Sharpe`s Trafalgar

CHAPTER 9

The British fleet tacked after dark, the signal passed on from ship to ship by lanterns hung in the rigging. Now, instead of sailing northward, the fleet headed south, staying parallel to the enemy ships, but out of their sight. The wind had dropped, but a long swell ran from the western darkness to lift and drop the ponderous hulls. It was a long night. Sharpe went on deck once and saw the stern lanterns of the Conqueror reflecting from the seas ahead, then he gazed eastward as a brilliant flame showed briefly on the horizon. Lieutenant Peel, bundled against the cold, reckoned it was one of the frigates setting off a firework to confuse the enemy. “Keeping them awake, Sharpe, keeping them worried.” Peel slapped his gloved hands together and stamped his feet on the deck.

“Why are they sailing south?” Sharpe asked. He was shaking. He had forgotten just how the cold could bite.

“The good Lord alone knows,” Peel said cheerfully, “and He ain’t telling me. They aren’t going to cover an invasion force in the Channel, that’s for certain. They’re probably heading for the Mediterranean which means they’ll keep on south until they’re clear of the shallows off Cape Trafalgar, then they can run east toward the Straits. Does your chess improve?”

“No,” Sharpe said, “too many rules.” He wondered whether Lady Grace would risk coming to his cabin, but he doubted it, for the night-shrouded ship was unnaturally busy as men readied themselves for the morning. A seaman brought him a cup of Scotch coffee and he drank the bitter liquid, then chewed on the sweetened bread crumbs that gave the coffee its flavor.

“This will be my first battle,” Peel admitted suddenly.

“My first at sea,” Sharpe said.

“It makes you think,” Peel said wistfully.

“It’s better once it starts,” Sharpe suggested. “It’s the waiting that’s hard.”

Peel laughed softly. “Some clever bugger once remarked that nothing concentrates the mind so much as the prospect of being hanged in the morning.”

“I doubt he knew,” Sharpe said. “And besides, we’re the hangmen tomorrow.”

“So we are, so we are,” Peel said, though he could not hide the fears that gnawed at him. “Of course nothing might happen,” he said. “The buggers might give us the slip.” He went to look at the compass, leaving Sharpe to stare into the darkness. Sharpe stayed on deck until he could abide the cold no longer, then went and shivered in his confining cot that felt so horribly like a coffin.

He woke just before dawn. The sails were flapping and he put his head out of his cabin door and asked Chase’s steward what was happening. “We’re wearing ship, sir. Going north again, sir. There’s coffee coming, sir. Proper coffee. I saved a handful of beans because the captain does like his coffee. I’ll bring you shaving water, sir.”

Once he had shaved, Sharpe pulled on his clothes, draped his borrowed cloak about his shoulders and went on deck to find that the fleet had indeed turned back to the north. Lieutenant Haskell now had the watch and he reckoned that Nelson had been running southward to keep out of the enemy’s sight so that they would not use the excuse of his presence to return to Cadiz, but as the first gray light seeped along the eastern horizon the admiral had turned his fleet in an attempt to get between the enemy and the Spanish port.

The wind was still light so that the line of great ships lumbered northward at less than a man’s walking pace. The sky brightened, burnishing the long swells with shifting bands of silver and scarlet. Euryalus, the frigate which had dogged the enemy fleet ever since it had left harbor, was now back with the fleet, while to the east, almost in line with the burning sky where the sun rose, was a streak of dirty cloud showing against the horizon. That streak was the topsails of the enemy, blurred by distance.

“Good God.” Captain Chase had emerged on deck and spotted the far sails. He looked tired, as though he had slept badly, but he was dressed for battle, doing honor to the enemy by wearing his finest uniform which was normally stored deep in a sea chest. The gold on the twin epaulettes gleamed. His tasseled hat had been brushed till it shone. His white stockings were of silk, his coat was neither faded by the sun nor whitened by salt, while his sword scabbard had been polished, as had the silver buckles on his clean shoes. “Good God,” he said again, “those poor men.”

The decks of the British ships were thick with men, all staring eastward. The Pucelle had seen the French and Spanish fleet on the previous day, but this was the first glimpse for the other crews of Nelson’s ships. They had crossed the Atlantic in search of this enemy, then sailed back from the West Indies and, in the last few days, they had tacked and worn ship, sailed east and west, north and south, and some had wondered if the enemy was at sea at all, yet now, as if summoned by a demon of the sea, thirty-four enemy ships of the line showed on the horizon.

“You’ll not see its like again,” Chase told Sharpe, nodding toward the enemy fleet. His steward had brought a tray with mugs of proper coffee onto the quarterdeck and Chase gestured that his officers should be served first, then took the last cup. He looked up at the sails which alternately stretched in the wind then slackened as the fitful gusts passed. “It will take hours to come up with them,” he said moodily.

“Maybe they’ll come to us,” Sharpe said, trying to raise Chase’s spirits that seemed dampened by the dawn and the pitiful wind.

“Against this sorry excuse for a breeze? I doubt it.” Chase smiled. “Besides, they won’t want battle. They’ve been stuck in harbor, Sharpe. Their sail handling will be poor, their gunnery rusty, their morale down in the mud. They’d rather run away.”

“Why don’t they?”

“Because if they run east from here they’ll end up on the shoals of Cape Trafalgar, and if they run north or south they know we’ll intercept them and beat them to smithereens, and that means they have nowhere to go. Nowhere to go, Sharpe. We have the weather gauge, and that’s like having the higher ground. I just pray we catch them before dark. Nelson fought the Nile in the dark and that was a triumph, but I’d rather fight in daylight.” He drained his coffee. “Is that really the last of the beans?” he asked the steward.

“It is, sir, except for those that got wetted in Calcutta, sir, and they’re growing fur.”

“They might grind, though?” Chase suggested.

“I wouldn’t feed ‘em to a pig, sir.”

The Victory had been flying a signal which ordered the British column to form their proper order, which was little more than an encouragement for the slower ships to press on more sail and close the intervals in the line, but now that signal was hauled down and another flew in its place.

“Prepare for battle, sir,” Lieutenant Connors reported, though it was scarcely necessary, for every man aboard except the landlubbers like Sharpe had recognized the signal. And the Pucelle, like the other warships, was already preparing, indeed the men had been readying their ship all night.

