LITMIR.BIZ

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‘because this dead cousin of yours owes me fourteen pounds, seven shillings and threepence ha’penny.’

      ‘Put the pistol away,’ Panjit said, waving his bodyguards back. He was nervous. Dealing with a courteous naval captain who was an obvious gentleman was one thing, but the red-coated ensign looked wild, and the pistol’s muzzle was grinding into Nana Rao’s skull so that the merchant whimpered with pain. ‘Just put the pistol away,’ Panjit said soothingly.

      ‘You think I’m daft?’ Sharpe sneered. ‘Besides, the magistrates can’t do anything to me if I shoot your cousin. He’s already dead! You said so yourself. He’s nothing but ashes in the river.’ He twisted Nana Rao’s hair, making the kneeling man gasp. ‘Fourteen pounds,’ Sharpe said, ‘seven shillings and threepence ha’penny.’

      ‘I’ll pay it!’ Nana Rao gasped.

      ‘And Captain Chase wants his money too,’ Sharpe said.

      ‘Two hundred and sixteen guineas,’ Chase said, brushing off his hat, ‘though I think we deserve a little more for having worked the miracle of bringing Nana Rao back to life!’

      Panjit was no fool. He looked at Chase’s seamen who were picking up their capstan bars and readying themselves to continue the fight. ‘No magistrates?’ he asked Sharpe.

      ‘I hate magistrates,’ Sharpe said.

      Panjit’s face betrayed a flicker of a smile. ‘If you were to let go of my cousin’s hair,’ he suggested, ‘then I think we can all talk business.’

      Sharpe let go of Nana Rao, lowered the flint of the pistol and stepped back. He stood momentarily to attention. ‘Ensign Sharpe, sir,’ he introduced himself to Chase.

      ‘You are no ensign, Sharpe, but a ministering angel.’ Chase climbed the steps with an outstretched hand. Despite the blood on his face he was a good-looking man with a confidence and friendliness that seemed to come from a contented and good-natured character. ‘You are the deus ex machina, Ensign, as welcome as a whore on a gundeck or a breeze in the horse latitudes.’ He spoke lightly, but there was no doubting the fervency of his thanks and, instead of shaking Sharpe’s hand, he embraced him. ‘Thank you,’ he whispered, then stepped back. ‘Hopper!’

      ‘Sir?’ The huge bosun with the tattooed arms who had been laying enemies left and right before he was overwhelmed stepped forward.

      ‘Clear the decks, Hopper. Our enemies wish to discuss surrender terms.’

      ‘Aye aye, sir.’

      ‘And this is Ensign Sharpe, Hopper, and he is to be treated as a most honoured friend.’

      ‘Aye aye, sir,’ Hopper said, grinning.

      ‘Hopper commands my barge crew,’ Chase explained to Sharpe, ‘and those battered gentlemen are his oarsmen. This night may not go down as one of our greater victories, gentlemen’ – Chase was now addressing his bruised and bleeding men – ‘but a victory it still is, and I thank you.’

      The yard was cleared, chairs were fetched from the house, and terms discussed.

      It had been a guinea, Sharpe thought, exceedingly well spent.

      ‘I rather liked the fellows,’ Chase said.

      ‘Panjit and Nana Rao? They’re rogues,’ Sharpe said. ‘I liked them too.’

      ‘Took their defeat like gentlemen!’

      ‘They got off light, sir,’ Sharpe said. ‘Must have made a fortune on that fire.’

      ‘Oldest trick in the bag,’ Captain Chase said. ‘There used to be a fellow on the Isle of Dogs who claimed thieves had cleaned out his chandlery on the night before some foreign ship sailed, and the victims always fell for it.’ Chase chuckled and Sharpe said nothing. He had known the man Chase spoke of, and had even helped him clear the warehouse one night, but he thought it best to be silent. ‘But you and I are all right, Sharpe, other than a scratch and a bruise,’ Chase went on, ‘and that’s all that matters, eh?’

      ‘We’re all right, sir,’ Sharpe agreed. The two men, followed by Chase’s barge crew, were walking back through the pungent alleys of Bombay and both were carrying money. Chase had originally contracted with Rao to supply his ship with rum, brandy, wine and tobacco, and now, instead of the two hundred and sixteen guineas he had paid the merchant, he was carrying three hundred, while Sharpe had two hundred rupees, so all in all, Sharpe reckoned, it had been a good evening’s work, especially as Panjit had promised to supply Sharpe with the bed, blankets, bucket, lantern, chest, arrack, tobacco, soap and filter machine, all to be delivered to the Calliope at dawn and at no cost to Sharpe. The two Indians had been eager to placate the Englishmen once they realized that Chase and Sharpe had no intention of telling the rest of the fleeced victims that Nana Rao still lived, and so the merchants had fed their unwanted guests, plied them with arrack, paid the money, sworn eternal friendship and bid them good night. Now Chase and Sharpe groped their way through the dark city.

      ‘God, this place stinks!’ Chase said.

      ‘You’ve not been here before?’ Sharpe asked, surprised.

      ‘I’ve been five months in India,’ Chase said, ‘but always at sea. Now I’m living ashore for a week, and it stinks. My God, how the place stinks!’

      ‘No more than London,’ Sharpe said, which was true, but here the smells were different. Instead of coal fumes there was bullock-dung smoke and the rich odours of spices and sewage. It was a sweet smell, ripe even, but not unpleasant, and Sharpe was thinking back to when he had first arrived and how he had recoiled from the smell that he now thought homely and even enticing. ‘I’ll miss it,’ he admitted. ‘I sometimes wish I wasn’t going back to England.’

      ‘Which ship are you on?’

      ‘The Calliope.’

      Chase evidently found that amusing. ‘So what do you make of Peculiar?’

      ‘Peculiar?’ Sharpe asked.

      ‘Peculiar Cromwell, of course, the Captain.’ Chase looked at Sharpe. ‘Surely you’ve met him!’

      ‘I haven’t. Never heard of him.’

      ‘But the convoy must have arrived two months ago,’ Chase said.

      ‘It did.’

      ‘Then you should have made an effort to see Peculiar. That’s his real name, by the way, Peculiar Cromwell. Odd, eh? He was navy once, most of the East Indiamen captains were navy, but Peculiar resigned because he wanted to become rich. He also believed he should have been made admiral without spending tedious years as a mere captain. He’s an odd soul, but he sails a tidy ship, and a fast one. I can’t believe you didn’t make the effort to meet him.’

      ‘Why should I?’ Sharpe asked.

      ‘To make sure you get some privileges aboard, of course. Can I assume you’ll be travelling in steerage?’

      ‘I’m travelling cheap, if that’s what you mean,’ Sharpe said. He spoke bitterly, for though he had paid the lowest possible rate, his passage was still costing him one hundred and seven pounds and fifteen shillings. He had thought the army would pay for the voyage, but the army had refused, saying that Sharpe was accepting an invitation to join the 95th Rifles and if the 95th Rifles refused to pay his passage then damn them, damn their badly coloured coats, and damn Sharpe. So he had cut one of the precious diamonds from the seam of his red coat and paid for the voyage himself. He still had a king’s ransom in the precious stones that he had taken from the Tippoo Sultan’s body in a dank tunnel at Seringapatam, but he resented using the loot to pay the East India Company. Britain had sent Sharpe to India, and Britain, Sharpe reckoned, should fetch him back.

      ‘So the clever thing to have done, Sharpe,’ Chase said, ‘would have been to introduce yourself to Peculiar while he was living ashore and given the greedy bugger a present, because then he’d have assigned

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