Sharpe's Devil

Herrera that his troops must leave their fortifications before nine o'clock this morning. Officers can wear side- arms, but all other weapons must be…' His Lordship's voice tailed away to nothing. He was no longer looking at his watch, nor even at the salacious pictures, but was instead staring incredulously across the misted harbor. Then, recovering himself, he managed a feeble blasphemy. 'Good God.'

'Bloody hell,' Sharpe said.

'I don't believe it!' Major Miller, his chin lathered, stared across the water.

'Good God,' Cochrane said again, for the Spaniards, without waiting for an envoy, or for any kind of attack, were simply abandoning their remaining defenses. Three boats were rowing hard away from Manzanera Island, while the flag had rippled down over Fort Niebla and Sharpe could see its garrison marching to the quay where a whole fleet of longboats waited. The Spanish were withdrawing up the river, going the fourteen miles to the Citadel itself. 'Christ on a donkey!' Cochrane blasphemed obscurely, 'But it rather looks like complete victory, does it not?'

'Congratulations, my Lord,' Sharpe said.

'I never thanked you for last night, did I? Allow me to, my dear Sharpe.' Cochrane offered Sharpe a hand, but continued to gape in disbelief at the Spanish evacuation. 'Good God almighty!'

'We still have to take Valdivia,' Sharpe said cautiously.

'So we do! So we do!' Cochrane turned away. 'Boats! I want boats! We're in a rowing race, my boys! We don't want those bastards adding their muskets to the town's defenses! Let's have some boats here! Mister Almante! Signal the O'Higgins.Tell them we need boats! Boats!'

In the first pearly light of dawn Sharpe had seen a Spanish longboat beached beneath the ramparts of Fort San Carlos. He presumed the boat had served to provision the fort from the main Spanish commissary in Fort Niebla, but now it would help Cochrane complete his victory. Sharpe, knowing it would take time to fetch boats from the O'Higgins, ran back to the smaller Fort San Carlos where, shouting at Harper and the seamen to bring their weapons, he scrambled down the steep cliff path which led to a small shingle beach. A dozen startled seals flopped into the water as his hurried progress triggered a score of small avalanches, then his boots grated on the shingle and he began heaving the boat toward the sea.

The first thirty men to reach the shingle gained places in the boat. Sixteen seamen took the oars, the rest crouched between the thwarts. They carried muskets and cutlasses. Sharpe told them their task was to overtake the fleeing Spaniards and stop them from reinforcing Valdivia, then he encouraged the oarsmen by saying that the fugitives were bound to be carrying Fort Niebla's valuables in their boats.

The boat, fueled by greed, fairly leaped ahead. Cochrane, still waiting at Fort Amargos for his own boats to come from the O'Higgins, bellowed at Sharpe to pick him up, but Sharpe just waved, then urged his oarsmen on.

They passed the O'Higgins. What was left of the warship's crew gave a cheer. The coxswain of Sharpe's boat, a gray-haired Spaniard, was muttering that the sequestered Spanish longboat was a pig, with a buckled keelson and sprung planks, and that Cochrane would soon catch them in his superior boats. 'Row, you bastards!' the coxswain shouted at the oarsmen. It was a race now, a race to snatch the plunder from the demoralized enemy.

Far off to Sharpe's right a warship had raised the Royal Navy's white ensign. The name Charybdis was inscribed in gold at her stern. A nearby merchant ship flew the Stars and Stripes. The two crews watched the odd race and some waved what Sharpe took to be encouragement. 'Nice to see the navy here,' Harper shouted from the bows. 'Maybe they can give us a ride home!'

The longboat reached the strait between Manzanera Island and Fort Niebla. The gun barrels that should have kept Valdivia safe now stared emptily from abandoned embrasures. The gates of Fort Niebla hung open, while the remains of a cooking fire dribbled a trickle of smoke from a hut on Manzanera Island. A small, rough- haired dog yelped at the passing boat from the beach beneath the earthworks that protected the island's guns, but there were no other signs of life. The Spanish had deserted a position as strong as any Sharpe had ever seen. A man could have died of old age before he would have needed to yield Niebla or Manzanera, yet the Spanish had vanished into the morning mist without firing a shot.

