Sharpe looked at Lady Grace, who looked back, expressionless.

“Hats on,” Chase said.

The officers went away to their duties while the seamen carried away the flag and plank. Lady Grace turned toward the quarterdeck steps and Sharpe, left alone, went to the rail and stared down into the sea.

“The Lord giveth”—Lord William Hale was suddenly beside Sharpe—”and the Lord taketh away. Blessed be the name of the Lord.”

Sharpe, astonished that his lordship should deign to speak to him, was silent for a few seconds. “I’m sorry about your secretary, my lord.”

Lord William looked at Sharpe who was again struck by his lordship’s resemblance to Sir Arthur Wellesley. The same cold eyes, the same hooked nose that looked like a hawk’s beak, but something in Lord William’s face now suggested amusement, as though his lordship was privy to information that Sharpe did not possess. “Are you really sorry, Sharpe?” Lord William asked. “That’s good of you. I spoke well of him just now, but what else could I say? In truth he was a narrow man, envious, inefficient and inadequate to his duties and I doubt the world will much regret his passing.” Lord William pulled his hat on as if to walk away, then turned back to Sharpe. “It occurs to me, Sharpe, that I never thanked you for the service you did for my wife on the Calliope. That was remiss of me, and I apologize. I also thank you for that service, and will thank you further if we do not speak of it again.”

“Of course, my lord.”

Lord William walked away. Sharpe watched him, wondering if there was some game being played that he was unaware of. He remembered Braithwaite’s claim to have left a letter among Lord William’s papers, then dismissed that idea as a lie. Sharpe reckoned he was seeing dangers where there were none and so he shrugged the conversation away and climbed, first to the quarterdeck and then to the poop where he stood at the taffrail and watched the wake dissipate in the sea.

He heard the footsteps behind him and knew who they belonged to before she came to the rail where, like him, she stared at the sea. “I’ve missed you,” she said softly.

“And I you,” Sharpe said. He gazed at the ship’s wake which rippled the place where a shrouded body sank under a stream of bubbles toward an unending darkness.

“He fell?” Lady Grace asked.

“So it seems,” Sharpe said, “but it must have been a very quick death, which is a blessing.”

“Indeed it is,” she said, then turned to Sharpe. “I find the sun tire-somely hot.”

“Maybe you should go below. My cabin is cooler, I think.”

She nodded, looked into his eyes for a few seconds, then abruptly turned and went.

Sharpe waited five minutes, then followed.

The Pucelle, if anyone could have seen her from out where the flying fish splashed down into the waves, looked beautiful that afternoon. Warships were not elegant. Their hulls were massive, making their masts seem disproportionately short, but Captain Chase had hung every sail high in the wind and those royals, studdingsails and skyscrapers added enough bulk aloft to balance the big yellow and black hull. The gilding on her stern and the silver paint on her figurehead reflected the sun, the yellow on her flanks was bright, her deck was scrubbed pale and clean, while the water broke white at her stem and foamed briefly behind. Her seventy-four massive guns were hidden.

The rot and damp and rust and stench could not be detected from the outside, but inside the ship the stink was no longer noticed. In the forecastle the ship’s last three goats were milked for the captain’s supper. In the bilge the water slopped. Rats were born, fought and died in the hold’s deep darkness. In the magazine a gunner sewed powder bags for the guns, oblivious of a whore who plied her trade between the two leather screens that protected the magazine’s door from an errant spark. In the galley the cook, one-eyed and syphilitic, shuddered at the smell of some badly salted beef, but put it in the caldron anyway, while in his cabin at the stern of the weather deck Captain Llewellyn dreamed of leading his marines in a glorious charge that would capture the Revenant. Four bells of the afternoon watch sounded. On the quarterdeck a seaman cast the log, a lump of wood, and let the line trail fast from its reel. He counted the knots in the line as they vanished over the rail, chanting the numbers aloud while an officer peered at a pocket watch. Captain Chase went to his day cabin and tapped the barometer. Still rising. The off-duty watch slept in their hammocks, swaying together like so many cocoons. The carpenter scarfed a piece of oak into a gun carriage while in Chase’s sleeping cabin an ensign and a lady lay in each other’s arms.

“Did you kill him?” Lady Grace asked Sharpe in a whisper.

“Would it matter if I did?”

She traced a finger down the scar on his face. “I hated him,” she whispered. “From the day he came into William’s employment he just watched me. He would drool.” She shuddered suddenly. “He told me if I went to his cabin he would keep silent. I wanted to slap him. I almost did, but I thought he’d tell William everything if I struck him, so I just walked away. I hated him.”

“And I killed him,” Sharpe said softly.

She said nothing for a while, then she kissed the tip of his nose. “I knew you did. The very moment William asked me where he was I knew you had killed him. Was it really quick?”

“Not very,” Sharpe admitted. “I wanted him to know why he was dying.”

She thought about that for a while, then decided she did not mind if Braithwaite’s end had been slow and painful. “No one’s killed for me before,” she said.

“I’d carve my way through a bloody army for you, lady,” Sharpe said, then again remembered Braithwaite’s claim that he had left a letter for Lord William and again dismissed his fears, reckoning that the claim had been nothing more than a desperate effort by a doomed man to cling onto life. He would not mention it to Lady Grace.

The sun westered, casting the intricate shadow of shrouds and halliards and sails and masts on the green sea. The ship’s bell counted the half hours. Three seamen were brought before Captain Chase, accused of various sins, and all three had their rum rations suspended for a week. A marine drummer boy cut his hand playing with a cutlass and the surgeon bandaged it, then clipped him about the ear for being a bloody little fool. The ship’s cats slept by the galley stove. The purser smelled a cask of water, recoiled from its stench, but chalked a sign on the barrel decreeing that it was drinkable.

And just after the sun set, when the west was a furnace blaze, a last bright ray was reflected off a distant sail.

“Sail on the larboard quarter!” the lookout shouted. “Sail on the larboard quarter.”

Sharpe did not hear the cry. At that moment he would not have heard the last trump, but the rest of the ship heard the news and seemed to quiver with excitement. For the hunt was not lost, it still ran, and the quarry was again in sight.