Sand was scattered on the decks to give the barefooted gunners a better grip. The men’s hammocks, as they were every morning, were rolled tight and brought on deck where they were laid in the hammock nettings that surmounted the gunwale. The packed hammocks, secured in the net trough and lashed down under a canvas rain cover, would serve as a bulwark against enemy musket fire. Up aloft a bosun was leading a dozen men who were securing the ship’s great yards, from which the vast sails hung, with lengths of chain. Other men were reeving spare halliards and sheets so that heavy coils of rope were forever tumbling through the rigging to thump on the decks. “They like slashing our rigging to bits,” Captain Llewellyn told Sharpe. “The Dons and the Frogs both, they like to fire at the masts, see? So the chains stop the yards falling and the spare sheets are there if the others are shot through. Mind you, Sharpe, we’ll lose a stick or two before the day’s out. It rains blocks and broken spars in battle, it does!” Llewellyn anticipated that dangerous downpour with relish. “Is your cutlass sharp?”

“It could do with a better edge,” Sharpe admitted.

“Forrard on the weather deck,” Llewellyn said, “by the manger, there’s a man with a treadle wheel. He’ll be glad to hone it for you.”

Sharpe joined a queue of men. Some had cutlasses, others had boarding axes while many had fetched down the boarding pikes which stood in racks about the masts on the upper decks. The goats, sensing that their routine had changed, bleated piteously. They had been milked for the last time and now a seaman rolled up his sleeves before slaughtering them with a long knife. The manger, with its dangerously combustible straw, was being dismantled and the goats’ carcasses would be packed in salt for a future meal. The first beast struggled briefly, then the smell of fresh blood cut through the ship’s usual stench.

Some of the men invited Sharpe to go to the head of the queue, but he waited his turn as the nearby gunners teased him. “Come to see a proper battle, sir?”

“You’d never win a scrap without a real soldier, lads.”

“These’ll win it for us, sir,” a man said, slapping the breech of his twenty-four-pounder on which someone had chalked the message “a pill for Boney.” The mess tables, on which the gunners ate, were being struck down into the hold. As much wooden furniture as possible was removed from the decks above water so that they could not be reduced to splinters that whirled lethally from every strike of enemy shot. Sharpe’s cot and chest were already gone, as was all the elegant furniture from Chase’s quarters. The precious chronometers and the barometer had been packed in straw and taken down to the hold. Some ships hoisted their more valuable furniture high into the rigging in hopes that it would be safe, while others had entrusted it to the ships’ boats that were being launched and towed astern to keep them from enemy gunnery.

A gunner’s mate sharpened the cutlass on the wheel, tested its edge against his thumb, then gave Sharpe a toothless grin. “That’ll give the buggers a shave they’ll never forget, sir.”

Sharpe tipped the man sixpence, then walked back down the deck just in time to see the paneled walls of Chase’s quarters being maneuvered down the quarterdeck stairs on their way to the hold. The simpler wooden bulkheads from the officers’ cabins and the wardroom at the stern of the weather deck had already been struck down so that now, for the first time, Sharpe could see the whole length of the ship, from its wide stern windows all the way to where men swept up the last straw of the manger in the bows of the ship. The Pucelle was being stripped of her frills and turned into a fighting machine. He climbed to the quarterdeck and saw that was similarly empty. The wide space beneath the long poop, instead of holding cabins, was now an open sweep of deck from the wheel to the windows of Chase’s day cabin. The dining cabin had vanished, Sharpe’s quarters were gone, the pictures had been taken below and the only remaining luxury was the black-and-white checkered canvas carpet on which the two eighteen-pounder guns stood.

Connors, stationed on the poop to watch for the flagship’s signals which were being repeated by the frigate Euryalus, called down to Chase. “We’re to bear up in succession on the flagship’s course, sir.” Chase just nodded and watched as the Victory, leading the line, swung to starboard so that she was now heading straight for the enemy. The wind, such as it was, came from directly behind her and Captain Hardy, doubtless on Nelson’s orders, already had men up on his yards to extend the slender poles from which he would hang his studdingsails.

Nine ships behind the Pucelle another three-decker swung to starboard. This was the Royal Sovereign, the flagship of Admiral Collingwood, Nelson’s second-in-command. Her bright copper gleamed in the morning light as the ships behind followed her eastward. Chase looked from the Victory to the Royal Sovereign, then back to the Victory again. “Two columns,” he said aloud, “that’s what he’s doing. Making two columns.”

Even Sharpe could understand that. The enemy fleet formed a ragged line that stretched for about four miles along the eastern horizon and now the British fleet was turning directly toward that line. The ships turned in succession, those at the front of the fleet curling around to make a line behind the Victory and those at the back following in the Royal Sovereign’s wake, so that the two short lines of ships were sailing straight for the enemy like a pair of horns thrusting at a shield.

“We’ll set studdingsails when we’ve turned, Mister Haskell,” Chase said.

“Aye aye, sir.”

The Conqueror, the fifth ship in Nelson’s column and the one immediately ahead of the Pucelle, turned toward the enemy, showing Sharpe her long flank which was painted in stripes of black and yellow. The Conqueror’s gunports, all on the yellow bands, were painted black to give her a half-checkered appearance.

“Follow her, quartermaster,” Chase said, then walked to the table behind the wheel where the ship’s log lay open. He dipped the pen in ink and made a new entry. “6:49 am. Turned east toward the enemy.” Chase put the pen down, then took a small notebook and a stub of pencil from his pocket. “Mister Collier!”

“Sir?” The midshipman looked pale.

“I will trouble you, Mister Collier, to take this notebook and pencil and to make a copy of any signals you see this day.”

“Aye aye, sir!” Collier said, taking the book and pencil from Chase.

Lieutenant Connors, the signal lieutenant, overheard the order from his place on the poop deck. He looked offended. He was an intelligent young man, quiet, red-haired and conscientious, and Chase, seeing his unhappiness, climbed to him. “I know that logging the signals is your responsibility, Tom,” he said quietly, “but I don’t want young Collier brooding. Keep him busy, eh? Let him think he’s doing something useful and he won’t worry so much about being killed.”

“Of course, sir,” Connors said. “Sorry, sir.”

“Good fellow,” Chase said, slapping Connors’s back, then he ran back down to the quarterdeck and stared at the Conqueror which had just completed her turn. “There goes Pellew now!” he cried. “See how well his fellows spread their wings?” The Conqueror’s studdingsails, projecting far outboard on either side of her huge square sails, fell to catch the small wind and were sheeted home.

“It’s a race now,” Chase said, “and the devil take the foremost. Lively now! Lively!” He was shouting at the men on the main yard who had been slow to release the Pucelle’s studdingsail yards, and doubtless Chase was thinking that Israel Pellew, the Cornishman commanding the Conqueror, would be watching him critically, but the yards were run out handily enough and, the eastward turn completed, the sails fell with a great slap and flap before the men on deck hauled them tight. The enemy was still hull down on the horizon and the wind scarce more than a whisper. “It’ll be a long haul,” Chase said ruefully, “a long, long haul. Are you sure there are no more coffee beans?” he asked his steward.

“Only the furry ones, sir.”

“Try them, try them.”

