JК
Sharpes Devil :: Корнуэлл Бернард
Страница: 31 из 209Even the wine was sour.
Sharpe and Harper, crammed together in a tiny cabin scarcely big enough for a dog, were luckier than most passengers, for neither man was seasick, and both were so accustomed to soldiers' food that a return to half-rotted seamen's rations gave no offense. They ate what they could, which was not much, and Harper even lost weight so that, by the time the Espiritu Santo hammered into a sleety wind near Cape Horn, the Irishman could almost walk through the cabin door without touching the frame on either side.
"I'm shriveling away, so I am," he complained as the frigate quivered from the blow of a great sea. "I'll be glad when we reach land, devils or no devils, and there'll be some proper food to eat. Christ, but it's cold up there!"
"No mermaids in sight?"
"Only a three-horned sea serpent." The grotesque stories of the fearful Spanish army officers had become a joke between the two men. "It's bad up there," Harper warned more seriously. "Filthy bad."
Sharpe went on deck a few moments later to find that conditions were indeed bad. The ocean was a white shambles, blown ragged by a freezing wind that came slicing off the icesheets which lay to the south. The Espiritu Santo, its sails furled down to mere dark scraps, labored and thumped and staggered against the weather's malevolence. Sharpe, tired of being cooped up in the stinking 'tweendecks, and wanting some fresh air, steadied himself against the quarterdeck's starboard carronade. There were few other people on deck, merely a handful of sailors who crouched in the lee scuppers, two men who were draped in tarpaulin capes by the wheel, and a solitary cloaked figure who clung to a shroud on the weather side of the poop.
The cloaked man, seeing Sharpe, carefully negotiated a passage across the wet and heaving deck, and Sharpe, to his astonishment, saw that it was the reclusive Captain Ardiles, who had not been seen by any of the passengers since the Espiritu Santo had left Saint Helena.
"Cape Horn!" Ardiles shouted, pointing off to starboard.
Sharpe stared. For a long time he could see nothing, then an explosion of shredded water betrayed where a black scrap of rock resisted the pounding waves.
"That's the last scrap of good earth that many a sailorman saw before he drowned!" Ardiles spoke with a gloomy relish, then clutched at the tarred rigging as the Espiritu Santo fell sideways into the green heart of a wave's trough. He waited till the frigate had recovered and was laboring up a great slope of savaged white sea. "So what did you think of Napoleon?" Ardiles asked Sharpe.
Sharpe and Harper, crammed together in a tiny cabin scarcely big enough for a dog, were luckier than most passengers, for neither man was seasick, and both were so accustomed to soldiers' food that a return to half-rotted seamen's rations gave no offense. They ate what they could, which was not much, and Harper even lost weight so that, by the time the Espiritu Santo hammered into a sleety wind near Cape Horn, the Irishman could almost walk through the cabin door without touching the frame on either side.
"I'm shriveling away, so I am," he complained as the frigate quivered from the blow of a great sea. "I'll be glad when we reach land, devils or no devils, and there'll be some proper food to eat. Christ, but it's cold up there!"
"No mermaids in sight?"
"Only a three-horned sea serpent." The grotesque stories of the fearful Spanish army officers had become a joke between the two men. "It's bad up there," Harper warned more seriously. "Filthy bad."
Sharpe went on deck a few moments later to find that conditions were indeed bad. The ocean was a white shambles, blown ragged by a freezing wind that came slicing off the icesheets which lay to the south. The Espiritu Santo, its sails furled down to mere dark scraps, labored and thumped and staggered against the weather's malevolence. Sharpe, tired of being cooped up in the stinking 'tweendecks, and wanting some fresh air, steadied himself against the quarterdeck's starboard carronade. There were few other people on deck, merely a handful of sailors who crouched in the lee scuppers, two men who were draped in tarpaulin capes by the wheel, and a solitary cloaked figure who clung to a shroud on the weather side of the poop.
The cloaked man, seeing Sharpe, carefully negotiated a passage across the wet and heaving deck, and Sharpe, to his astonishment, saw that it was the reclusive Captain Ardiles, who had not been seen by any of the passengers since the Espiritu Santo had left Saint Helena.
"Cape Horn!" Ardiles shouted, pointing off to starboard.
Sharpe stared. For a long time he could see nothing, then an explosion of shredded water betrayed where a black scrap of rock resisted the pounding waves.
"That's the last scrap of good earth that many a sailorman saw before he drowned!" Ardiles spoke with a gloomy relish, then clutched at the tarred rigging as the Espiritu Santo fell sideways into the green heart of a wave's trough. He waited till the frigate had recovered and was laboring up a great slope of savaged white sea. "So what did you think of Napoleon?" Ardiles asked Sharpe.