Sharpe 3-Book Collection 3: Sharpe's Trafalgar, Sharpe's Prey, Sharpe's Rifles (34 page)

‘They’ve opened!’ It was Connors who shouted the words, pointing towards the southern part of the enemy line where one ship was wreathed in grey 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 colours at last for, one by one, their ensigns appeared so that the approaching British could distinguish between their enemies. The French tricolour 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 battering 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 towards 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.

Sharpe’s place was on the forecastle. Captain Llewellyn and his young lieutenant commanded forty of the ship’s marines stationed on the poop and quarterdeck, while Sharpe had twenty, though in truth the score of forecastle men were led by Sergeant Armstrong, a man as squat as a hogshead and stubborn as a mule. The sergeant came from Seahouses in Northumberland where he had been imbued with a deep distrust of the Scots. ‘They’re thieves to a man, sir,’ he confidently assured Sharpe, but still contrived that every Scotsman among Llewellyn’s marines serve in his squad. ‘Because that’s where I can keep an eye on the thieving bastards, sir.’

The Scots were content to serve under Sergeant Armstrong, for, if he distrusted them, he hated anyone from south of the River Tyne. So far as Armstrong was concerned only men from Northumberland itself, raised to remember the cattle-raiders from north of the border, were true warriors while the rest of mankind was composed of thieving bastards, cowardly foreigners and officers. France, he seemed to believe, was a populous county somewhere so far south of London as to be execrable, while Spain was probably hell itself. The sergeant possessed one of Captain Llewellyn’s precious seven-barrel guns that he had propped against the foremast. ‘You can take your eyes off that, sir,’ he had told Sharpe when he saw the officer’s interest in the weapon, ‘ ’cos I’m saving it for when we board one of the bastards. There’s nothing like a volley gun for clearing an enemy deck.’ Armstrong was instinctively suspicious of Sharpe for the ensign was not a marine, not from Northumberland and not born into the officer class. Armstrong was, in short, ugly, ignorant, prejudiced and as fine a soldier as Sharpe had met.

The forecastle was manned by the marines and by two of the ship’s six thirty-two-pounder carronades. The one to larboard was under the command of Clouter, the escaped slave who was in Chase’s barge crew. The huge black man, like his gunners, was naked to the waist and had a scarf tied around his ears. ‘Going to be lively, sir,’ he greeted Sharpe, nodding towards the enemy line that was now barely a mile away. A half-dozen ships were firing at the
Victory
, just as another half-dozen were hammering the
Royal Sovereign
a little more than a mile to the south. That ship, by far the closest to the French and Spanish line, looked bedraggled, for her studdingsail yards had been shot away and the sails hung like broken wings beside her rigging. She could still not return the enemy’s fire, but in a few minutes she would be among them and her three decks of guns could begin to repay the beating she endured.

The sea ahead of the
Pucelle
was being pockmarked by shot, flicked by white spray or whipped by round shots skimming the waves, though so far none of those shots had come close to the
Pucelle
herself. The
Temeraire
, which had failed to overtake the
Victory
and was now sailing off her starboard quarter, was taking shots through her sails. Sharpe could see the holes appear like magic, making the ship’s whole spread of canvas quiver. A broken line whipped and flew wide. To Sharpe it seemed as though the
Victory
and
Temeraire
were sailing directly towards the
Santisima Trinidad
with its four smoke-wreathed decks of death. The sound of the enemy guns was loud now, punching over the water, sometimes in thunderous groups, more often single gun by single gun. ‘It’ll be ten or fifteen minutes before we’re in range, sir,’ Clouter said, answering Sharpe’s unspoken question.

‘Good luck, Clouter.’

The tall man grinned. ‘Ain’t a white man alive that can kill me, sir. No, sir, they done all they can to me, and now it’s me and my smasher’s turn.’ He patted his carronade, his ‘smasher’, which was as ugly a weapon as any Sharpe had seen. It resembled an army mortar, though it was slightly longer in the barrel, and it squatted in its short carriage like a deformed cooking pot. The carriage had no wheels, but instead allowed the barrel to slide back, wood on greased wood. The gun’s wide muzzle gaped and its belly was crammed with one thirty-two-pound round shot and a wooden cask of musket balls. It was no pretty thing, nor was it accurate, but bring it within yards of an enemy ship and it could belch a flail of metal that could have torn the guts out of a battalion.

‘A Scotsman invented it.’ Sergeant Armstrong had appeared beside Sharpe. The sergeant sniffed as he looked at the vast pot on its carriage. ‘Heathen gun, sir. Heathen gunner, too,’ he added, looking at Clouter. ‘If we boards an enemy, Clouter,’ he said sternly, ‘you stay close to me.’

‘Yes, Sergeant.’

‘Why close to you?’ Sharpe asked Armstrong as they walked away from the carronade.