The British ensigns broke out at the sterns of the ships. Today, respecting Nelson’s wishes, every ship flew the white ensign. Chase had been ready to hoist the red up his mizzen, for the commander of the East Indian station had been a rear admiral of the red, but when he saw the white break at the Conqueror’s stern he ordered that flag brought up from the storeroom. Even Collingwood, Vice Admiral of the Blue, had hoisted Nelson’s beloved white at the mizzen of the huge three-decked Royal Sovereign. Union flags were hoisted to the fore topgallant mast and to the main topmast stay so that every ship flew three flags. Two masts might be shot away, but the British colors would still fly.

The marines were coiling down the lines of the grapnels that they had hung on the hammock nettings. The grapnels were triple-barbed hooks that could be hurled into an enemy’s rigging to drag her close for boarding. The wooden tubs on the deck, in which the sail sheets were usually coiled, were being carried down below. Some ships had jettisoned theirs, but Chase deemed that a waste of money. “Though by sundown, God willing, we’ll be the owners of enough French and Spanish chandlery to fit out a couple of warships.” He turned and took off his hat to greet Lady Grace who had appeared on deck with her husband. “I apologize, milady, that your cabin has been dismantled.”

“It seems Britain has a better use for the space today,” she said, amused.

“We shall restore your privacy as soon as we have dealt with those fellows,” Chase said, nodding toward the enemy fleet, “but once we are within gunshot, milady, I shall have to insist that you go below the water line.”

“I would prefer to offer my services to the surgeon,” Lady Grace said.

“The cockpit can come under fire, ma’am,” Chase said, “especially if the enemy depress their guns. I would be remiss if I did not insist you shelter in the hold. I shall have a place made ready for you.”

“You will go to the hold, Grace,” Lord William said, “as the captain orders you.”

“As must you, my lord,” Chase said.

Lord William shrugged. “I can fire a musket, Chase.”

“Doubtless you can, my lord, but we must gauge whether you are more valuable to Britain alive than dead.”

Lord William nodded. “If you say so, Chase, if you say so.” Was he relieved? Sharpe could not tell, but certainly Lord William was making no great effort to persuade Chase to let him stay on deck. “How long till you close on them?” Lord William asked.

“Five hours at least,” Chase said, “probably six.” A seaman was casting the log that brought ill news with every throw. Two knots slipped through his fingers, sometimes three, but it was slow going even though Chase was cramming every sail onto the masts. Sharpe stood ten paces from Lady Grace, not daring to look at her, but acutely aware of her. Pregnant! He felt his heart leap with a strange happiness, then he flinched as he realized that they must soon be parted and what would happen to his child then? He stared fixedly down into the weather deck where two gunners were attaching the flintlocks to the guns. Another gunner received permission to come to the quarterdeck to arm the twelve eighteen-pounder cannons and the four thirty-two-pounder carronades. Two more of the brutal carronades squatted on the forecastle. They were short-barreled and wide-mouthed, capable of belching a terrible onslaught of musket and cannon balls at an enemy’s deck.

A dozen gunners were now in Chase’s quarters, marveling at the gilded beams and delicately carved windows. Small tubs of water for swabbing the guns or slaking the men’s thirst were placed beside every cannon, while other men threw water on the decks and the ship’s sides so that the dampened timber would be slow to catch fire. Match tubs were readied, half filled with water and capped with a pierced lid through which a slow match hung in case a flintlock should break. Down in the orlop deck men coiled an anchor cable to make a gigantic bed on which the wounded could be laid as they waited to see Pickering, the surgeon, who was singing as he laid out his knives, saws, probes and pincers. The carpenter was putting shot plugs all about the orlop deck. The plugs were great cones of wood, thickly smeared with tallow, that could be rammed into any hole punched close to the water line. Relieving ropes were laid for the rudder so that if the wheel was shot away, or the tiller rope severed by a round shot, the ship could be steered from the weather deck. Leather fire buckets, most filled with sand, stood in clusters. The powder monkeys, small boys of ten or eleven, brought up the first charges from the magazines. Chase had ordered blue bags, which were the middle size of charge. The biggest powder charges, in black bags, were used when firing at long range, the blue were more than adequate for a close-range fight, while even the red bags, which had the smallest charge and were usually used for signaling, could smash a shot through an enemy ship’s side at point-blank range. “By day’s end,” Chase said wistfully, “we’ll probably be double-loading reds.” He suddenly brightened. “My God, it’s my birthday! Mister Haskell! You owe me ten guineas! You recall our wager? I said, did I not, that we should come up with the Revenant on my birthday?”

“I shall pay gladly, sir.”

“You’ll pay nothing, Mister Haskell, nothing. If Nelson hadn’t been here then the Revenant would have escaped us. It ain’t fair for a captain to win a bet with an admiral’s help. This coffee tastes good! The fur adds piquancy, don’t you think?”

The galley cooked a last burgoo, a generous one, with great chunks of pork and beef floating in the greasy oats. It would be the last hot meal the men would enjoy before battle, for the galley fires would have to be doused in case an enemy shot struck the oven and scattered fire across a gundeck where the powder bags waited to be loaded. The men ate the meal sitting on the deck, while the bosun’s mates took around a double ration of rum. A band began playing on the Conqueror. “Where’s our band?” Chase demanded. “Have them play! Have them play! I’d like some music.”

But before the band could gather, the Victory signaled to Pucelle, a signal that was repeated by the Euryalus. “Our number, sir!” Lieutenant Connors shouted, then watched the frigate that sailed wide out on the larboard side of Nelson’s column. “You’re invited to take breakfast with the admiral, sir.”

“I am?” Chase sounded delighted. “Inform his lordship I’m on my way.”

The barge crew was summoned while the barge itself, which was already on tow behind the ship, was hauled up to the starboard side. Lord William stepped forward, plainly expecting to accompany Chase to the Victory, but the captain turned to Sharpe instead. “You’ll come, Sharpe? Of course you will!”

“Me?” Sharpe blinked in astonishment. “I’m not dressed to meet an admiral, sir!”

“You look fine, Sharpe. Ragged, perhaps, but fine.” Chase, blithely ignoring Lord William’s ill-concealed indignation, dropped his voice. “Besides, he’ll expect me to bring a lieutenant, but if I take Haskell, Peel will never forgive me and if I take Peel, Haskell will feel slighted, so you’ll have to do.” Chase grinned, pleased with the idea of introducing Sharpe to his beloved Nelson. “And you’ll divert him, Sharpe. He’s a perverse man, he likes soldiers.” Chase drew Sharpe forward as the barge crew, led by the huge Hopper, scrambled down the steps built into the Pucelle’s side. “You go first, Sharpe,” Chase said. “The boys will make sure you don’t get a bath.”

