‘Back to England,’ Sharpe said, and watched as the oars were raised straight up as Hopper used the last of the barge’s momentum to lay her sweetly alongside the floating platform. Sharpe gave Hopper a coin, touched his hat to Mister Collier, thanked the boat’s crew and stepped up onto the platform from where he climbed to the main deck past an open gunport in which a polished cannon muzzle showed.
An officer waited just inside the entry port. ‘Your name?’ he asked peremptorily.
‘Richard Sharpe.’
The officer peered at a list. ‘Your baggage is already aboard, Mister Sharpe, and this is for you.’ He took a folded sheet of paper from a pocket and gave it to Sharpe. ‘Rules of the ship. Read, mark, learn and explicitly obey. Your action station is gun number five.’
‘My what?’ Sharpe asked.
‘Every male passenger is expected to help defend the ship, Mister Sharpe. Gun number five.’ The officer waved across the deck which was so heaped with baggage that none of the guns on the farther side could be seen. ‘Mister Binns!’
A very young officer hurried through the piled baggage. ‘Sir?’
‘Show Mister Sharpe to the lower-deck steerage. One of the seven by sixes, Mister Binns, seven by six. Mallet and nails, look lively, now!’
‘This way, sir,’ Binns said to Sharpe, darting aft. ‘I’ve got the mallet and nails, sir.’
‘The what?’ Sharpe asked.
‘Mallet and nails, sir, so you can nail your furniture to the deck. We don’t want it sliding topsy-turvy if we gets rough weather, sir, which we shouldn’t, sir, not till we reach the Madagascar Straits and it can be lumpy there, sir, very lumpy.’ Binns hurried on, vanishing down a dark companionway like a rabbit down its burrow.
Sharpe followed, but before he reached the companionway he was accosted by Lord William Hale who stepped from behind a pile of boxes. The young man in the sepulchral clothes stood behind his lordship. ‘Your name?’ Hale demanded.
Sharpe bristled. The sensible course was to knuckle under, for Hale was evidently a formidable man in London, but Sharpe had acquired an acute dislike of his lordship. ‘The same as it was ten minutes ago,’ he answered curtly.
Lord William looked into Sharpe’s face which was sunburned, hard and slashed by the wicked scar. ‘You are impertinent,’ Lord William said, ‘and I do not abide impertinence.’ He glanced at the grubby white facings on Sharpe’s jacket. ‘The 74th? I am acquainted with Colonel Wallace and I shall let him know of your insubordination.’ So far Lord William had not raised his voice which was chilling enough anyway, but now a note of indignation did creep in. ‘You could have killed me with that pistol!’
‘Killed you?’ Sharpe asked. ‘No, I couldn’t. I wasn’t aiming at you.’
‘You will write to Colonel Wallace now, Braithwaite,’ Lord William said to the young man in the black clothes, ‘and make sure the letter goes ashore before we sail.’
‘Of course, my lord. At once, my lord,’ Braithwaite said. He was evidently Lord William’s secretary and he shot Sharpe a look of pitying condescension, suggesting that the ensign had come up against forces far too strong for him.
Lord William stepped aside, allowing Sharpe to catch up with the young Binns who had been watching the confrontation from the companionway.
Sharpe was not worried by Lord William’s threat. His lordship could write a thousand letters to Colonel Wallace and much good it would do him for Sharpe was no longer in the 74th. He wore the uniform for he had no other clothes to wear, but once he was back in Britain he would join the 95th with its odd new uniform of a green jacket. He did not like the idea of wearing green. He had always worn red.
Binns waited at the foot of the companionway. ‘Lower deck, sir,’ he said, then pushed through a canvas screen into a dark, humid and foul-smelling space. ‘This is steerage, sir.’
‘Why’s it called steerage?’
‘They used to steer the boats from here, sir, in the old days, before there was wheels. Gangs of men hauling on ropes, sir, must have been hell.’ It still looked hellish. A few lanterns guttered, struggling against the gloom in which a score of sailors were nailing up canvas screens to divide the foetid space into a maze of small rooms. ‘One seven by six,’ Binns shouted, and a sailor gestured to the starboard side where the screens were already in place. ‘Take your pick, sir,’ Binns said, ‘as you’re one of the first gentlemen aboard, but if you wants my advice I’d be as near aft as you can go, and it’s best not to share with a gun, sir.’ He gestured at an eighteen-pounder cannon that half filled one cabin. The weapon was lashed to the deck and pointed at a closed gunport. Binns ushered Sharpe into the empty cubicle next door where he dropped a linen bag on the floor. ‘That’s a mallet and nails, sir, and as soon as your dunnage is delivered you can secure everything shipshape.’ He tied back one side of the canvas box, thus allowing a little dim lantern light to seep into the cabin, then tapped the deck with his foot. ‘All the money’s down below, sir,’ he said cheerfully.
‘The money?’ Sharpe asked.
‘A cargo of indigo, sir, saltpetre, silver bars and silk. Enough to make us all rich a thousand times over.’ He grinned, then left Sharpe to contemplate the tiny space that would be his home for the next four months.
The rear wall of his cabin was the curving side of the ship. The ceiling was low, and crossed by heavy black beams in which some hooks rusted. The floor was the deck, thickly scarred with old nail-holes where previous passengers had hammered down their chests. The remaining three walls were made of dirty canvas, but it was a heaven compared to the accommodation he had been given when he had sailed from Britain to India. Then, a private, he had been content with a hammock and fourteen inches of space in which to swing it.
He squatted in the cabin’s entrance, where a lantern offered some light, and unfolded the ship’s rules. They were printed, though some additions had been inked in afterwards. He was forbidden to go on the quarterdeck unless invited by the ship’s captain or the officer of the watch, and to that prohibition someone had added the warning that, even if he was so invited, he was never to come between the captain and the weather rail. Sharpe did not even know what the weather rail was. Upon going on deck he was required to touch his hat to the quarterdeck, even if the captain was not in sight. Gambling was forbidden. The purser would hold divine service, weather permitting, each Sunday and passengers were required to attend unless excused by the ship’s surgeon. Breakfast would be supplied at eight o’clock in the morning, dinner at midday, tea would be served at four o’clock and supper at eight. All male passengers were required to acquaint themselves with the quarter bill which allocated their action stations. No unshielded flames were to be lit below decks and all lanterns must be extinguished by nine o’clock at night. Smoking was forbidden because of the danger of fire, and passengers who chewed tobacco were to use the spittoons. Spitting on the deck was strictly forbidden. No passenger was to climb the rigging without permission of a ship’s officer. Passengers in steerage, like Sharpe, were prohibited from entering the great cabin or the roundhouse unless invited. There would be no foul language aboard.
‘Christ all-bloody-mighty,’ a sailor grumbled as he struggled with Sharpe’s barrel of arrack. Two other seamen were carrying his bed and another pair were bringing his chest. ‘Got any rope, sir?’ one of them asked.
‘No.’
The sailor produced a length of hemp rope and showed Sharpe how to secure the wooden chest and the heavy hogshead which virtually filled the small space. Sharpe gave the sailor a rupee as thanks, then hammered the nails through the chest’s corners into the deck and roped the barrel to one of the beams on the ship’s side. The bed was a wooden cot, the size of a coffin, which he hung from the hooks in the beams. He suspended the bucket alongside. ‘It’s best to piss through the after gunport when