Sharpes Devil   ::   Корнуэлл Бернард

Sharpe hesitated, wanting his answer to be precise. "He put me in mind of a man who has played a hugely successful joke on people he despises."

Ardiles, who had flat, watchful eyes in a hungry, cadaverous face, thought about Sharpe's answer, then shrugged. "Maybe. But I think he should have been executed for his joke."

Sharpe said nothing. He could see the waves breaking on Cape Horn more clearly now, and could just make out the loom of a black cliff beyond the battered water. God, he thought, but this is a fearful place.

"They made me sick!" Ardiles said suddenly.

"Sick?" Sharpe had only half heard Ardiles's scathing words and had assumed that the frigate's Captain was talking about the seasickness that afflicted most of the army officers.

"Ruiz and the others! Fawning over that man! Jesus! But Bonaparte was our enemy. He did enough damage to Spain! If it were not for Bonaparte you think there'd be any rebellion in South America? He encouraged it! And how many more Spaniards will die for that man's evil? Yet these bastards bowed and scraped to him. Given half a chance they'd have licked his bum cleaner than a nun's finger!"

Sharpe staggered as the ship rolled. A rattle of sleet and foam shot down the deck and slammed into the poop. "I can't say I wasn't impressed by meeting Bonaparte!" he shouted in defense of the Spanish army officers. "He's been my enemy long enough, but I felt privileged to be there. I even liked him!"

"That's because you're English! Your women weren't raped by those French bastards, and your children weren't killed by them!" Ardiles stared balefully into the trough of a scummy wave that roared under the Espiritu Santos counter. "So what did you talk about when you were alone with him?”

"Waterloo."

"Just Waterloo?" Ardiles seemed remarkably suspicious.

"Just that," Sharpe said, with an air of irritation, for it was none of Ardiles's business what he and a stricken Emperor had discussed.

Ardiles, sensing he had offended Sharpe, changed the subject by waving a hand toward the cabins where Ruiz's artillery officers sheltered from the storm in their vomit-rinsed misery. "What do you think of officers who don't share their men's discomforts?"

Sharpe believed that officers who abandoned their men were officers on their way to defeat, but tact kept him from saying as much to the sardonic Ardiles, so instead he made some harmless comment about being no expert on Spanish shipping arrangements.

"I think such officers are bastards!" Ardiles had to shout to be heard over the numbing sound of the huge seas.