The wind was still light so that the line of great ships lumbered northwards 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 harbour, 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 honour 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 tasselled 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 eastwards. 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 towards 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 harbour, 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 panelled walls of Chase’s quarters being manoeuvred 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 chequered 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 me
n 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 eastwards. 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 towards that line. The ships turned in succession, those at the front of the fleet curling round 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 towards 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-chequered 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 towards 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 eastwards 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 colours 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 towards 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-barrelled 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, marvelling 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 signalling, 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 round 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 signalled 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!’