The side of a warship leaned steeply inward, for the ships were built to bulge out close to the water line, and that generous slope made the first few steps easy enough, but the nearer Sharpe came to the water line the steeper the narrow steps became and, though there was scarcely any wind, the Pucelle was rising and falling in the big swells, while the barge was falling and rising, and Sharpe could feel his boots sliding on the lower wooden ledges that were slimy with growth. “Hold it there, sir,” Hopper growled at him, then shouted, “Now!” and two pairs of hands unceremoniously grasped Sharpe by his breeches and jacket and hauled him safe into the barge. Clouter, the escaped slave, was one of his helpers and he grinned as Sharpe found his feet.

Chase came nimbly down the steps, glanced once at the pitching barge, then stepped gracefully onto the rear thwart. “It’ll be a stiff pull, Hopper.”

“It’ll be easy enough, sir, easy enough.”

Chase took the tiller himself while Hopper sat at an oar. It was indeed a hard pull and a long one, but the barge crept past the intervening ships and Sharpe could stare up at their massive striped sides. From the white and red barge, low down among the swells, the ships looked vast, cumbersome and indestructible.

“I also brought you,” Chase grinned at Sharpe, “because your inclusion will annoy Lord William. He doubtless thinks he should have been invited, but bless me, how he would bore Nelson!” Chase waved to an officer high on the stern of a seventy-four. “That’s the Leviathan,” he told Sharpe, “under Harry Bayntun. He’s a prime fellow, prime! I served with him in the old Bellona. I was only a youngster, but they were happy days, happy days.” The swell lifted the Leviathan’s stern, revealing an expanse of green copper and trailing weed. “Besides,” Chase went on, “Nelson can be useful to you.”

“Useful?”

“Lord William don’t like you,” Chase said, not bothering that he was being overheard by Hopper and Clouter who had the two stroke oars nearest the stern, “which means he’ll try and obstruct your career. But I know Nelson’s a friend of Colonel Stewart, and Stewart’s one of your strange riflemen, so perhaps his lordship will put in a word for you? Of course he will, he’s the very soul of generosity.”

It took a half-hour to reach the flagship, but at last Chase steered the barge into the Victory’s starboard flank and one of his men hooked onto its chains so that the small boat was held just beneath another ladder as steep and perilous as the one Sharpe had descended on the Pucelle. A gilded entryway was halfway up the ladder, but its door was closed, meaning Sharpe must climb all the way to the top. “You first, Sharpe,” Chase said. “Jump and cling on!”

“God help me,” Sharpe muttered. He stood on a thwart, twisted the cutlass out of his way, and leaped for the ladder when the barge was heaved up by a wave. He clung on desperately, then climbed past the entryway’s gilded frame. A hand reached down from the weather deck and hauled him through the entry port where a line of bosun’s mates waited to welcome Chase with their whistles.

Chase was grinning as he scrambled up the side. A lieutenant, immaculately uniformed, saluted him, then inclined his head when Sharpe was introduced. “You’re most welcome, sir,” the lieutenant told Chase. “Another seventy-four today is a blessing from heaven.”

“It’s good of you to let me join the celebrations,” Chase said, removing his hat to salute the quarterdeck. Sharpe hurriedly followed suit as the bosun’s whistles made their strange twittering sound. The Victory’s upper decks were crowded with gunners, sail-handlers and marines who ignored the visitors, though one older man, a sailmaker, judging from the big needles thrust into his gray hair which was bundled on top of his head, did bob down as Chase was led toward the quarterdeck. Chase stopped, clicked his fingers. “Prout, isn’t it? You were on the Bellona with me.”

“I remembers you, sir,” Prout said, tugging the hair over his forehead, “and you was just a boy, sir.”

“We grow old, Prout,” Chase said. “We grow damned old! But not too old to give the Dons and Frenchmen a drubbing, eh?”

“We shall beat ‘em, sir,” Prout said.

Chase beamed at his old shipmate, then went to the quarterdeck, which was thickly crowded with officers who politely removed their hats as Chase and Sharpe were ushered aft past the great wheel and under the poop to the admiral’s quarters, which were guarded by a single marine in a short red jacket crossed by a pair of pipe-clayed belts. The lieutenant opened the door without knocking and led Chase and Sharpe through a small sleeping cabin which had been stripped of its furniture and then, again without knocking, into a massive cabin that stretched the whole width of the ship and was lit by the wide array of stern windows. This cabin had also been emptied of its furniture, so that only a single table was left on the black and white checkered canvas floor. Two massive guns, already equipped with their flintlocks, stood on either side of the table.

Sharpe was aware of two men silhouetted against the stern window, but he could not distinguish which was the admiral until Chase put his hat under his arm and offered a bow to the smaller man who was seated at the table. The light was bright behind the admiral and Sharpe still could not see him clearly and he hung back, not wanting to intrude, but Chase turned and gestured him forward. “Allow me to name my particular friend, my lord. Mister Richard Sharpe. He’s on his way to join the Rifles, but he paused long enough to save me from an embarrassment in Bombay and I’m monstrous grateful.”

“You, Chase? An embarrassment? Surely not?” Nelson laughed and gave Sharpe a smile. “I’m most grateful to you, Sharpe. I would not have my friends embarrassed. How long has it been, Chase?”

“Four years, my lord.”

“He was one of my frigate captains,” Nelson said to his companion, a post captain who stood at his shoulder. “He commanded the Spritely and took the Bouvines a week after leaving my command. I never had the chance to congratulate you, Chase, but I do now. It was a creditable action. You know Blackwood?”

“I’m honored to make your acquaintance,” Chase said, bowing to the Honorable Henry Blackwood who commanded the frigate Euryalus.

“Captain Blackwood has been hanging onto the enemy’s apron strings ever since they left Cadiz,” Nelson said warmly, “and you’ve drawn us together now, Blackwood, so your work’s done.”

“I trust I shall have the honor of doing more, my lord.”

“Doubtless you will, Blackwood,” Nelson said, then gestured at the chairs. “Sit, Chase, sit. And you, Mister Sharpe. Tepid coffee, hard bread, cold beef and fresh oranges, not much of a breakfast, I fear, but they tell me the galley’s been struck.” The table was set with plates and knives among which the admiral’s sword lay in its jeweled scabbard. “How are your supplies, Chase?”

“Low, my lord. Water and beef for two weeks, maybe?”

“‘Twill be long enough, long enough. Crew?”

“I pressed a score of good men from an Indiaman, my lord, and have sufficient.”

