Lieutenant Ford groaned. David was taking on Goliath and winning.

The sound of the American gunfire came over the wind-broken water like a growl of thunder, then the lugger was spinning about, sails rippling as the American skipper let his speed carry him through the wind’s eye, until, taut on the opposite tack, he headed back past the brig’s counter towards the fleet of chasse-marees.

The brig, foresails at last catching the wind to lever her hull around, received a second mocking broadside. The American carried five guns on each flank, small guns, but their shot punctured the brig’s Bermudan cedar to spread death down the packed deck.

Two of the brig’s guns punched smoke into the cold wind, but the American had judged his action well and the brig dared fire no more for fear of hitting the chasse-marees into which, like a wolf let rip into a flock, the American sailed.

The hired coasters were unarmed. Each sea-worn boat, sails frayed, was crewed by four men who did not expect, beneath the protection of their enemy’s Navy, to face the gunfire of an ally.

The French civilian crews leaped into the cold water as the Americans, serving their guns with an efficiency that Sharpe could only admire even if he could not applaud, put ball after ball into the luggers’ hulls. The gunners aimed low, intending to shatter, sink, and panic.

Ships collided. One chasse-maree’s mainmast, its shrouds cut, splintered down to the water in a tangle of tarred cables and tumbling spars. One boat was settling in the churning sea, another, its rudder shot away, turned broadside to receive the numbing shock of another’s bow in its gunwales.

“Fire!” Captain Bampfylde roared again, this time not as an order, but in alarm. Flames were visible on a French boat, then another, and Sharpe guessed the Americans were using shells as grenades. Rigging flared like a lit fuse, two more boats collided, tangled, and the flames flickered across the gap. Then a merciful rain-squall swept out of Biscay to help douse the flames even as it helped hide the American boat.

“They’ll not catch her,” Lieutenant Ford said indignantly.

“Damn his eyes!” Bampfylde said.

The American had got clear away. She could outsail her square-rigged pursuers, and she did. The last Sharpe saw of the black-hulled ship was the flicker of her grey sails in the grey squall and the bright flash of her gaudy flag.

“That’s Killick!” The naval captain spoke with a fury made worse by impotence. „I’ll wager that’s Killick!“

The spectators, appalled by what they had seen, watched the chaos in the harbour approach. Two luggers were sinking, three were burning, and another four were inextricably tangled together. Of the remaining ten boats no less than half had grounded themselves on the harbour bar and were being pushed inexorably higher by the force of the wind-driven, flowing tide. A damned American, in a cockle boat, had danced scornful rings around the Royal Navy and, even worse, had done it within sight of the Army.

Captain Horace Bampfylde closed his spyglass and dropped it into his pocket. He looked down at Sharpe. “Mark that well,” the captain said, “mark it very well! I shall look to you for retribution.”

“Me?” Sharpe said in astonishment.

But there was no answer, for the two naval officers had strode away leaving a puzzled Sharpe and a tangle of scorched wreckage that heaved on the sea’s grey surface and bobbed towards the land where an Army, on the verge of its enemy’s country, gathered itself for its next advance, but whether to north or east, or by bridge or by boat, no one in France yet knew.

CHAPTER 2

He had a cutwater of a face; sharp, lined, savagely tanned; a dangerously handsome face framed by a tangled shock of gold-dark hair. It was battered, beaten by winds and seas and scarred by blades and scorched by powder-blasts, but still a handsome face; enough to make the girls look twice. It was just the kind of face to annoy Major Pierre Ducos who disliked such tall, confident, and handsome men.

“Anything you can tell me,” Ducos said with forced politeness, “would be of the utmost use.”

“I can tell you,” Cornelius Killick said, “that a British brig is burying its dead and that the bastards have got close to forty chasse-marees in the harbour.”

“Close to?” Ducos asked.

“It’s difficult to make an accurate count when you’re firing cannon, Major.” The American, careless of Ducos’ sinister power, leaned over the malachite table and lit a cigar from a candle’s flame. “Aren’t you going to thank me?”

Ducos’ voice was sour with undisguised irony. “The Empire is most grateful to you, Captain Killick.”

“Grateful enough to fetch me some copper sheeting?” Killick’s French was excellent. “That was our agreement.”

“I shall order some sent to you. Your ship is at Gujan, correct?”

“Correct.”

Ducos had no intention of ordering copper sheeting sent to the Bassin d’Arcachon, but the American had to be humoured. The presence of the privateer captain had been most fortuitous for Ducos, but what happened to the American now was of no importance to an embattled France.

Cornelius Killick was the master of the Thuella, a New England schooner of sleek, fast lines. She had been built for one purpose alone; to evade the British blockade and, under Killick’s captaincy, the Thuella had become a thorn in the Royal Navy’s self-esteem. Whether as a cargo ship that evaded British patrols, or as a privateer that snapped up stragglers from British convoys, the schooner had led a charmed life until, at the beginning of January, as the Thuella stole from the mouth of the Gironde in a dawn mist, a British frigate had come from the silvered north and its bow-chasers had thumped nine-pounder balls into the Thuella’s transom.

The schooner, carrying a cargo of French twelve-pounder guns for the American Army, turned south. Her armament was no match for a frigate, nor could her speed save her in the light, mist-haunted airs. For three hours she was pounded. Shot after shot crashed into the stern and Killick knew that the British gunners were firing low to spring his planks and sink his beloved ship. But the Thuella had not sunk, and the mist was stirred by catspaws of wind, and the wind became a breeze and, even though damaged, the schooner had outrun her pursuer and taken refuge in the vast Bassin d’Arcachon. There, safe behind the guns of the Teste de Buch fort, the Thuella was beached for repairs.

The wounded Thuella needed copper, oak, and pitch. Day followed day and the supplies were promised, but never came. The American consul in Bordeaux pleaded on Cornelius Killick’s behalf, and the only answer had been the strange request, from Major Pierre Ducos, that the American take a chasse-maree south and investigate why the British collected such craft in St Jean de Luz. There was no French Navy to make the reconnaissance, and no French civilian crew, lured by British gold, could be trusted with the task, and so Killick had gone. Now, as he had promised, he had come to this lavish room in Bordeaux to give his report.

“Would you have any opinion,” Ducos now asked the tall American, “why the British are hiring chasse-marees?”

“Perhaps they want a regatta?” Killick laughed, saw that this Frenchman had no sense of humour at all, and sighed instead. “They plan to land on your coast, presumably.”

“Or build a bridge?”

“Where to? America? They’re filling the damned harbour with boats.” Killick drew on his cigar. “And if they were going to make a bridge, Major, wouldn’t they take down the masts? Besides, where could they build it?”

Ducos unrolled a map and tapped the estuary of the Adour. “There?”

Cornelius Killick hid his impatience, remembering that the French had never understood the sea, which was why the British fleets now sailed with such impunity. “That estuary,” the American said mildly, “has a tidefall of over fifteen feet, with currents as foul as rat-puke. If the British build a bridge there, Major, they’ll drown an army.”