Cromwell kept giving the helmsman orders, demanding a point closer to the wind or three points off the wind, and to Sharpe it seemed that the captain was trying to coax the last reserves of speed from the Calliope, but the sailors on the foredeck were disgusted. “Just slows us down,” one of them explained. “Every time you turn the rudder it slows you. He should leave well alone.” He looked at Sharpe. “I should hide that glass, sir. Some Frenchie would like that, and yon ship has the legs of us.”
Sharpe ran below. He would have to fetch his jewels from Cromwell’s cabin, but there were other things he also wanted to save and so he stuffed the precious telescope inside his shirt and tied his red officer’s sash across it, then he pulled on his red coat, buckled his sword belt and pushed the pistol into his trouser pocket. Other passengers were trying to hide their more valuable possessions, the children were crying, and then, far away, muffled by distance and the ship’s hull, Sharpe heard a gun.
He climbed back to the main deck and asked Cromwell’s permission to be on the quarterdeck. Cromwell nodded, then looked with amusement at Sharpe’s saber. “Expecting a fight, Mister Sharpe?”
“Can I retrieve my valuables from your cabin, Captain?” Sharpe asked.
Cromwell scowled. “All in good time, Sharpe, all in good time. I’m busy now and will thank you to let me try and save the ship.”
Sharpe went to the rail. The French ship still looked a long way off, but now Sharpe could see the seas breaking white at the enemy’s stem and a shredding puff of smoke drifting just ahead of its bows. “They fired”—Major Dalton, his heavy claymore at his waist, joined Sharpe at the rail—”but the ball fell a long mile short. Tufnell says they weren’t trying to hit us, they just want us to heave to.”
Ebenezer Fairley came to Sharpe’s other side. “We should have stayed with the convoy,” he spat in disgust.
“A ship like that,” Dalton said, gazing at the French warship’s massive flank which was thick with gunports, “could have chewed up the whole convoy.”
“We’d have sacrificed the Company frigate,” Fairley said. “That’s what the frigate is for.” He drummed nervous fingers on the rail. “She’s a fast sailor.”
“So are we,” Major Dalton said.
“She’s bigger,” Fairley said brusquely, “and bigger ships sail faster than small ones.” He turned. “Captain!”
“I am busy, Fairley, busy.” Cromwell did not look at the merchant.
“Can you outrun her?”
“If I am left in peace to practice my trade, perhaps.”
“What about my cash?” Lord William demanded. He had joined his wife on deck.
“The French,” Cromwell decreed, “do not make war on private individuals. The ship and its cargo might be lost, but they will respect private property. If I have time, my lord, I will unlock my cabin. But for now, gentlemen, perhaps you will all let me sail this ship without yapping at me?”
Sharpe glanced at Lady Grace, but she ignored him and he looked back at the French warship. Fairley thumped the rail in his frustration. “That bloody Frenchman will make a tidy profit,” the merchant said bitterly. “This hull and cargo must be worth sixty thousand pound. Sixty thousand! Maybe more.”
Twenty for the French, Sharpe thought, twenty for Pohlmann and twenty for Cromwell, a captain who fervently believed the war was lost and that the French would win. A captain who had declared that a man must make his fortune before the French took over the world. And twenty thousand pounds was a real fortune, a sum on which a man could live forever. “They’ve still got to catch us,” Sharpe tried to reassure Fairley, “and they’ll have to get the ship and its cargo back to France. That won’t be easy.”
Fairley shook his head. “Doesn’t work like that, Mister Sharpe. They’ll take us to Mauritius and sell the cargo there. There are plenty of neutrals ready to buy this cargo. And like as not they’ll sell the ship too. Next thing you know she’ll be called the George Washington and be sailing out of Boston.” He spat across the rail. The tiller ropes creaked as Cromwell demanded yet another correction.