‘Because when that black heathen starts to fight, sir, there ain’t a man born who dares stand in his way. A fiend, he is.’ Armstrong sounded disapproving, but then, Clouter was palpably not a Northumbrian. ‘And you, sir?’ Armstrong asked suspiciously. ‘Will you board with us?’ What the sergeant really wanted to know was whether Sharpe planned to usurp his authority.

Sharpe could have insisted on commanding the marines, but he suspected they would fight better if Armstrong gave them their orders. Which meant Sharpe had little to do on the forecastle other than set an example, which was what most junior officers were doing when they were killed in battle. Armstrong knew what had to be done, the marines had been superbly trained by Llewellyn, and Sharpe had no mind to pace the forecastle showing a gentlemanly disdain for enemy fire. He would rather fight. ‘I’m going below,’ he told Armstrong, ‘to draw a musket from stores.’

The enemy shots were still falling well short of the
Pucelle
as Sharpe went down the companionway and forward into the covered bow portion of the weather deck where he found the galley – usually a place where men gathered – empty, cold and deserted. The fires in the vast iron oven had all been doused and two of the ship’s cats were rubbing themselves against the blackened metal as if curious as to why their source of warmth was gone. The gunners sat by their guns. Once in a while a man would lift a gunport, letting in a bright wash of light, and lean out to peer towards the enemy.

Sharpe went on down to the lower deck which was as dim as a cellar, though some light seeped from the wide windows of the stripped wardroom that lay at the stern. The ship’s biggest guns squatted here like tethered beasts behind their closed ports. The cannons were usually stored with their barrels fully elevated and then drawn tight to the ship’s sides, but now the barrels had been lowered to the fighting position and the carriages were standing well back from the ports. The sound of the enemy gunfire was muted so that it was little more than a dull grumble. Sharpe dropped down one more companionway to the orlop deck which was lit by shielded lanterns. He was below the water line now, and it was here that the ship’s magazines were guarded by marines armed with muskets, bayonets and orders to stop any unauthorized person from going through the double leather curtains that were dripping with sea water. Powder monkeys, some in felt slippers, but most barefooted, waited by the outer curtain with their long tin canisters and Sharpe asked one of the boys to fetch him a pouch of musket ammunition and another of pistol shot while he went forrard to the small arms store and took a musket and pistol from the racks. The weight of the pistol made him think of Grace, safe now in the deep after hold. He tested both flints, found them secure.

He took the two pouches, thanked the boy, and climbed back to the lower deck where he paused to hang the cartridge pouches from his belt. The ship swooped up on a long swell, making him stagger slightly, then subsided into the trough, and suddenly a terrible crash echoed through the timbers, making the deck beneath Sharpe’s feet quiver, and he realized that a round shot must have hit the upperworks. ‘Froggies have our range,’ a man said in the gloom.

‘For what we are about to receive,’ another man intoned, but before he could finish the prayer Lieutenant Holderby’s voice interrupted him. Holderby was at his station by the aft companionway.

‘Open ports!’ the fifth lieutenant shouted, and petty officers repeated the order to the forward part of the deck.

The lower deck’s thirty gunports were all raised, letting the daylight stream in to reveal the ship’s masts like three gigantic pillars about which was a seething mass of half-naked men. The long guns were all in their recoil position, hard back against their breeching ropes.

‘Run them out!’ Holderby ordered. ‘Run them out!’

Gunners heaved on the tackles and the thick deck quivered as the huge guns were hauled forward so that their barrels protruded beyond the ship’s sides. Holderby, elegant in silk stockings and gilded coat, ducked under the deck beams. ‘You’re to lie down between the guns. Between the guns! Lie down! Have a rest, gentlemen, before proceedings commence. Lie down!’

Chase had ordered his crew to lie down because the enemy’s shot, coming from directly forward, could scream down these decks and each one could easily knock down a score of men, but if the gun crews were in the intervals between the heavy cannons then they would be mostly protected. Up on the quarterdeck Chase shuddered and when Haskell raised an eyebrow, the captain smiled. ‘She’s going to be knocked to pieces, ain’t she?’

Haskell rapped a knuckle on the quarterdeck rail. ‘French-built, sir, well built.’

‘Aye, they do make good ships.’ Chase stood on tiptoes to see across the barrier of the hammock netting to where the
Royal Sovereign
was almost up to the enemy line. ‘She survived,’ he said admiringly, ‘and she’s been under fire for twenty-three minutes! Dreadful gunnery, wouldn’t you say?’

The tip of the British right horn was about to tear into the enemy, but the
Pucelle
was in the left horn and that was still well short of the line, and the enemy could still fire without fear of any reply. Chase winced as a round shot smacked through his sails to open a succession of holes. The
Pucelle
’s ordeal had begun, and all he could do now was sail slowly on into an ever-increasing storm of gunnery. A fountain spewed up on the starboard side, spattering one of the carronade crews. ‘Water’s cold, eh, lads?’ Chase remarked to the bare-chested gunners.