An hour later it was dark, India was gone and Sharpe sailed beneath the stars.

“The war is lost,” Captain Peculiar Cromwell declared, “lost.” He made the statement in a harsh, flat voice, then frowned at the tablecloth. It was the Calliope’s third day out from Bombay and she was running before a gentle wind. She was, as Captain Chase had told Sharpe, a fast ship and the East India Company frigate had ordered Cromwell to shorten sail during the day because she was in danger of outrunning the slower ships. Cromwell had grumbled at the order, then had taken so much canvas from the yards that the Calliope now sailed at the convoy’s rear.

Anthony Pohlmann had invited Sharpe to take supper in the cuddy where Captain Cromwell nightly presided over those wealthier passengers who had paid to travel in the luxurious stern cabins. The cuddy was in the poop, the highest part of the ship, just forward of the two roundhouse cabins that were the largest, most lavish and most expensive. Lord William Hale and the Baron von Dornberg occupied the roundhouse, while beneath them, on the main deck of the ship, the great cabin had been divided into four compartments for the ship’s other wealthy passengers. One was a nabob and his wife who returned to their Cheshire home after twenty profitable years in India, another was a barrister who had been traveling after practicing in the Supreme Court in Bengal, the third was a gray-haired major from the 96th who was retiring from the army, while the last cabin belonged to Pohlmann’s servant who alone among the stern passengers was not invited to eat in the cuddy.

It was the Scottish major, a stocky man called Arthur Dalton, who frowned at Peculiar Cromwell’s declaration that the war was lost. “We’ve beaten the French in India,” the major protested, “and their navy is on its knees.”

“If their navy is on its knees,” Cromwell growled, “why are we sailing in convoy?” He stared belligerently at Dalton, waiting for an answer, but the major declined to take up the cudgels and Cromwell looked triumphantly about the cuddy.