“Ten guineas rides on the result,” Chase said, “and I know I have forsworn gambling, but I shall happily pay you so long as we do catch her. Then we’ll have a rare fight, milady, but let me assure you that you will be safe below the water line.”
Lady Grace smiled. “I am to miss all the entertainment aboard, Captain?”
That brought laughter. Sharpe had never seen her ladyship so relaxed in company. The candles glinted off her diamond earrings and necklace, from the jewels on her fingers and from her bright eyes. Her vivacity was captivating the whole table, all except for her husband who wore a slight frown as though he feared his wife had drunk too much of the blackstrap or the Miss Taylor. Sharpe was assailed with the jealous thought that perhaps she was responding to the handsome and genial Chase, but just as he felt that envy she glanced down the table and briefly caught his eye. Braithwaite saw it and stared down at his plate.
“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.