“Good, good,” the admiral said, then, after his steward had brought coffee and food to the table, he questioned Chase about his voyage and the pursuit of the Revenant. Sharpe, sitting to the admiral’s left, watched him. He knew the admiral had lost the sight of one eye, but it was hard to tell which, though after a while Sharpe saw that the right eye had an unnaturally large and dark pupil. His hair was white and tousled, framing a thin and extraordinarily mobile face that reacted to Chase’s story with alarm, pleasure, amusement and surprise. He interrupted Chase rarely, though he did stop the tale once to request that Sharpe carve the beef. “And perhaps you’ll cut me some bread as well, Mister Sharpe, as a kindness? My fin, you understand,” and he touched his empty right sleeve that was pinned onto a jacket bright with jeweled stars. “You’re very kind,” he said when Sharpe had obeyed. “Do go on, Chase.”

Sharpe had expected to be awed by the admiral, to be struck dumb by him, but instead he found himself feeling protective of the small man who emanated a fragile air of vulnerability. Even though he was sitting, it was clear he was a small man, and very thin, and his pale, lined face suggested he was prone to sickness. He looked so frail that Sharpe had to remind himself that this man had led his fleets to victory after victory, and that in every fight he had been in the thick of the battle, yet he gave the impression that the slightest breeze would knock him down.

The admiral’s apparent frailty made the most immediate impression on Sharpe, but it was the admiral’s eyes that had the stronger effect, for whenever he looked at Sharpe, even if it was merely to request a small service like another piece of buttered bread, it seemed that Sharpe became the most important person in the world at that moment. The glance seemed to exclude everything and everyone else, as though Sharpe and the admiral were in collusion. Nelson had none of Sir Arthur Wellesley’s coldness, no condescension, and gave no impression of believing himself to be superior; indeed it seemed to Sharpe that at that moment, as the fleet lumbered toward the enemy, Horatio Nelson asked nothing from life except to be seated with his good friends Chase, Blackwood and Richard Sharpe. He touched Sharpe’s elbow once. “This talk must be tedious to a soldier, Sharpe?”

“No, my lord,” Sharpe said. The discussion had moved on to the admiral’s tactics this day and much of it was beyond Sharpe’s comprehension, but he did not care. It was enough to be in Nelson’s presence and Sharpe was swept by the little man’s infectious enthusiasm. By God, Sharpe thought, but they would not just beat the enemy fleet this day, but pound it into splinters, hammer it so badly that no French or Spanish ship would ever dare sail the world’s seas again. Chase, he saw, was reacting the same way, almost as though he feared Nelson would weep if he did not fight harder than he had ever fought before.

“Do you put your men in the tops?” Nelson asked, clumsily attempting to remove the peel of an orange with his one hand.

“I do, my lord.”

“I do fear that the musket wads will fire the sails,” the admiral said gently, “so I would rather you did not.”

“Of course not, my lord,” Chase said, immediately yielding to the modest suggestion.

“Sails are only linen, after all,” Nelson said, evidently wanting to explain himself further in case Chase had been offended by the order. “And what do we put inside tinderboxes? Linen! It is horribly flammable.”

“I shall respect your wishes gladly, my lord.”

“And you comprehend my greater purpose?” the admiral asked, referring to his earlier discussion of tactics.

“I do, my lord, and applaud it.”

“I shall not be happy with less than twenty prizes, Chase,” Nelson said sternly.

“So few, my lord?”

The admiral laughed and then, as another officer entered the cabin, stood. Nelson was at least a half-foot shorter than Sharpe who, standing like the others, had to stoop beneath the beams, but the newcomer, who was introduced as the Victory’s captain, Thomas Hardy, was a half-foot taller than Sharpe again and, when he spoke to Nelson, he bent over the little admiral like a protective giant.

“Of course, Hardy, of course,” the admiral said, then smiled at his guests. “Hardy tells me it is time to strike down these bulkheads. We are being evicted, gentlemen. Shall we retreat to the quarterdeck?” He led his guests forward, then, seeing Sharpe hang back, he turned and took his elbow. “Did you serve under Sir Arthur Wellesley in India, Sharpe?”

“I did, my lord.”

“I met him after his return and enjoyed a notable conversation, though I confess I found him rather frightening!” The admiral’s tone made Sharpe laugh, which pleased Nelson. “So you’re joining the 95th, are you?”

“I am, my lord.”

“That is splendid!” The admiral, for some reason, seemed particularly pleased by this news. He ushered Sharpe through the door, then walked him across to the hammock nettings on the larboard side of the quarterdeck. “You’re fortunate indeed, Mister Sharpe. I know William Stewart and count him among my dearest and closest friends. You know why his rifle regiment is so good?”

“No, my lord,” Sharpe said. He had always thought that the newfangled 95th was probably made of the army’s leavings and was dressed in green because no one wanted to waste good red cloth on its soldiers.

“Because they’re intelligent,” the admiral said enthusiastically. “Intelligent! It is a quality sadly despised by the military, but intelligence does have its uses.” He looked up at Sharpe’s face, peering at the tiny blue-flecked marks on Sharpe’s scarred cheek. “Powder scars, Mister Sharpe, and I note you are still an ensign. Would I offend you by suspecting that you once served in the ranks?”

“I did, my lord.”

“Then you have my warmest admiration, indeed you do,” Nelson said energetically, and his admiration seemed entirely genuine. “You must be a remarkable man,” the admiral added.

“No, my lord,” Sharpe said, and he wanted to say that Nelson was the man to admire, but he did not know how to phrase the compliment.

“You’re modest, Mister Sharpe, and that is not good,” Nelson said sternly. To Sharpe’s surprise he found he was alone with the admiral. Chase, Blackwood and the other officers stood on the starboard side while Nelson and Sharpe paced up and down under the larboard hammock nettings. A dozen seamen, grinning at their admiral, had begun collapsing the paneled bulkheads so that no enemy shot could turn them into lethal splinters that could sweep the quarterdeck. “I am not in favor of modesty,” Nelson said, and once again the admiral was overwhelming Sharpe with a flattering intimacy, “and you doubtless find that surprising? We are told, are we not, that modesty is among the virtues, but modesty is not a warrior’s virtue. You and I, Sharpe, have been forced to rise from a lowly place and we do not achieve that by hiding our talents. I am a country clergyman’s son and now?” He waved his one hand at the far enemy fleet, then unconsciously touched the four brilliant stars, the jeweled decorations of his orders of knighthood, that glinted on the left breast of his coat. “Be proud of what you have done,” he said to Sharpe, “then go and do better.”

“As you will, my lord.”

“No,” Nelson said abruptly, and for a moment he looked desperately frail again. “No,” he repeated, “for in bringing these two fleets together, Sharpe, I will have done my life’s work.” He looked so forlorn that Sharpe had a ridiculous urge to comfort the admiral. “Kill those ships,” Nelson went on, gesturing at the enemy fleet filling the eastern horizon, “and Bonaparte and his allies can never invade England. We shall have caged the beast in Europe, and what will be left for a poor sailor to do then, eh?” He smiled. “But there will be work for soldiers, and you, I know, are a good one. Just remember, though, you must hate a Frenchman like the very devil!” The admiral said this with a venomous force, showing his steel for the first time. “Never let go of that sentiment, Mister Sharpe,” he added, “never!” He turned back to the waiting officers. “I am keeping Captain Chase from his ship. And it will be time for you to go soon, Blackwood.”

