Бернард Корнуэлл - Sharpe's Escape

"Unless they're going back to their army." Harper suggested.

Vicente stood and peered over the tree, but saw no enemy. "I think they'll be staying on the river," he said. "They won't have found much food between here and Coimbra, so they'll be wanting to make a bridge somewhere."

"A bridge?" Harper asked.

"To reach this bank," Vicente said. "There will be plenty of food on this bank. And if they do make a bridge it will be at Santarem."

"Where's that?"

"South," Vicente said, nodding downstream, "an old fortress above the river."

"Which we have to pass?" Sharpe asked.

"I suggest we do it tonight," Vicente said. "We should rest here for a while, wait for dark, then float downstream."

Sharpe wondered if that was what the Ferreira brothers would be doing. He constantly stared northwards, half expecting to see them, and worried that he did not. Perhaps they had changed their minds? Maybe they had gone to the northern mountains, or else had crossed the Tagus much higher up and used their money to buy horses to carry them down the eastern bank. He told himself it did not really matter, that the only important thing was to get back to the army, but he wanted to find the brothers. Ferreira, at least, should pay for his treachery and Sharpe had a score to settle with Ferragus.

They lingered till dusk, making a fire ashore and brewing a can of strong, gunpowder-flavored tea with the last leaves from Sharpe and Harper's haversacks. Any dragoons would long have ridden back to their base for fear of the partisans who were at their most dangerous in the darkness, and as the light faded Sharpe and Harper pushed the boat out of their refuge and let it drift downstream again. The rain persisted: a soft drizzle that soaked and chilled them as the last light went. Now they were at the mercy of the stream, unable to see or steer, and they let the boat go where it wanted. Sometimes, far off, there was the misted gleam of a fire high in the western hills, and once there was a bigger fire, much closer, but who had lit it was a mystery. Once or twice they bumped into solid pieces of driftwood, and then they brushed past a fallen tree, and an hour or so later, after it seemed to Sharpe that they had drifted for hours, they saw a cluster of rain-hazed lights high up on the western bank. "Santarem," Vicente said softly.

There were sentries on the high wall, lit up there by fires behind the parapet, and Sharpe assumed they were French. He could hear men singing in the town and he imagined the soldiers in the taverns and wondered if the rape and horror that had raged through Coimbra was being visited on Santarem's townsfolk. He crouched low in the boat, even though he knew that any sentry on that high wall could see nothing against the river's inky blackness. It seemed to take forever to pass beneath the ancient ramparts, but at last the lights faded and there was only the wet darkness. Sharpe fell asleep. Sarah bailed the boat with a tin cup. Harper snored while, beside him, Joana shivered. The river was wider now, wider and faster, and Sharpe woke in the wolf light before dawn to see misted trees on the western bank and fog everywhere else. The rain had stopped. He unshipped his oars and gave a few tugs, to warm himself more than anything else. Sarah smiled at him from the stern. "I've been dreaming," she said, "of a cup of tea."

"None left," Sharpe said.

"That's why I was dreaming of it," she said.

Harper had woken and started rowing now, but it seemed to Sharpe they were making no progress at all. The fog had thickened and the boat seemed suspended in a pearly whiteness into which the water faded. He tugged harder at the oars and finally saw the vague shape of a twisted tree on the eastern bank and he kept his eyes on the tree, kept rowing as strongly as he could, and slowly became convinced that the tree was staying in the same place however hard he pulled.

"Tide," Vicente said.

"Tide?"

"It comes up the river," Vicente said, "and it's carrying us backwards. Or trying to. But it will turn."

Sharpe thought about going to the eastern bank and mooring the boat, but then decided that the Ferreira brothers, who could not be so very far behind, might slip past in the fog, so he and Harper pulled at the oars until their hands were blistered with the effort of fighting the flooding tide. The fog grew brighter, the tide at last slackened and a gull flew overhead. They were still miles from the sea, but there was a smell of salt and the water was brackish. The day was growing warmer, and that seemed to thicken the fog which drifted in patches like gun smoke above the swirling gray water. They had to go nearer the western bank to avoid the bedraggled remains of a fish trap made of nets, withies and poles that jutted far out from the eastern shore. There was no movement on the western bank so that they seemed to be alone on a pale river beneath a pearly sky, but then, from ahead, came the unmistakable bang of a cannon. Birds shot up from the trees on the bank and flew in circles as the sound echoed from some unseen hills, rumbled up the river's valley and faded.

"I can't see anything," Vicente reported from the bow.

Sharpe and Harper had rested on their oars and both twisted to see ahead, but there was only the fog over the river. Another cannon sounded and Sharpe thought he saw a patch of the mist thicken, then he rowed two more strokes and there, appearing like a ghost ship in the vapor, was a gunboat firing at the western shore. There were dragoons there, half seen in the mist, scattering from the gunfire. Another cannon blasted from the boat that was anchored in midstream, and a barrel-load of grapeshot threw down two horses and Sharpe saw a sudden spray of blood, almost instantly gone, discolor the fog, and then the gunboat's forward cannon fired and a round shot skipped across the water a score of yards ahead of the skiff. It had been a warning shot, and a man was standing in the gunboat's forepeak, shouting at them to come alongside.

"They're English," Vicente said. He stood in the skiff's bow and waved both arms while Sharpe and Harper pulled towards the gunboat that had one high mast, a low waist, and six gunports visible on its port side which faced upstream. A white ensign hung at the stern while a union flag drooped at the topmast.

"Here!" the man shouted. "Bring that bloody boat here!"

The two aft cannon fired at the retreating dragoons who were now galloping into the fog, leaving dead horses behind. Three seamen with muskets were waiting for the skiff, pointing their guns down into the boat.

"Any of you speak English?" another man called.

"My name's Captain Sharpe!"

"Who?"

"Captain Sharpe, South Essex regiment. And point those bloody muskets somewhere else!"

"You're English?" The astonishment might have come from Sharpe's appearance for he was not wearing his jacket and his beard had grown to a thick stubble.

"No, I'm bloody Chinese," Sharpe snapped. The skiff bumped against the tarred side of the gunboat and Sharpe looked up at a very young naval lieutenant. "Who are you?"

"Lieutenant Davies, commanding here."

"I'm Captain Sharpe, that's Captain Vicente of the Portuguese army, and the big fellow is Sergeant Harper and I'll introduce the ladies later. What we need, Lieutenant, if you'd be so kind, is some proper tea."

They scrambled aboard by using the chain plates which secured the ratlines for the big mast and Sharpe saluted Davies who, though he only looked about nineteen years old and was a lieutenant, nevertheless outranked Sharpe because, as an officer commanding one of His Majesty's vessels, he had the equivalent rank of major in the army. The seamen gave a small cheer as Joana and Sarah climbed over the side in their rain-shrunken breeches. "Quiet on deck!" Davies snarled and the seamen went instantly silent. "Secure the guns," Davies ordered. "Make fast that boat! Lively, lively!" He gestured that Sharpe and his companions should go to the boat's stern. "Welcome to the Squirrel ," he said, "and I think we can supply tea. Might I ask why you're here?"