“We were introduced not an hour ago, my lord,” Sharpe said. “Richard Sharpe is the name.” He fired and the pistol ball splintered a timber of the boat just on the water line between the recalcitrant skipper and his passengers. Lady Grace put a hand to her mouth in alarm, but the ball had harmed no one, merely holed the boat so that the Indian had to stoop to plug the damage with a thumb. Sharpe began to reload. “Row on, you bastard!” he shouted.
The Indian glanced behind as if judging the distance to the shore, but Hopper ordered his crew to back water and the barge slowly moved behind the two boats, cutting them off from land. Lord William seemed too astonished to speak, but just stared indignantly as Sharpe rammed a second bullet down the short barrel.
The Indian did not want another ball cracking into his boat and so he suddenly sat and shouted at his men who began pulling hard on their oars. Hopper nodded approvingly. “Twixt wind and water, sir. Captain Chase would be proud of you.”
“Between wind and water?” Sharpe asked.
“You holed the bastard on the water line, sir. It’ll sink him if he doesn’t keep it stopped up.”
Sharpe gazed at her ladyship who, at last, turned to look at her rescuer. She had huge eyes, and perhaps they were the feature that made her seem so sad, but Sharpe was still astonished by her beauty and he could not resist giving her a wink. She looked quickly away. “She’ll remember my name now,” he said.
“Is that why you did it?” Hopper asked, then laughed when Sharpe did not answer.
Lord William’s boat drew up to the Calliope first. The servants, who were in the second boat, were expected to scramble up the ship’s side as best they could while seamen hauled the baggage up in nets, but Lord William and his wife stepped from their boat onto a floating platform from which they climbed a gangway to the ship’s waist. Sharpe, waiting his turn, could smell bilge water, salt and tar. A stream of dirty water emerged from a hole high up in the hull. “Pumping his bottoms, sir,” Hopper said.
“You mean she leaks?”
“All ships leak, sir. Nature of ships, sir.”
Another launch had gone alongside the Calliope’s bows and sailors were hoisting nets filled with struggling goats and crates of protesting hens. “Milk and eggs,” Hopper said cheerfully, then barked at his crew to lay to their oars so Sharpe could be put alongside. “I wish you a fast, safe voyage, sir,” the bosun said. “Back to old England, eh?”
“Back to England,” Sharpe said, and watched as the oars were raised straight up as Hopper used the last of the barge’s momentum to lay her sweetly alongside the floating platform. Sharpe gave Hopper a coin, touched his hat to Mister Collier, thanked the boat’s crew and stepped up onto the platform from where he climbed to the main deck past an open gunport in which a polished cannon muzzle showed.
An officer waited just inside the entry port. “Your name?” he asked peremptorily.
“Richard Sharpe.”
The officer peered at a list. “Your baggage is already aboard, Mister Sharpe, and this is for you.” He took a folded sheet of paper from a pocket and gave it to Sharpe. “Rules of the ship. Read, mark, learn and explicitly obey. Your action station is gun number five.”
“My what?” Sharpe asked.
“Every male passenger is expected to help defend the ship, Mister Sharpe. Gun number five.” The officer waved across the deck which was so heaped with baggage that none of the guns on the farther side could be seen. “Mister Binns!”
A very young officer hurried through the piled baggage. “Sir?”
“Show Mister Sharpe to the lower-deck steerage. One of the seven by sixes, Mister Binns, seven by six. Mallet and nails, look lively, now!”
“This way, sir,” Binns said to Sharpe, darting aft. “I’ve got the mallet and nails, sir.”
“The what?” Sharpe asked.
“Mallet and nails, sir, so you can nail your furniture to the deck. We don’t want it sliding topsy-turvy if we gets rough weather, sir, which we shouldn’t, sir, not till we reach the Madagascar Straits and it can be lumpy there, sir, very lumpy.” Binns hurried on, vanishing down a dark companionway like a rabbit down its burrow.