A strange sail was sighted one morning and there was an hour’s excitement as the gun crews mustered, the convoy clumsily closed up and the Company frigate set her studdingsails to investigate the stranger, which turned out to be an Arab dhow on course for Cochin and certainly no threat to the big Indiamen.
The passengers in the stern, the rich folk who inhabited the roundhouse and the great cabin, played whist. Another group played the game in steerage, but Sharpe had never learned to play and, besides, was not tempted to wager. He was aware that large sums were being won and lost, and though it was forbidden by the Company rules, Captain Cromwell made no objection. Indeed he sometimes played a hand himself. “He wins,” Pohlmann told Sharpe, “he always wins.”
“And you lose?”
“A little.” Pohlmann shrugged as though it did not matter.
Pohlmann was sitting on one of the lashed guns. He often came and talked with Sharpe, usually about Assaye where he had suffered such a great defeat. “Your William Dodd,” he told Sharpe, “claimed that Sir Arthur was a cautious general. He isn’t.” He always called Dodd “your William Dodd,” as though the renegade redcoat had been a colleague of Sharpe’s.
“Wellesley’s bull-headed,” Sharpe said admiringly. “He sees a chance and snatches it.”
“And he’s gone home to England?”
“Sailed last year,” Sharpe said. Sir Arthur, as befitted his rank, had sailed on the Trident, Admiral Rainier’s flagship, and was probably in Britain by now.
“He will be bored at home,” Pohlmann said.
“Bored? Why?”
“Because our dour Captain Cromwell is right. Britain cannot fight France in Europe. She can fight her at the ends of the world, but not in Europe. The French army, my dear Sharpe, is a horde. It is not like your army. It doesn’t depend on jailbirds, failures and drunkards, but is conscripted. It is therefore huge.”
Sharpe grinned. “The jailbirds, failures and drunkards cooked your goose.”
“So they did,” Pohlmann acknowledged without taking offense, “but they cannot stand against the vast armies of France. No one can. Not now. And when the French decide to build a proper navy, my friend, then you will see the world dance to their tunes.”
“And you?” Sharpe asked. “Where will you be dancing?”
“Hanover?” Pohlmann suggested. “I shall buy a big house, fill it with women and watch the world from my windows. Or perhaps I shall live in France. The women are more beautiful there and I have learned one thing in my life, Sharpe, and that is that women do like money. Why do you think Lady Grace married Lord William?” He jerked his head toward the quarterdeck where Lady Grace, accompanied by her maid, walked up and down. “How goes your campaign with the lady?”
“It doesn’t,” Sharpe grunted, “and there isn’t a campaign.”
Pohlmann laughed. “Then why do you accept my invitations to supper?”
The truth, and Sharpe knew it, was that he was obsessed with the Lady Grace. From the moment he woke in the morning until he finally slept he thought of little but her. She seemed untouchable, unemotional, unapproachable, and that only made his obsession worse. She had spoken to him once, then never again, and when Sharpe did meet her at sup-pertime in the captain’s cuddy and tried to engage her in conversation she turned away as though his presence offended her.
Sharpe thought of her constantly, and constantly watched for her, though he took good care not to show his obsession. But it was there, gnawing at him, filling the tedious hours as the Calliope thumped her way across the Indian Ocean. The winds stayed kind and each day the first officer, Lieutenant Tufnell, reported on the convoy’s progress: seventy-two miles, sixty-eight miles, seventy miles, always about the same distance.
The weather was fine and dry, yet even so the ship seemed to be rotting with damp below the decks. Even in the tropic winds that blew the convoy southwestward some water slopped through the closed lower gun-ports, and the lower-deck steerage where Sharpe slept was never dry; his blankets were damp, the timbers of the ship were dank, indeed the whole Calliope, wherever the sun did not shine, was weeping with water, stinking and decaying, fungus-ridden and rat-infested. Seamen constantly manned the ship’s four pumps and the water slopped out of the elm tubes ito gutters on the lower deck which led the stinking bilge water overboard, but however much they pumped, more always needed to be sucked out of the hull.