“I shall pay gladly, sir.”
“You’ll pay nothing, Mister Haskell, nothing. If Nelson hadn’t been here then the Revenant would have escaped us. It ain’t fair for a captain to win a bet with an admiral’s help. This coffee tastes good! The fur adds piquancy, don’t you think?”
The galley cooked a last burgoo, a generous one, with great chunks of pork and beef floating in the greasy oats. It would be the last hot meal the men would enjoy before battle, for the galley fires would have to be doused in case an enemy shot struck the oven and scattered fire across a gundeck where the powder bags waited to be loaded. The men ate the meal sitting on the deck, while the bosun’s mates took around a double ration of rum. A band began playing on the Conqueror. “Where’s our band?” Chase demanded. “Have them play! Have them play! I’d like some music.”
But before the band could gather, the Victory signaled to Pucelle, a signal that was repeated by the Euryalus. “Our number, sir!” Lieutenant Connors shouted, then watched the frigate that sailed wide out on the larboard side of Nelson’s column. “You’re invited to take breakfast with the admiral, sir.”
“I am?” Chase sounded delighted. “Inform his lordship I’m on my way.”
The barge crew was summoned while the barge itself, which was already on tow behind the ship, was hauled up to the starboard side. Lord William stepped forward, plainly expecting to accompany Chase to the Victory, but the captain turned to Sharpe instead. “You’ll come, Sharpe? Of course you will!”
“Me?” Sharpe blinked in astonishment. “I’m not dressed to meet an admiral, sir!”
“You look fine, Sharpe. Ragged, perhaps, but fine.” Chase, blithely ignoring Lord William’s ill-concealed indignation, dropped his voice. “Besides, he’ll expect me to bring a lieutenant, but if I take Haskell, Peel will never forgive me and if I take Peel, Haskell will feel slighted, so you’ll have to do.” Chase grinned, pleased with the idea of introducing Sharpe to his beloved Nelson. “And you’ll divert him, Sharpe. He’s a perverse man, he likes soldiers.” Chase drew Sharpe forward as the barge crew, led by the huge Hopper, scrambled down the steps built into the Pucelle’s side. “You go first, Sharpe,” Chase said. “The boys will make sure you don’t get a bath.”
The side of a warship leaned steeply inward, for the ships were built to bulge out close to the water line, and that generous slope made the first few steps easy enough, but the nearer Sharpe came to the water line the steeper the narrow steps became and, though there was scarcely any wind, the Pucelle was rising and falling in the big swells, while the barge was falling and rising, and Sharpe could feel his boots sliding on the lower wooden ledges that were slimy with growth. “Hold it there, sir,” Hopper growled at him, then shouted, “Now!” and two pairs of hands unceremoniously grasped Sharpe by his breeches and jacket and hauled him safe into the barge. Clouter, the escaped slave, was one of his helpers and he grinned as Sharpe found his feet.
Chase came nimbly down the steps, glanced once at the pitching barge, then stepped gracefully onto the rear thwart. “It’ll be a stiff pull, Hopper.”
“It’ll be easy enough, sir, easy enough.”
Chase took the tiller himself while Hopper sat at an oar. It was indeed a hard pull and a long one, but the barge crept past the intervening ships and Sharpe could stare up at their massive striped sides. From the white and red barge, low down among the swells, the ships looked vast, cumbersome and indestructible.
“I also brought you,” Chase grinned at Sharpe, “because your inclusion will annoy Lord William. He doubtless thinks he should have been invited, but bless me, how he would bore Nelson!” Chase waved to an officer high on the stern of a seventy-four. “That’s the Leviathan,” he told Sharpe, “under Harry Bayntun. He’s a prime fellow, prime! I served with him in the old Bellona. I was only a youngster, but they were happy days, happy days.” The swell lifted the Leviathan’s stern, revealing an expanse of green copper and trailing weed. “Besides,” Chase went on, “Nelson can be useful to you.”
“Useful?”
“Lord William don’t like you,” Chase said, not bothering that he was being overheard by Hopper and Clouter who had the two stroke oars nearest the stern, “which means he’ll try and obstruct your career. But I know Nelson’s a friend of Colonel Stewart, and Stewart’s one of your strange riflemen, so perhaps his lordship will put in a word for you? Of course he will, he’s the very soul of generosity.”
It took a half-hour to reach the flagship, but at last Chase steered the barge into the Victory’s starboard flank and one of his men hooked onto its chains so that the small boat was held just beneath another ladder as steep and perilous as the one Sharpe had descended on the Pucelle. A gilded entryway was halfway up the ladder, but its door was closed, meaning Sharpe must climb all the way to the top. “You first, Sharpe,” Chase said. “Jump and cling on!”
“God help me,” Sharpe muttered. He stood on a thwart, twisted the cutlass out of his way, and leaped for the ladder when the barge was heaved up by a wave. He clung on desperately, then climbed past the entryway’s gilded frame. A hand reached down from the weather deck and hauled him through the entry port where a line of bosun’s mates waited to welcome Chase with their whistles.
Chase was grinning as he scrambled up the side. A lieutenant, immaculately uniformed, saluted him, then inclined his head when Sharpe was introduced. “You’re most welcome, sir,” the lieutenant told Chase. “Another seventy-four today is a blessing from heaven.”
“It’s good of you to let me join the celebrations,” Chase said, removing his hat to salute the quarterdeck. Sharpe hurriedly followed suit as the bosun’s whistles made their strange twittering sound. The Victory’s upper decks were crowded with gunners, sail-handlers and marines who ignored the visitors, though one older man, a sailmaker, judging from the big needles thrust into his gray hair which was bundled on top of his head, did bob down as Chase was led toward the quarterdeck. Chase stopped, clicked his fingers. “Prout, isn’t it? You were on the Bellona with me.”
“I remembers you, sir,” Prout said, tugging the hair over his forehead, “and you was just a boy, sir.”