“Are we turning west today?” Sharpe asked.
“Tomorrow, probably,” Tufnell said, “southwest, anyway. I rather think our gamble hasn’t paid off and that we should have gone through the Straits. Still, we’re a quick sailor and we should make up the time in the Atlantic.”
“Sail ho!” a lookout called from the mainmast. “Sail on the larboard bow!”
Cromwell snatched up a speaking trumpet. “What kind of sail?”
“Topsail, sir, can’t see more.”
Tufneil frowned. “A topsail means a European ship. Perhaps another Jonathon?” He looked up at Cromwell. “You want to wear ship, sir?”
“We shall stand on, Mister Tufhell, we stand on.”
“Wear ship?” Sharpe asked.
“Turn away from whoever it is,” Tufnell said. “It don’t matter if it’s a Jonathon, but we don’t want to be playing games with a Frenchie.”
“The Revenant?” Sharpe suggested.
“Don’t even say the name,” Tufnell answered grimly, reaching out to touch the wooden rail to avert the ill fortune of Sharpe’s suggestion. “But if we wore now we could outrun her. She’s coming upwind, whoever she is.”
The lookout shouted again. “She’s a French ship, sir.”
“How do you know?” Cromwell called back.
“Cut of her sails, sir.”
Tufnell looked pained. “Sir?” he appealed to Cromwell.
“The Pucelle is a French-made ship, Mister Tufnell,” Cromwell snapped. “Most likely it’s the Pucelle. We stand on.”
“Powder on deck, sir?” Tufnell asked.
Cromwell hesitated, then shook his head. “Probably another whaler, Mister Tufnell, probably another whaler. Let us not become unduly excited.”
Sharpe forgot his dinner and climbed to the foredeck where he trained his telescope on the approaching ship. It was still hull down, but he could see two layers of sails above the skyline and make out the flattened shape of the foresails as they fought to gain a purchase on the wind. He lent the glass to the sailors who crowded the foredeck and none liked what they saw. “That ain’t the Pucelle,” one grunted. “She’s got a dirty streak on her fore topsail.”
“Could have washed the sail,” another suggested. “Captain Chase ain’t a man to let dirt stay on a sail.”
“Well, if it ain’t the Pucelle,” the first man said, “it’s the Revenant, and we shouldn’t be standing on. Shouldn’t be standing on. Don’t make sense.”
Tufnell had gone to the maintop with his own telescope. “French warship, sir!” he called down to the quarterdeck. “Black hoops on the mast!”
“The Pucelle has black hoops,” Cromwell shouted back. “Can you see her flag?”
“No, sir.”
Cromwell stood irresolute for a moment, then gave an order to the helmsman so that the Calliope clumsily turned toward the west. Sailors ran to man the sheets, trimming the great sails to the wind’s new angle.
“She’s turning with us, sir!” Tufnell shouted.
The Calliope was going faster now and her bluff bows were thumping into the waves, and each thump sent a tremor through her tons of oak timbers. The passengers were silent. Sharpe stared through the telescope and saw that the far ship’s hull was above the horizon now and it was painted black and yellow like a wasp.
“French colors, sir!” Tufnell shouted.
“Peculiar left it too bloody late,” a seaman near Sharpe said. “Bloody man thinks he can walk on water.”
Sharpe turned and stared across the main deck at Peculiar Cromwell. Maybe, he thought, the captain had been expecting this. Morgen friih, Sharpe thought, morgen friih, only the rendezvous had come a few minutes late, but then he dismissed the idea. Surely Cromwell had not expected this? But then Sharpe saw Pohlmann gazing forrard with a glass and he remembered that Pohlmann had once commanded French officers. Had he stayed in touch with the French after Assaye? Was he allied with the French? No, Sharpe thought, no. It seemed unthinkable, but then Lady Grace came to the quarterdeck rail and she stared straight at Sharpe, looked pointedly at Cromwell, then back to Sharpe and he knew she was thinking the same unthinkable thought. “Are we going to fight?” a passenger asked.
A seaman laughed. “Can’t fight a French seventy-four! And she’ll have big guns, not like our eighteen-pounders.”
“Can we outrun her?” Sharpe asked.
“If we’re lucky.” The man spat overboard.