“Why are you searching for him, sir?”
“It seems, Sharpe, that he has been negotiating with the last of the Mahrattas who are terrified that the British will take over what’s left of their territory, so Vaillard has concluded a treaty with one of their leaders, Holkar?” He looked at the paper. “Yes, Holkar, and Vaillard is taking the treaty back to Paris. Holkar agrees to talk peace with the British, and in the meantime Monsieur Vaillard, presumably with the help of your friend Pohlmann, arranges to supply Holkar with French advisers, French cannon and French muskets. This is a copy of the treaty.” He flicked the paper over to Sharpe who saw that it was in French, though someone had helpfully written a translation between the lines. Holkar, the ablest of the Mahratta war leaders and a man who had evaded the army of Sir Arthur Wellesley, but who was now being pressed by other British forces, had undertaken to open peace negotiations and, under their cover, raise an enormous army which would be equipped by his allies, the French. The treaty even listed those princes in British territory who could be relied on to rebel if such an army attacked out of the north.
“They’ve been clever, Vaillard and Pohlmann,” Chase said. “Used British ships to go home! Quickest way, you see. They suborned your fellow, Cromwell, and must have sent a message to Mauritius arranging a rendezvous.”
“How did we get a copy of their treaty?” Sharpe asked.
“Spies?” Chase guessed. “Everything became vigorous after you left Bombay. The admiral sent a sloop to the Red Sea in case Vaillard decided to go overland and he sent the Porcupine to overhaul the convoy and told me to keep my eyes skinned as well, because stopping that damned Vaillard is our most important job. Now we know where the bloody man is, or we think we do, so I’ll have to pursue him. They’re going back to Europe and we are too. It’s back home for us, Sharpe, and you’re going to see just how fast a French-built warship can sail. The trouble is that the Revenant’s just as quick and she’s the best part of a week in front of us.”
“And if you catch her?”
“We beat her to smithereens, of course,” Chase said happily, “and make certain Monsieur Vaillard and Herr Pohlmann go to the fishes.”
“And Captain Cromwell with them,” Sharpe said vengefully.
“I think I’d rather take him alive,” Chase said, “and hang him from the yardarm. Nothing cheers up a jack tar’s spirit so much as seeing a captain swinging on a generous length of Bridport hemp.”
Sharpe looked through the stern window to see the Calliope was just a smudge of sails on the horizon. He felt like a cask thrown into a fast river, being swept away to some unknown destination on a journey over which he had no control, but he was glad it was happening, for he was still with Lady Grace. The very thought of her sparked a warm feeling in his breast, though he knew it was a madness, an utter madness, but he could not escape it. He did not even want to escape it.
“Here’s Mister Harold Collier,” Chase said, responding to a knock on the door that brought into the cabin the diminutive midshipman who had commanded the boat that had carried Sharpe out to the Calliope so long ago in Bombay Harbor. Now Mister Collier was ordered to show Sharpe the Pucelle.
The boy was touchingly proud of his ship while Sharpe was awed by it. It was a vast thing, much bigger than the Calliope, and young Harry Collier rattled off its statistics as he took Sharpe through the lavish dining cabin where another eighteen-pounder squatted. “She’s 178 feet long, sir, not counting her bowsprit, of course, and 48 in the beam, sir, and 175 feet to the main truck which is the very top of the mainmast, sir, and mind your head, sir. She was French-built out of two thousand oak trees and she weighs close to two thousand tons, sir—mind your head—and she’s got seventy-four guns, sir, not counting the carronades, of course, and we’ve six of them, all thirty-two-pounders, and there’s six hundred and seventeen men aboard, sir, not counting the marines.”