“I shall stay a while longer, if I may, my lord?” Blackwood said.

“Of course. Thank you for coming, Chase. I’m sure you had more important business to attend to, but you have been kind. Will you accept some oranges as a gift? They’re fresh out from Gibraltar.”

“I should be honored, my lord, honored.”

“You do me honor by joining us, Chase. So lay alongside and hit away. Hit away. We shall make them wish they had never seen our ships!”

Chase descended into his barge in a kind of trance. A net of oranges, enough to feed half a regiment, lay on the barge’s bottom boards. For a time, as Hopper stroked back down the line of warships, Chase just sat silent, but then he could contain himself no longer. “What a man!” he exclaimed. “What a man! My God, we’re going to do some slaughter today! We shall murder them, murder them!”

“Amen,” Hopper said.

“Praise the Lord,” Clouter volunteered.

“What did you think of him, Sharpe?” Chase asked.

Sharpe shook his head, almost lost for words. “What was it you said, sir? That you would follow him into the throat of hell? By God, sir, I’d follow that man into the belly of hell and down to its bowels too.”

“And if he led us,” Chase said reverently, “we would win there, just as we shall win this day.”

If they ever got into battle. For the wind was still light, desperately light, and the fleet sailed slow as haystacks. It seemed to Sharpe that they could never reach the enemy, and then he was sure of it, for an hour after he and Chase regained the Pucelle’s deck, the combined enemy fleet turned clumsily around to sail back northward. They were heading for Cadiz in a last attempt to escape Nelson whose ships, their white wings spread, ghosted toward hell in a wind so light that it seemed the very heavens were holding their breath.

The Pucelle’s band, more enthusiastic than it was skilled, played “Hearts of Oak,” “Nancy Dawson,” “Hail Britannia,” “Drops of Brandy” and a dozen other tunes, most of which Sharpe did not know. He did not know many of the words either, but the sailors bellowed them out, not bothering to disguise the coarsest verses even though Lady Grace was on the quarterdeck. Lord William, when one particularly obscene song echoed up from the weather deck, remonstrated with Captain Chase, but Chase pointed out that some of his men were about to be silenced forever and he was in no temper to bridle their tongues now. “Your ladyship can go to the hold now?” he suggested.

“I am not offended, Captain,” Lady Grace said. “I know when to be deaf.”

Lord William, who had chosen to wear a slim sword and had a long-barreled pistol bolstered at his waist, stalked to the starboard rail and stared at Admiral Collingwood’s column that lay a little more than a mile southward. Collingwood’s big three-decker, the Royal Sovereign, newly come from England with her freshly coppered bottom, was sailing faster than the other ships so that a gap had opened between her and the rest of Collingwood’s squadron.

The French and Spanish seemed no nearer, though when Sharpe extended his glass and looked at the enemy fleet he saw that their hulls were now above the horizon. They showed no flags yet and their gunports were still closed, for the battle, if one ever ensued, was still two or three hours away. Some of the ships were painted black and yellow like the British fleet, others were black and white, two were all black, while some were banded with red. Lieutenant Haskell had commented that they were attempting to form a line of battle, but their attempts were clumsy, for Sharpe could see great gaps in the fleet which looked like clumps of ships strung along the horizon. One ship did stand out, for, maybe a third of the way from the front of the line, there was a towering vessel with four gundecks. “The Santisima Trinidad,” Haskell told Sharpe, “with at least one hundred and thirty guns. She’s the largest ship in the world.” Even at such a distance the Spaniard’s hull looked like a cliff, but a cliff pierced with gunports. Sharpe tracked the French line, looking for the Revenant, but there were so many black-and-yellow two-decked ships that he could not distinguish her.

Some of the men were writing letters, using their guns as desks. Others wrote wills. Few could write, but those who could took the dictation of others and the letters were taken down to the safety of the orlop deck. The wind stayed feeble; indeed it seemed to Sharpe that the great swells coming from the west heaved the ships on with more effect than the wind. Those seas were monstrously long, looking like great smooth hills that ran silent and green toward the enemy. “I fear,” Chase said, coming to Sharpe’s side, “that we are in for a storm.”

“You can tell?”

“I hate those glassy swells,” Chase said, “and the sky has an ominous cast.” He looked behind the ship where the sky was darkening, while overhead the blue was crossed by bands of feathered white streaks. “Still,” he continued, “it should hold off long enough for this day’s business.”

The band on the forecastle came to the end of one of its more ragged efforts and Chase went to the quarterdeck rail and held up a hand to keep them silent. The captain had still not ordered the drummer to beat to quarters, so most of the lower-deck men were on the weather deck and that great throng now looked up at Chase expectantly, then stood respectfully when he doffed his hat. The officers copied him. “We shall be handing out a drubbing to the Frenchies and Dons today, men,” Chase said, “and I know you will make me proud!” A murmur of agreement sounded from the men crowded about the guns. “But before we go about our business,” Chase went on, “I would like to commend all our souls to Almighty God.” He took a prayer book from his pocket and leafed through its pages, seeking the Prayer to Be Said Before a Fight at Sea Against Any Enemy. He was not an outwardly religious man, but the captain had a blithe faith in God that was almost as strong as his trust in Nelson. He read the prayer in a strong voice, his fair hair lifting to the small wind. “Stir up thy strength, O Lord, and come and help us. Let not our sins cry against us for vengeance, but hear us, thy poor servants, begging mercy and imploring thy help, that thou would’st be a defense unto us against the enemy. O Lord of Hosts, fight for us. Suffer us not to sink under the weight of our sins or the violence of the enemy. O Lord, arise, help us, and deliver us for thy name’s sake.” The men called out amen and some of them crossed themselves. Chase put his hat on. “We shall have a glorious victory! Listen to your officers, don’t waste shot! I warrant you I shall lay us alongside an enemy and then it is up to you and I know the wretches will regret the day they met the Pucellel” He smiled, then nodded at the band. “I think we could suffer ‘Hearts of Oak’ once more?”

The men cheered him and the band struck up again. Some of the gunners were dancing the hornpipe. A woman appeared on the weather deck, carrying a can of water to one of the gun crews. She was a stocky young woman, pale after being concealed below decks for so long and raggedly dressed in a long skirt and a threadbare shawl. She had red hair that hung lank and filthy and the men, pleased to see her, teased her as she threaded her way across the crowded deck. The officers pretended not to notice her.

