“How many of those?”
“Sixty-six, sir. This way, sir. Mind your head, sir.”
Collier led Sharpe onto the quarterdeck where eight long guns lay behind their closed ports. “Eighteen-pounders, sir,” Collier squeaked, “the babies on the ship. Just six a side, sir, including the four in the stern quarters.” He slithered down a perilously steep companionway to the main deck. “This is the weather deck, sir. Thirty-two guns, sir, all twenty-four-pounders.” The center of the main deck, or weather deck, was open to the sky, but the forward and aft sections of the deck were planked over where the forecastle and quarterdeck were built. Collier led Sharpe forward, weaving nimbly between the huge guns and the mess tables rigged between them, ducking under hammocks where men of the off-duty watch slept, then swerving around the anchor capstan and down another ladder into the stygian darkness of the lower deck, which held the ship’s biggest guns, each throwing a ball of thirty-two pounds. “Thirty of these big guns, sir,” he said proudly, “mind your head, sir, fifteen a side, and we’re lucky to have so many. There’s a shortage of these big guns, they tell us, and some ships are even driven to put eighteen-pounders on their lower deck, but not Captain Chase, he wouldn’t abide that. I told you to mind your head, sir.”
Sharpe rubbed the bruise on his forehead and tried to work out the weight of shot that the Pucelle could fire, but Collier was ahead of him. “We can throw 972 pounds of metal with each broadside, sir, and we’ve got two sides,” he added helpfully, “as you may have noticed. And we’ve got the six carronades, sir, and they can throw thirty-two pounds apiece plus a cask of musket balls as well, which will make a Frenchman weep, sir. Or so I’m told, sir. Mind your head, sir.” Which meant, Sharpe thought, that this one ship could throw more round shot in a single broadside than all the combined batteries of the army’s artillery at the battle of Assaye. It was a floating bastion, a crushing killer of the high seas, and this was not even the largest warship afloat. Some ships, Sharpe knew, carried over a hundred guns, and again Collier had the answers, trained in them because, like all midshipmen, he was preparing for his lieutenant’s examination. “The navy’s got eight first rates, sir, that’s ships with a hundred or more guns—watch that low beam, sir—fourteen second rates, which carry about ninety or more cannon, and a hundred and thirty of these third rates.”
“You call this a third rate?” Sharpe asked, astonished.
“Down here, sir, watch your head, sir.” Collier vanished into another companionway, sliding down the ladder’s uprights, and Sharpe followed more slowly, using the rungs, to find himself in a dark, dank, low-ceilinged deck that stank foully and was dimly lit by a scatter of glass-shielded lanterns. “This is the orlop deck, sir. Mind your head. It’s called the cockpit as well, sir. Watch that beam, sir. We’re just about under water here, sir, and the surgeon has his rooms down there, beyond the magazines, and we all prays, sir, we never end under his knife. This way, sir. Mind your head.” He showed Sharpe the cable tiers where the anchor ropes were flaked down, the two leather-curtained magazines that were guarded by red-coated marines, the spirit store, the surgeon’s lair where the walls were painted red so that the blood did not show, the dispensary, and the midshipmen’s cabins that were scarce bigger than dog kennels, then he took Sharpe down a final ladder into the massive hold where the ship’s stores were piled in vast heaps of casks. Only the bilge lay beneath and a mournful sucking, interrupted by a clatter, told Sharpe that men were even now pumping it dry. “We hardly ever stop the six pumps,” the midshipman said, “because as tight as you build ‘em, sir, the sea do get in.” He kicked at a rat, missed, then scrambled back up the ladder. He showed Sharpe the galley beneath the forecastle, introduced him to master-at-arms, cooks, bosuns, gunner’s mates, the carpenter, then offered to take Sharpe up the mainmast.