None of the prize crew tried to stop them going on deck, indeed the Frenchmen were already hauling down the Calliope’s original ensign which they had hoped would fool their pursuer into thinking that the Indiaman was still under British command.
And now they really were under British command for, coming slowly toward the Calliope and furling her sails as she glided ever nearer, was another great bluff-sided warship painted yellow and black. Her beakhead was a riot of gilded wood supporting a figurehead that showed an ecstatic-faced lady graced with a halo, carrying a sword and dressed in silver-painted armor, though her breastplate was curiously truncated to reveal a pinkly naked bosom. “The Pucelle,” Sharpe said in delight. Joan of Arc had come to the rescue of the British.
And the Calliope, for the second time in five days, was taken.
CHAPTER 6
The first Pucelle crewman to board the Calliope was Captain Joel Chase himself who scrambled nimbly up the merchantman’s side to the cheers of the liberated passengers. The officier marinier, having no sword to surrender, stoically offered Chase a marlin spike instead. Chase grinned, took the spike, then gallantly returned it to the officier marinier who resignedly led his men into imprisonment below decks while Chase doffed his hat, shook hands with the passengers on the main deck and tried to answer a dozen questions all at once. Malachi Braithwaite stood apart from the happy passengers, staring morosely at Sharpe on the quarterdeck. The secretary had been sequestered in steerage ever since the French took the ship and he must have been suffering pangs of jealousy at the thought of Sharpe being in the stern with Lady Grace.
“There’s a happy naval captain,” Ebenezer Fairley said. He had come to stand beside Sharpe on the quarterdeck and was staring down at the throng of steerage passengers surrounding Chase. “He’s just made a fortune in prize money, but mind you he’ll have to fight for it proper now.”
“What do you mean?”
“You think the lawyers won’t want their share?” Fairley asked sourly. “The East India Company will have lawyers saying that the Frogs never took the ship properly so it can’t be a prize, and Chase’s prize agent will have another set of lawyers arguing the opposite and between them they’ll keep the court busy for years and make themselves rich and everyone else poor.” He sniffed. “I suppose I could hire a lawyer or two myself, seeing as how a deal of the cargo is mine, but I won’t bother. Yon captain’s welcome to the prize so far as I’m concerned. I’d rather he got the cash than some blood-sucking lawyer.” Fairley grimaced. “I once had a good idea on how we could mightily improve the prosperity of Britain, Sharpe. My notion was that every man of property could kill one lawyer a year without fear of penalty. Parliament wasn’t interested, but then, Parliament’s full of blood-suckers.”
Captain Chase extricated himself from the main-deck throng and climbed to the quarterdeck where the first person he saw was Sharpe. “My dear Sharpe!” Chase cried, his face lighting up. “My dear Sharpe! We are equal now, eh? You rescue me, I rescue you. How are you?” He clasped Sharpe’s hand in both his, was introduced to Fairley, then glimpsed Lord William Hale. “Oh God, I’d forgotten he was on board. How are you, my lord? You’re well? Good, good!” In fact Lord William had not answered the captain, though he was eager to speak with him privately, but Chase spun away and took Tufnell’s arm and the two seamen embarked on a long discussion about how the Calliope had first fallen prey to the Revenant. A party of Calliope sailors went below to mend the tiller ropes, while some Pucelles, led by Hopper, the big man who commanded Captain Chase’s gig, hoisted a British ensign above the French flag.
Lord William, visibly irritated at being ignored by Chase, was waiting to catch the captain’s attention, but something Tufnell said caused Chase to ignore his lordship and turn back to the other passengers. “I want to know everything you can tell me,” Chase said urgently, “about the man posing as the Baron von Dornberg’s servant.”