“How many women are aboard?” Lady Grace had come to stand beside Sharpe. She was wearing a blue dress, a wide-brimmed hat, and a long black boat cloak.

Sharpe glanced guiltily toward Lord William, but his lordship was deep in conversation with Lieutenant Haskell. “Chase tells me there are at least a half-dozen,” Sharpe said. “They hide themselves.”

“And they will shelter in the battle?”

“Not with you.”

“It doesn’t seem fair.”

“Life isn’t fair,” Sharpe said. “How do you feel?”

“Healthy,” she said, and indeed she looked glowing. Her eyes were bright and her cheeks, that had been so pale when Sharpe first saw her in Bombay, were full of color. She touched his arm briefly. “You will take care, Richard?”

“I shall take care,” he promised, though he doubted that his life or death were in his own keeping this day.

“If the ship is taken… “ Lady Grace said hesitantly.

“It won’t be,” Sharpe interrupted her.

“If it is,” she said earnestly, “I do not want to meet another man like that lieutenant on the Calliope. I can use a pistol.”

“But you have none?” Sharpe asked. She shook her head and Sharpe drew out his own pistol and held it toward her. They were standing close together at the quarterdeck rail and no one behind could see the gift which Lady Grace took, then pushed into a pocket of the heavy cloak. “It’s loaded,” Sharpe warned her.

“I shall take care,” she promised him, “and I doubt I will need it, but it gives me a comfort. It’s something of yours, Richard.”

“You already have something of mine,” he said.

“Which I will protect,” she said. “God bless you, Richard.”

“And you, my lady.”

She walked away from him, watched by her husband. Sharpe stared doggedly forward. He would borrow another pistol from Captain Llewellyn whose marines were lining the forecastle rails and sometimes leaning outboard to see the distant enemy.

Chase had gathered his officers and Sharpe, curious, went to listen as the captain outlined what Nelson had told him on board the Victory. The British fleet, Chase said, was not going to form a line parallel to the enemy, which was the accepted method of fighting a sea battle, but intended to sail its two columns directly into the enemy’s line. “We shall chop their line into three pieces,” Chase said, “and destroy them piecemeal. If I fall, gentlemen, then your only duty is to stand on, pass through their line, then lay the ship alongside an enemy.”

Captain Llewellyn shuddered, then drew Sharpe to one side. “I don’t like it,” the Welshman said. “It’s none of my business, of course, I am merely a marine, but you will have noticed, Sharpe, surely, that we have no guns to speak of in the bow of the ship?”

“I had noticed,” Sharpe said.

“The foremost guns can fire somewhat forward, but not directly forward, and what the admiral is proposing, Sharpe, is that we sail straight toward the enemy who will have their broadsides pointing at us!” Llewellyn shook his head sadly. “I don’t have to spell that out to you, do I?”

“Of course not.”

Llewellyn spelled it out nonetheless. “They can fire at us and we cannot return the fire! They will rake us, Sharpe. You know what raking is? You rake an enemy when your broadside faces his defenseless stern or bow, and it is the quickest way to reduce a ship to kindling. And for how long will we be defenseless under their guns? At this speed, Sharpe, for at least twenty minutes. Twenty minutes! They can pour round shot into us, they can tear our rigging to pieces with chain and bar, they can dismast us, and what can we do in return?”

“Nothing, sir.”

“You have grasped the point,” Llewellyn said, “but as I said it is none of my business. But the fighting tops, Sharpe, they are my business. Do you know what the captain has ordered?”

“No men in the tops,” Sharpe said.

“How could he order such a thing?” Llewellyn demanded indignantly. “The Frogs, now, they’ll have men in the rigging like spiders in a web, and they’ll be pouring nastiness on us, and we must just cower on the deck? It isn’t right, Sharpe, it isn’t right. And if I cannot put men up the masts then I cannot use my grenades!” He sounded aggrieved. “They are too dangerous to keep on deck, so I’ve left them in the forward magazine.” He stared at the enemy fleet which was now less than two miles away. “Still,” Llewellyn went on, “we shall beat them.”

The Britannia, which followed the Pucelle, was a slow ship and so a long gap had opened between the two. There were similar gaps in both columns, but none so wide as the gap between Collingwood’s Royal Sovereign and the rest of his squadron. “He’ll be fighting alone for a time,” Llewellyn said, then turned because Connors, the signal lieutenant, had called that the flagship was signaling.

It was an immensely long signal, so long that when the Euryalus repeated the message the flags needed to be flown from all three of the frigate’s masts where the pennants made bright splashes of color against the white sails. “Well?” Chase demanded of Connors.

The signal lieutenant waited for the feeble wind to spread some of the flags, then paused as he tried to remember the flag code. It was a recent code, and simple enough, for each flag corresponded to a letter, but some combinations of flags were used to transmit whole words or sometimes phrases, and there were over three thousand such combinations to be memorized and it was evident that this long signal, which required no less than thirty-two flags, was using some of the more obscure words of the system. Connors frowned, then suddenly made sense of it. “From the admiral, sir. England expects that every man will do his duty.”

“I should damn well think so,” Chase said indignantly.

“What about the Welsh?” Llewellyn asked with an equal indignation, then smiled. “Ah, but the Welsh need no encouragement to do their duty. It’s you bloody English who have to be chivvied.”

“Pass the message on to the men,” Chase ordered his officers and, in contrast to the resentful reception the message had received on the quarterdeck, it provoked cheers from the crew.

“He must be bored,” Chase said, “sending messages like that. Is it in your notebook, Mister Collier?”

The midshipman nodded eagerly. “It’s written down, sir.”

“You noted the time?”

Collier reddened. “I will, sir, I will.”

“Thirty-six minutes past eleven, Mister Collier,” Chase said, inspecting his pocket watch, “and if you are uncertain of the time of any message you will find the wardroom’s clock has been conveniently placed under the poop on the larboard side. And by consulting that clock, Mister Collier, you will be hidden from the enemy and so might stop them from removing your head with a well-aimed round shot.”

“It’s not a very big head, sir,” Collier said bravely, “and my place is near you, sir.”

“Your place, Mister Collier, is where you can see both the signals and the clock, and I suggest you stand under the break of the poop.”

“Yes, sir,” Collier said, wondering how he was expected to see any signals while standing in the shelter of the poop deck.

Chase was staring at the enemy, drumming his fingers on the rail. He was nervous, but no more so than any other man on the Pucelle. “Look at the Saucy\” Chase said, pointing ahead to where the Temeraire was trying to overtake the Victory, but the Victory had unfurled her topgallant stud-dingsails and so held onto her lead. “He really shouldn’t go first through their line,” Chase said, frowning, then turned. “Captain Llewellyn!”

“Sir?”

“Your drummer can beat to quarters, I think.”

