Captain Horace Bampfylde closed his spyglass and dropped it into his pocket. He looked down at Sharpe. “Mark that well,” the captain said, “mark it very well! I shall look to you for retribution.”
“Me?” Sharpe said in astonishment.
But there was no answer, for the two naval officers had strode away leaving a puzzled Sharpe and a tangle of scorched wreckage that heaved on the sea’s grey surface and bobbed towards the land where an Army, on the verge of its enemy’s country, gathered itself for its next advance, but whether to north or east, or by bridge or by boat, no one in France yet knew.
CHAPTER 2
He had a cutwater of a face; sharp, lined, savagely tanned; a dangerously handsome face framed by a tangled shock of gold-dark hair. It was battered, beaten by winds and seas and scarred by blades and scorched by powder-blasts, but still a handsome face; enough to make the girls look twice. It was just the kind of face to annoy Major Pierre Ducos who disliked such tall, confident, and handsome men.
“Anything you can tell me,” Ducos said with forced politeness, “would be of the utmost use.”
“I can tell you,” Cornelius Killick said, “that a British brig is burying its dead and that the bastards have got close to forty chasse-marees in the harbour.”
“Close to?” Ducos asked.
“It’s difficult to make an accurate count when you’re firing cannon, Major.” The American, careless of Ducos’ sinister power, leaned over the malachite table and lit a cigar from a candle’s flame. “Aren’t you going to thank me?”