Bernard Cornwell – 1807 09 Sharpe’s Prey

Everyone stared at the diminutive Pumphrey. Baird, approving the idea of killing Lavisser, smiled, but most of the other officers looked shocked. Jackson just shook his head sadly. “One devoutly wishes that such a simple solution would obviate our problem, but, alas, the Danes will have other men ready to start a conflagration.” He sighed and looked up at the ceiling. “It will be a terrible defeat,” he mused, “if we were to come this far and lose the prize.”

“But, damn it, the Frogs won’t get the ships!” Cathcart protested. “That’s the point, ain’t it?”

“A most craven defeat,” Jackson said, ignoring the General’s words, “for all the King’s horses and all the King’s men to have come this far merely to provoke a bonfire. We shall be the laughingstock of Europe.” He made the last observation to Cathcart with the obvious insinuation that his lordship would be the butt of the joke.

General Baird signaled a waiter to bring the decanter of port. “Will the ships be fully manned?” he demanded.

No one answered, but most looked to Chase for an answer. The naval Captain shrugged as if to suggest he did not know. Sharpe hesitated, then spoke up. “The sailors have been added to the garrison, sir.”

“So how many men are left aboard?” Baird demanded.

“Two or three,” Chase opined. “The ships aren’t in danger where they are, so why have crews aboard? Besides, I’m sure they’re en fl–te.”

“They’re what?” Baird asked.

“En fl–te, Sir David. Their guns will have been taken ashore to add to the garrison’s ordnance, so their gunports are empty like a flute’s finger-holes.”

“Why didn’t you damn well say so?”

“And ships en fl–te,” Chase went on, “won’t need crews, or nothing more than a couple of fellows to keep an eye on the mooring lines, pump out the bilges and be ready to light the fuses.”

“A couple of fellows, eh?” Baird asked. “Then the question is, I suppose, how do we get a few of our fellows into the inner harbor?” Cathcart just stared at him wide-eyed. Jackson sipped port. “Well?” Baird inquired belligerently.

“I was there last week,” Sharpe said. “Walked in. No guards.”

“You can’t send men into the city! They won’t last an hour!” Cathcart protested.

“Sharpe did,” Lord Pumphrey said in his delicately high voice. He was staring at the chandelier, apparently fascinated by a lengthening strand of wax that threatened to drip into the dessert bowl. “You lasted a good few days, didn’t you, Sharpe?”

“You did?” Cathcart stared at Sharpe.

“I pretended to be an American, sir.”

“What did you do?” Cathcart asked. “Spit tobacco juice everywhere?” He had made his name in the war of American independence and reckoned himself an expert on the erstwhile colonies.

“But even if our fellows can survive in the city,” Captain Chase said, “how do we get them inside?”

Francis Jackson, elegant in a black suit and white silk shirt, snipped the end from a cigar. “How do the Danes infiltrate their messengers into the city?”

“Small boats, close inshore, dark nights,” Chase said shortly.

“There’s a small jetty,” Sharpe said diffidently, “a small wooden pier by the citadel where people go to fish. It’s very close to the fort. Too close, maybe.”

“And right under the guns of the Sixtus Battery,” one of Cathcart’s aides observed.

“But a dark night?” Chase was suddenly enthusiastic. “Muffled oars. Blackened boat. Yes, why not? But why land at the pier? Why not row all the way in?”

“There’s a boom across the outer harbor,” Sharpe said, “and across the inner, but the pier’s outside the boom.”

“Ah. The pier it is, then.” Chase smiled, then looked down the table at Cathcart. “But we’d need the Admiral’s permission to send a launch, my lord, and might I suggest, with all the humility at my command, that this is a service best done by sailors? Unless, of course, you have soldiers who can find their way around a darkened ship at night?”

“Cite a verse from the Bible,” Lord Pumphrey observed quietly, “that justifies such an expedition and I am sure Lord Gambier will grant permission.”

One or two men smiled, the others wondered whether the prickly Admiral really would authorize such a gamble. “He’ll give permission when he knows his prize money depends on it,” Baird growled.

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