“God, this place stinks!” Chase said.
“You’ve not been here before?” Sharpe asked, surprised.
“I’ve been five months in India,” Chase said, “but always at sea. Now I’m living ashore for a week, and it stinks. My God, how the place stinks!”
“No more than London,” Sharpe said, which was true, but here the smells were different. Instead of coal fumes there was bullock-dung smoke and the rich odors of spices and sewage. It was a sweet smell, ripe even, but not unpleasant, and Sharpe was thinking back to when he had first arrived and how he had recoiled from the smell that he now thought homely and even enticing. “I’ll miss it,” he admitted. “I sometimes wish I wasn’t going back to England.”
“Which ship are you on?”
“The Calliope.”
Chase evidently found that amusing. “So what do you make of Peculiar?”
“Peculiar?” Sharpe asked.
“Peculiar Cromwell, of course, the Captain.” Chase looked at Sharpe. “Surely you’ve met him!”
“I haven’t. Never heard of him.”
“But the convoy must have arrived two months ago,” Chase said.
“It did.”
“Then you should have made an effort to see Peculiar. That’s his real name, by the way, Peculiar Cromwell. Odd, eh? He was navy once, most of the East Indiamen captains were navy, but Peculiar resigned because he wanted to become rich. He also believed he should have been made admiral without spending tedious years as a mere captain. He’s an odd soul, but he sails a tidy ship, and a fast one. I can’t believe you didn’t make the effort to meet him.”
“Why should I?” Sharpe asked.
“To make sure you get some privileges aboard, of course. Can I assume you’ll be traveling in steerage?”
“I’m traveling cheap, if that’s what you mean,” Sharpe said. He spoke bitterly, for though he had paid the lowest possible rate, his passage was still costing him one hundred and seven pounds and fifteen shillings. He had thought the army would pay for the voyage, but the army had refused, saying that Sharpe was accepting an invitation to join the 95th Rifles and if the 95th Rifles refused to pay his passage then damn them, damn their badly colored coats, and damn Sharpe. So he had cut one of the precious diamonds from the seam of his red coat and paid for the voyage himself. He still had a king’s ransom in the precious stones that he had taken from the Tippoo Sultan’s body in a dank tunnel at Seringapatam, but he resented using the loot to pay the East India Company. Britain had sent Sharpe to India, and Britain, Sharpe reckoned, should fetch him back.
“So the clever thing to have done, Sharpe,” Chase said, “would have been to introduce yourself to Peculiar while he was living ashore and given the greedy bugger a present, because then he’d have assigned you to decent Quarters. But if vou haven’t crossed Peculiar’s palm with silver, Sharpe, he’ll like as not have you down in lower steerage with the rats. Maindeck steerage is much better and doesn’t cost a penny more, but the lower steerage is nothing but farts, vomit and misery all the way home.” The two men had left the narrow alleys and were leading the barge crew down a street that was edged with sewage-filled ditches. It was a tin-smithing quarter and the forges were already burning bright as the sound of hammers rattled the night. Pale cows watched the sailors pass and dogs barked frantically, waking the homeless poor who huddled between the ditches and the house walls. “It’s a pity you’re sailing in convoy,” Chase said.
“Why, sir?”
“Because a convoy goes at the speed of its slowest boat,” Chase explained. “Calliope could make England in three months if she was allowed to fly, but she’ll have to limp. I wish I was sailing with you. I’d offer you passage myself as thanks for your rescue tonight, but alas, I am ghost-hunting.”
“Ghost-hunting, sir?”
“You’ve heard of the Revenant?”
“No, sir.”
“The ignorance of you soldiers,” Chase said, amused. “The Revenant, my dear Sharpe, is a French seventy-four that is haunting the Indian Ocean. Hides herself in Mauritius, sallies out to snap up prizes, then scuttles back before we can catch her. I’m here to stifle her ardor, only before I can hunt her I have to scrape the bottom. My ship’s too slow after eight months at sea, so we scour off the barnacles to quicken her up.”