“Aye aye, sir,” Llewellyn replied, then nodded to his drummer boy who hitched his instrument up, raised his sticks, then beat out the rhythm of the song “Hearts of Oak.”

“And God preserve us all,” Chase said as the men crowding the weather deck began to disappear down the hatchways to man the lower-deck euns. The drummer kept on beating as he went down the quarterdeck steps. The boy would beat the call to arms all about the ship, though not one sailor aboard needed the summons. They had long been ready.

“Open gunports, sir?” Haskell asked.

“No, we’ll wait, we’ll wait,” Chase said, “but tell the gunners to load another shot on top of the first, then put in a charge of grape.”

“Aye aye, sir.”

The Pucelle’s guns would now be double-shotted, with a cluster of nine smaller balls ahead of the bigger round shot. Such a charge, Chase explained to Sharpe, was deadly at close range. “And we can’t fire till we’re in the thick of them, so we might as well hurt them badly with our opening broadside.” The captain turned to Lord William. “My lord, I think you should go below.”

“Not yet, surely?” It was Lady Grace who answered. “No one has fired.”

“Soon,” Chase said, “soon.”

Lord William scowled, as if disapproving of his wife questioning the captain’s orders, but Lady Grace just stared ahead at the enemy as if she was memorizing the extraordinary sight of an horizon filled by ships of the line. Lieutenant Peel was surreptitiously sketching her in his notebook, trying to capture the tilt of her profiled face and its expression of intent fascination. “Which is the enemy admiral’s ship?” she asked Chase.

“We can’t tell, my lady. They haven’t put out their flags.”

“Who is the enemy admiral?” Lord William asked.

“Villeneuve, my lord,” Chase answered, “or so Lord Nelson believes.”

“Is he a capable man?” Lord William asked.

“Compared to Nelson, my lord, no one is capable, but I am told Villeneuve is no fool.”

The band had gone to their stations so the ship was oddly quiet as she heaved forward on the big swells. The wind just filled the sails, though in every lull, or when the waves drove the ship faster, the canvas sagged before lazily stretching again. Chase stared southward at the Royal Sovereign which was now far ahead of Collingwood’s other ships as, under every possible sail, she headed toward a lonely battle in the thick of the enemy fleet. “How far is she from the enemy?” he asked.

“A thousand yards?” Haskell guessed.

“I’d say so,” Chase said. “The enemy will open on her soon.”

“Bounce won’t like that,” Lieutenant Peel said with a smile.

“Bounce?” Chase asked. “Oh! Collingwood’s dog.” He smiled. “It hates gunfire, doesn’t it? Poor dog.” He turned to stare beyond his own bows. It was possible to estimate now where the Pucelle would meet the enemy line and Chase was working out how many ships would be able to batter him while he sailed his defenseless bows toward them. “When we come under fire, Mister Haskell, we shall order the crew to lie down.”

“Aye aye, sir.”

“It won’t be for three quarters of an hour yet,” Chase said, then frowned. “I hate waiting. Send me wind! Send me wind! What’s the time, Mister Collier?”

“Ten minutes of twelve, sir,” Collier called from under the poop.

“So we should meet their fire at half past midday,” Chase said, “and by one o’clock we’ll be among them.”

“They’ve opened!” It was Connors who shouted the words, pointing toward the southern part of the enemy line where one ship was wreathed in gray and white smoke which blossomed to hide her hull entirely.

“Make a note in the log!” Chase ordered, and just then the sound of the broadside came like a ripple of thunder across the sea. White splashes punctured the swells ahead of the Royal Sovereign’s bows, showing that the enemy’s opening salvo had fallen short, but a moment later another half-dozen ships opened fire.

“It sounds precisely like thunder,” Lady Grace said in amazement.

The Victory was still too far from the northern part of the enemy’s fleet to be worth firing at, and so the vast majority of the French and Spanish ships stayed silent. Just the six ships kept firing, their shots whipping the sea to foam ahead of Collingwood’s flagship. Perhaps it was the sound of those guns that prompted the enemy to reveal their colors at last for, one by one, their ensigns appeared so that the approaching British could distinguish between their enemies. The French tricolor appeared brighter than the Spanish royal flag which was dark red and white. “There, my lady,” Chase said, pointing forward, “you can see the French admiral’s flag? At the masthead of the ship just behind the Santisima Trinidad.”

The Royal Sovereign must have been taking shots, for she suddenly fired two of her forward guns so that their smoke would hide her hull as it drifted with the feeble wind. Sharpe took out his telescope, trained it on Collingwood’s flagship, and saw a sail twitch as a round shot whipped through the canvas, and now he could see other holes in the sails and he knew the enemy must be firing at her rigging in an attempt to stop her brave advance. Yet she stood on, studdingsails set, widening the gap between her and the Belleisle, the Mars and the Tonnant which were the next three ships astern. The splashes of the enemy gunfire began to land about those ships now. None could fire back, and none could expect to open fire for at least twenty minutes. They must simply endure and hope to repay the bartering when they reached the line. Chase turned. “Mister Collier?”

“Sir?”

“You will escort Lord William and Lady Grace to the lady hole. Use the aft hatchway in the gunroom. Your maid will accompany you, my lady.”

“We are not under fire, Captain,” Lady Grace objected.

“You will oblige me, my lady,” Chase insisted.

“Come, Grace,” Lord William said. He still wore his sword and pistol, but made no attempt to stay on deck. “May I wish you well, Captain.”

“Your sentiments are much appreciated, my lord. I thank you.”

Lady Grace gave Sharpe a last look, and he dared not answer it with a smile for Lord William would see it, but he met her gaze and held it till she turned away. Then she was gone down the quarterdeck steps and Sharpe felt a horrid pang of loss.

The Pucelle was catching up with the Conqueror now and Chase took her toward that ship’s starboard side. He stared at the enemy through his glass and suddenly called Sharpe. “Our old friend, Sharpe.”

“Sir?”

“There, look.” He pointed. “You see the Santisima Trinidad? The big ship?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Six ships back. It’s the Revenant.”

Sharpe trained his telescope and counted the ships astern of the vast four-decked Spanish battleship, and there, suddenly, was the familiar black and yellow hull and as he gazed he saw the ports open and the guns appear. Then the Revenant vanished in smoke.

And the Victory was under fire, and the enemy could not hope to escape to Cadiz because, despite the fickle wind, there would be a battle. Thirty-four enemy ships would take on twenty-eight British. Two thousand five hundred and sixty-eight enemy guns, manned by thirty thousand French and Spanish seamen would face two thousand one hundred and forty-eight guns crewed by seventeen thousand British tars.

“To your places, gentlemen,” Chase said to the officers on his quarterdeck. “To your places, please.” He touched the prayer book in his pocket. “And may God preserve us, gentlemen, preserve us each and every one.”

For the fighting had begun.