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.”
“We grow old, Prout,” Chase said. “We grow damned old! But not too old to give the Dons and Frenchmen a drubbing, eh?”
“We shall beat ‘em, sir,” Prout said.
Chase beamed at his old shipmate, then went to the quarterdeck, which was thickly crowded with officers who politely removed their hats as Chase and Sharpe were ushered aft past the great wheel and under the poop to the admiral’s quarters, which were guarded by a single marine in a short red jacket crossed by a pair of pipe-clayed belts. The lieutenant opened the door without knocking and led Chase and Sharpe through a small sleeping cabin which had been stripped of its furniture and then, again without knocking, into a massive cabin that stretched the whole width of the ship and was lit by the wide array of stern windows. This cabin had also been emptied of its furniture, so that only a single table was left on the black and white checkered canvas floor. Two massive guns, already equipped with their flintlocks, stood on either side of the table.
Sharpe was aware of two men silhouetted against the stern window, but he could not distinguish which was the admiral until Chase put his hat under his arm and offered a bow to the smaller man who was seated at the table. The light was bright behind the admiral and Sharpe still could not see him clearly and he hung back, not wanting to intrude, but Chase turned and gestured him forward. “Allow me to name my particular friend, my lord. Mister Richard Sharpe. He’s on his way to join the Rifles, but he paused long enough to save me from an embarrassment in Bombay and I’m monstrous grateful.”
“You, Chase? An embarrassment? Surely not?” Nelson laughed and gave Sharpe a smile. “I’m most grateful to you, Sharpe. I would not have my friends embarrassed. How long has it been, Chase?”
“Four years, my lord.”
“He was one of my frigate captains,” Nelson said to his companion, a post captain who stood at his shoulder. “He commanded the Spritely and took the Bouvines a week after leaving my command. I never had the chance to congratulate you, Chase, but I do now. It was a creditable action. You know Blackwood?”
“I’m honored to make your acquaintance,” Chase said, bowing to the Honorable Henry Blackwood who commanded the frigate Euryalus.
“Captain Blackwood has been hanging onto the enemy’s apron strings ever since they left Cadiz,” Nelson said warmly, “and you’ve drawn us together now, Blackwood, so your work’s done.”