “I won’t. I have orders to take you back to Europe, and I am a man who obeys orders. But are you? Whose side will you be on if we meet Cochrane?”
This time Sharpe did not hesitate. “Cochrane’s side,” he paused, “sir.”
Ardiles was immediately and understandably hostile. “Then you must take the consequences if there’s a fight, mustn’t you?” He stalked away.
“What does that mean?” Harper said.
“It means that if we sight Lord Cochrane then he’ll send Balin and his cronies to slit our throats.”
Next day there were no more fishing boats, just an empty ocean and a succession of thrashing squalls. Sharpe, under the immense vacancy of sea and sky, felt all hope slide away. He had lost his uniform and sword; things of no value except to himself, but their loss galled him. He had lost Louisa’s money. He had been humiliated and there was nothing he could do about it. He had been fleeced, then ignominiously kicked out of a country with only the clothes on his back. He felt heartsick. He was not used to failure.
But at least he was accustomed to hardship, and had no fears about surviving on board the Espiritu Santo. The hard bread, salted meat, dried fish and rancid wine that were the seamen’s rations would have been counted luxuries in Sharpe’s army. The worst part of the life, apart from the damp which permeated every stitch of clothing and bedding, were the Bosun’s mates who, knowing that Sharpe had been a senior army officer, seemed to find a particular pleasure in finding him the dirtiest and most menial jobs on board. Sharpe and Harper mucked out the sheep and pigs that would be slaughtered for fresh meat during the voyage, they scrubbed the poopdeck each morning, they ground the rust off the blades of the boarding pikes that were racked on deck, and each afternoon they collected the latrine buckets from the passenger cabins and scoured them clean. Among the score of passengers aboard the frigate were seven Spanish army officers, two of whom were sailing with their families, and those army officers, knowing Sharpe’s history, stared at him with frank curiosity. It was, Sharpe thought, going to be a long voyage home.
Yet, like most ordeals, it abated swiftly. The humiliated Balin might bear a grudge, but Harper inevitably discovered a score of fellow Irishmen aboard the Espiritu Santo, all of them exiles from British justice, and all of them eager to hear Harper’s news of home, and Sharpe, given temporary and flattering status as an honorary Irishman, felt a good deal safer from the Balin faction. One of the Bosun’s mates was from Donegal and his presence took much of the sting out of Sharpe’s treatment. A week into the voyage and Sharpe was even beginning to enjoy the experience.
The next dawn brought proof that the sea could throw up hardships far worse than anything yet inflicted on Sharpe and Harper. They were scrubbing the poopdeck when the forward lookout hailed the quarterdeck with a cry that a boat was in sight. Ardiles ran on deck and seized the watch officer’s telescope, while the First Lieutenant, Otero, who remembered Sharpe and Harper well from the outward voyage, and who was excruciatingly embarrassed by their change of fortune, climbed to the lookout’s post on the foremast from where he trained his own telescope forward.
“What is she?” Ardiles called.
“A wreck, sir! A dismasted whaler, by the look of her.”
“Goddamn.” Ardiles had been hoping it would prove to be the O’Higgins. “Change course to take a look at her, then call me when we’re closer!” Ardiles muttered the instruction to the officer on watch, then, before taking refuge in his cabin, he glowered at the handful of passengers who had come on deck to see what had caused the sudden alarm.
Among the spectators were two army officers’ wives who were standing at the weather rail to stare at the stricken whaler. Their excited children ran from one side of the deck to the other, playing an involved game of tag. One of the small girls slipped on the wet patch left by Sharpe’s holystone. “Move back! Give the ladies room!” the Bosun ordered Sharpe and Harper. “Just wait forrard! Wait till the passengers have gone below.”
Sharpe and Harper went to the beakhead where, concealed by the forecastle, they could hide from authority and thus stretch their temporary unemployment. They joined a small group of curious men who gazed at the wrecked whaler. She was a small ship, scarcely a third the size of the Espiritu Santo, with an ugly squared-off stern and, even uglier, three splintered stumps where her masts had stood. A spar, perhaps a yardarm, had been erected in place of the foremast, and a small sail lashed to that makeshift mast. Despite the jury rig she seemed to be unmanned, but then, in answer to a hail from the Spanish frigate’s masthead, two survivors appeared on the whaler’s deck and began waving frantically toward the Espiritu Santo. One of the two unfolded a flag that he held aloft to the wind. “She’s an American,” the First Lieutenant shouted down to the forecastle where a midshipman was deputed to carry the news back to the Captain’s cabin.
