“Low, my lord. Water and beef for two weeks, maybe?”
“‘Twill be long enough, long enough. Crew?”
“I pressed a score of good men from an Indiaman, my lord, and have sufficient.”
“Good, good,” the admiral said, then, after his steward had brought coffee and food to the table, he questioned Chase about his voyage and the pursuit of the Revenant. Sharpe, sitting to the admiral’s left, watched him. He knew the admiral had lost the sight of one eye, but it was hard to tell which, though after a while Sharpe saw that the right eye had an unnaturally large and dark pupil. His hair was white and tousled, framing a thin and extraordinarily mobile face that reacted to Chase’s story with alarm, pleasure, amusement and surprise. He interrupted Chase rarely, though he did stop the tale once to request that Sharpe carve the beef. “And perhaps you’ll cut me some bread as well, Mister Sharpe, as a kindness? My fin, you understand,” and he touched his empty right sleeve that was pinned onto a jacket bright with jeweled stars. “You’re very kind,” he said when Sharpe had obeyed. “Do go on, Chase.”
Sharpe had expected to be awed by the admiral, to be struck dumb by him, but instead he found himself feeling protective of the small man who emanated a fragile air of vulnerability. Even though he was sitting, it was clear he was a small man, and very thin, and his pale, lined face suggested he was prone to sickness. He looked so frail that Sharpe had to remind himself that this man had led his fleets to victory after victory, and that in every fight he had been in the thick of the battle, yet he gave the impression that the slightest breeze would knock him down.
The admiral’s apparent frailty made the most immediate impression on Sharpe, but it was the admiral’s eyes that had the stronger effect, for whenever he looked at Sharpe, even if it was merely to request a small service like another piece of buttered bread, it seemed that Sharpe became the most important person in the world at that moment. The glance seemed to exclude everything and everyone else, as though Sharpe and the admiral were in collusion. Nelson had none of Sir Arthur Wellesley’s coldness, no condescension, and gave no impression of believing himself to be superior; indeed it seemed to Sharpe that at that moment, as the fleet lumbered toward the enemy, Horatio Nelson asked nothing from life except to be seated with his good friends Chase, Blackwood and Richard Sharpe. He touched Sharpe’s elbow once. “This talk must be tedious to a soldier, Sharpe?”
“No, my lord,” Sharpe said. The discussion had moved on to the admiral’s tactics this day and much of it was beyond Sharpe’s comprehension, but he did not care. It was enough to be in Nelson’s presence and Sharpe was swept by the little man’s infectious enthusiasm. By God, Sharpe thought, but they would not just beat the enemy fleet this day, but pound it into splinters, hammer it so badly that no French or Spanish ship would ever dare sail the world’s seas again. Chase, he saw, was reacting the same way, almost as though he feared Nelson would weep if he did not fight harder than he had ever fought before.
“Do you put your men in the tops?” Nelson asked, clumsily attempting to remove the peel of an orange with his one hand.
“I do, my lord.”
“I do fear that the musket wads will fire the sails,” the admiral said gently, “so I would rather you did not.”
“Of course not, my lord,” Chase said, immediately yielding to the modest suggestion.
“Sails are only linen, after all,” Nelson said, evidently wanting to explain himself further in case Chase had been offended by the order. “And what do we put inside tinderboxes? Linen! It is horribly flammable.”
“I shall respect your wishes gladly, my lord.”
“And you comprehend my greater purpose?” the admiral asked, referring to his earlier discussion of tactics.
“I do, my lord, and applaud it.”
“I shall not be happy with less than twenty prizes, Chase,” Nelson said sternly.