The oarsmen grunted as the boat slammed into the turgid current of the outflowing Valdivia River. Harper, in the boat's bows, was watching for the fugitives, but Sharpe, in the stern, was looking for Cochrane. Some of the men in Sharpe's boat were bailing with their caps. The old boat had gaping seams and was leaking at an alarming rate, but the men were coping and the oarsmen had found a good, steady rhythm. Sharpe could see Cochrane's boats striking out from the far shore, but they were still a long way behind.

'What do we do if we catch up with the bastards?' the coxswain asked Sharpe.

'Say boo to them. They'll surrender.'

The coxswain laughed. They were rowing past the quays at the river's mouth. A group of bemused families had come from the fishermen's cottages to stare at the morning's events. Sharpe wondered what difference any of this would make to such pitiably poor people. Bautista's rule could not be easy, but would O'Higgins make life better? Sharpe doubted it. He had talked once with an old man in the village of Seleglise, a man ancient enough to remember the old French king and to remember all the other Paris governments that had come through bloody revolution or coup d'etat, and the old man had reckoned that not one of those governments had made the slightest difference to his life. His cows had still needed milking, his vegetables had needed weeding, his corn had needed cutting, his cherries needed picking, his taxes needed paying, the church had needed his money and no one, neither priest, politician, taxman nor prefect, had ever given him a penny or a thank-you for any of it. No doubt the Chilean peasantry would feel the same. All this morning's excitement meant was that a different set of politicians would become rich at the country's expense.

The boat was in the river valley now. The hills on either side were thick with trees. Two herons flapped lazily down one bank. The oarsmen had slowed, settling to the long haul. A fisherman, casting a hand net from a small leather boat, abandoned his tackle and paddled furiously for the safety of land as the strange boat full of armed men appeared. Harper had cocked a musket in case the Spaniards had set an ambush beyond the river's first bend.

The coxswain hugged the right bank, cutting the corner and risking the shallows to make the bend swiftly. The oars brushed reeds, then the river straightened and Sharpe, standing to get a clear view ahead, felt a pang, for there were no boats in sight. For a second he thought the Spaniards must have such superior boats that they had somehow converted a two-mile lead into four or five miles, but then he saw that the Spanish longboats had stopped altogether and were huddled on the southern river-bank. There must have been twenty boats there, all crammed with men and none of them moving. 'There!' he pointed for Harper.

Then Sharpe saw horsemen on the river's bank. Cavalry? Had Bautista sent reinforcements upriver? For a second Sharpe was tempted to turn the boat and seize Fort Niebla before the Spaniards, realizing how hugely they outnumbered Cochrane's puny forces, made their counterattack, but Harper suddenly shouted that the dagoes on the riverbank were flying a white flag.

'Bloody hell,' Sharpe said, for there was indeed a white flag of truce or surrender.

The oarsmen, sensing Sharpe's momentary indecision, and needing a rest, had stopped rowing and the boat was beginning to drift back downstream. 'A trap?' the coxswain asked.

'God knows,' Sharpe said. Cochrane was forever using flags as a trick to get himself close to the enemy, and were the Spaniards now learning to use the same ruse? 'Put me ashore,' he told the coxswain.

The oars dipped again, took the strain, and drove hard for the southern bank. The bow touched, and Sharpe clambered over the thwarts, then jumped up onto tussocky grass. Harper followed him. Sharpe loosened the sword in its scabbard, checked that his pistols were primed, and walked slowly toward the horsemen who were a half mile away.

There were not many horsemen, perhaps twenty, and none was in uniform, suggesting that this was not a cavalry unit. The men carried two flags—one the white flag of truce, and the other a complicated ensign bearing a coat of arms. 'They look like civilians,' Harper commented.

The horsemen were cantering toward Sharpe and Harper. One of the leading riders had a large black hat and a scarlet sash. He stood in his stirrups and waved, as if to signify that he meant no harm. Sharpe checked that the longboat with its cargo of armed sailors was close enough to offer him support, then waited.

'There's that bastard Blair!' Harper exclaimed.

'Where?'