Ardiles, though, was not in his cabin, but had instead come forward. He had avoided the inquisitive passengers by using a lower deck, but now he suddenly appeared out of the low door which led to the beakhead. He nodded affably to the men who were perched on the ship’s lavatory bench, then trained his telescope on the whaler.
“She isn’t too badly damaged,” Ardiles spoke to himself, but as Sharpe and Harper were the closest men, they grunted an acknowledgment of his words. “Hardly damaged at all!” Ardiles continued his assessment of the beleaguered American whaler.
“She looks buggered to me, sir,” Sharpe said.
“She’s floating upright,” Ardiles pointed out, “so, as they say in the Cadiz boatyards, her hull must be as watertight as a duck’s backside. Mind you, the hulls of whaling ships are as strong as anything afloat.” He paused as he stared through the glass. “They’ve lost their rudder, by the look of it. They’re using a steering oar instead.”
“What could have happened to her, sir?” Harper asked.
“A storm? Perhaps she rolled over? That can snap the sticks out of a boat as quick as you like. And she’s lost all her whaleboats, so I suspect her topsides were swept clean when she rolled. That would explain the rudder, too. And I’ll warrant she lost a few souls drowned too, God rest them.” Ardiles crossed himself.
Three men were now visible on the whaler’s deck. Lieutenant Otero, still high on the foremast, read the whaler’s name through his telescope and shouted it down to Captain Ardiles. “She’s called the Mary Starbuck!”
“Probably the owner’s wife,” Ardiles guessed. “I hope the poor man has got insurance, or else Mary Starbuck will be making do with last year’s frocks.”
Lieutenant Otero, now that the Espiritu Santo was nearing the hulk, slid down the ratlines to leave tar smeared on his white trousers. “Do we rig a towing bridle?” he asked Ardiles.
Ardiles shook his head. “We haven’t time to take them in tow. But prepare to heave to. And fetch me a speaking trumpet from the quarterdeck.” Ardiles still stared at the whaler, his fingers drumming on the beakhead’s low rail. “Perhaps, Sharpe, you’ll find out what the Americans need? I doubt they want us to rescue them. Their hull isn’t broached, and under that jury rig they could sail from here to the Californias.”
The speaking trumpet was brought to the bows. Ten minutes later the frigate heaved to, backing her square sails so that she rolled and wallowed in the great swells. Sharpe, standing beside one of the long-barreled nine-pounder bow guns that were the frigate’s pursuit weapons, could clearly read the whaler’s name that was painted in gold letters on a black quarterboard across her stern. Beneath that name was written her hailing port, Nantucket. “Tell them who we are,” Ardiles ordered, “then ask them what they want.”
Sharpe raised the trumpet to his mouth. “This is the Spanish frigate Espiritu Santo,” he shouted, “What do you want?”
“Water, mister!” One of the Americans cupped his hands. “We lost all our fresh water barrels!”
“Ask what happened.” Ardiles, who spoke reasonable
English, had not needed to have the American’s request for water translated.
“What happened?” Sharpe shouted.
“She rolled over! We were close to the ice when a berg broke off!”
Sharpe translated as best he could, for the answer made little sense to him, but Ardiles both understood and explained. “The fools take any risk to chase whales. They got caught by an iceberg calving off the ice mass. The sea churns like a tidal wave when that happens. Still, they’re good seamen to have brought their boat this far. Ask where they’re heading.”
“Valdivia!” came the reply. The whaler was close now, close enough for Sharpe and Ardiles to see how gaunt and bearded were the faces of the three survivors.
“Ask how many there are on board,” Ardiles commanded.
“Four of us, mister! The rest drowned!”
“Tell them to keep away,” Ardiles was worried that the heavily built whaler might stove in the Espiritu Santo’s ribs. “And tell them I’ll float a couple of water barrels to them.” Ardiles saw Sharpe’s puzzlement, and explained. “Barrels of fresh water float in salt water.”
Sharpe leaned over the rail. “Keep away from our side! We’re going to float water barrels to you!”
“We hear you, mister!” One of the Americans dutifully leaned on the makeshift steering oar, though his efforts seemed to have little effect for the clumsy whaler kept heaving herself ever closer to the frigate.
Ardiles had ordered two barrels of water brought onto deck and a sling rove to heave them overboard. Now, while he waited for the barrels to arrive, he frowned at the Mary Starbuck’s wallowing hulk. “Ask them where Nantucket is,” he ordered suddenly.
Sharpe obeyed. “Off Cape Cod, mister!” Came back the answer.
Ardiles nodded, but some instinct was still troubling him. “Tell them to sheer away!” he snapped, then, perhaps not trusting Sharpe to deliver the order with sufficient force, he seized the speaking trumpet. “Keep clear! Keep clear!” he shouted in English.
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