The oarsmen grunted as the boat slammed into the turgid current of the outflowing Valdivia River. Harper, in the boat’s bows, was watching for the fugitives, but Sharpe, in the stern, was looking for Cochrane. Some of the men in Sharpe’s boat were bailing with their caps. The old boat had gaping seams and was leaking at an alarming rate, but the men were coping and the oarsmen had found a good, steady rhythm. Sharpe could see Cochrane’s boats striking out from the far shore, but they were still a long way behind.
“What do we do if we catch up with the bastards?” the coxswain asked Sharpe.
“Say boo to them. They’ll surrender.”
The coxswain laughed. They were rowing past the quays at the river’s mouth. A group of bemused families had come from the fishermen’s cottages to stare at the morning’s events. Sharpe wondered what difference any of this would make to such pitiably poor people. Bautista’s rule could not be easy, but would O’Higgins make life better? Sharpe doubted it. He had talked once with an old man in the village of Seleglise, a man ancient enough to remember the old French king and to remember all the other Paris governments that had come through bloody revolution or coup d’etat, and the old man had reckoned that not one of those governments had made the slightest difference to his life. His cows had still needed milking, his vegetables had needed weeding, his corn had needed cutting, his cherries needed picking, his taxes needed paying, the church had needed his money and no one, neither priest, politician, taxman nor prefect, had ever given him a penny or a thank-you for any of it. No doubt the Chilean peasantry would feel the same. All this morning’s excitement meant was that a different set of politicians would become rich at the country’s expense.
The boat was in the river valley now. The hills on either side were thick with trees. Two herons flapped lazily down one bank. The oarsmen had slowed, settling to the long haul. A fisherman, casting a hand net from a small leather boat, abandoned his tackle and paddled furiously for the safety of land as the strange boat full of armed men appeared. Harper had cocked a musket in case the Spaniards had set an ambush beyond the river’s first bend.
The coxswain hugged the right bank, cutting the corner and risking the shallows to make the bend swiftly. The oars brushed reeds, then the river straightened and Sharpe, standing to get a clear view ahead, felt a pang, for there were no boats in sight. For a second he thought the Spaniards must have such superior boats that they had somehow converted a two-mile lead into four or five miles, but then he saw that the Spanish longboats had stopped altogether and were huddled on the southern river-bank. There must have been twenty boats there, all crammed with men and none of them moving. “There!” he pointed for Harper.
Then Sharpe saw horsemen on the river’s bank. Cavalry? Had Bautista sent reinforcements upriver? For a second Sharpe was tempted to turn the boat and seize Fort Niebla before the Spaniards, realizing how hugely they outnumbered Cochrane’s puny forces, made their counterattack, but Harper suddenly shouted that the dagoes on the riverbank were flying a white flag.
“Bloody hell,” Sharpe said, for there was indeed a white flag of truce or surrender.
The oarsmen, sensing Sharpe’s momentary indecision, and needing a rest, had stopped rowing and the boat was beginning to drift back downstream. “A trap?” the coxswain asked.
“God knows,” Sharpe said. Cochrane was forever using flags as a trick to get himself close to the enemy, and were the Spaniards now learning to use the same ruse? “Put me ashore,” he told the coxswain.
The oars dipped again, took the strain, and drove hard for the southern bank. The bow touched, and Sharpe clambered over the thwarts, then jumped up onto tussocky grass. Harper followed him. Sharpe loosened the sword in its scabbard, checked that his pistols were primed, and walked slowly toward the horsemen who were a half mile away.
There were not many horsemen, perhaps twenty, and none was in uniform, suggesting that this was not a cavalry unit. The men carried two flags—one the white flag of truce, and the other a complicated ensign bearing a coat of arms. “They look like civilians,” Harper commented.