“If you say so, Mister Hopper.”
The crew were grinning. “Wipe those smirks off your uglies!” Hopper shouted, then spat a stream of tobacco juice over the gunwale. His two upper front teeth were missing, which made spitting the juice far easier. “Yes, sir,” he went on, looking at Sharpe, “I’ve served with Captain Chase since he was a nipper. I was with him when he captured the Bouvines.”
“The Bouvines?”
“A Frog frigate, sir, thirty-two guns, and we was in the Spritely, twenty-eight, and it took us twenty-two minutes first gun to last and there was blood leaking out of her scuppers when we’d finished with her. And one day, Mister Collier, sir”—he looked sternly down at the small boy whose face was almost entirely hidden by a cocked hat that was much too big for him—”you’ll be in charge of one of His Majesty’s ships and it’ll be your duty and privilege to knock a Froggy witless.”
“I hope so, Mister Hopper.”
The barge was traveling smoothly through water that was filthy with floating rubbish, palm fronds and the bloated corpses of rats, dogs and cats. A score of other boats, some of them heaped with baggage, were also rowing out to the waiting convoy. The luckiest passengers were those whose ships were moored at the Company’s docks, but those docks were not large enough for every merchantman that would leave for home and so most of the travelers were being ferried out to the anchorage. “I seen your goods loaded on a native boat, sir,” Hopper said, “and told the bastards there’d be eight kinds of hell to pay if they weren’t delivered shipshape. They do like their games, sir, they do.” He squinted ahead and laughed. “See? One of the buggers is up to no good right now.”
“No good?” Sharpe asked. All he could see were two small boats that were dead in the water. One of the two boats was piled with leather luggage while the other held three passengers.
“Buggers say it’ll cost a rupee to reach the ship, sir,” Hopper explained, “then they get halfway and triple the price, and if they don’t get it they’ll row back to the quay. Our boys do the same thing when they pick passengers up at Deal to row them out to the Downs.” He tugged on a rudder line to skirt the two boats.
Sharpe saw that Lord William Hale, his wife and a young man were the passengers in the leading boat, while two servants and a pile of luggage were crammed into the second. Lord William was speaking angrily with a grinning Indian who seemed unmoved by his lordship’s ire.
“His bloody lordship will just have to pay up,” Hopper said, “or else get rowed ashore.”
“Take us close,” Sharpe said.
Hopper glanced at him, then shrugged as if to suggest that it was none of his business if Sharpe wanted to make a fool of himself. “Ease oars!” he shouted and the crew lifted their dripping blades from the water to let the barge glide on until it was within a few feet of the stranded boats. “Back water!” Hopper snapped and the oars dipped again to bring the elegant boat to a stop.
Sharpe stood. “You have trouble, my lord?”
Lord William frowned at Sharpe, but said nothing, while his wife managed to suggest that an even more noxious stench than the others in the harbor had somehow approached her delicate nostrils. She just stared sternward, ignoring the Indian crew, her husband and Sharpe. It was the third passenger, the young man who was dressed as soberly as a curate, who stood and explained their trouble. “They won’t move,” he complained.
“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?”