Sharpe 3-Book Collection 3: Sharpe's Trafalgar, Sharpe's Prey, Sharpe's Rifles (39 page)

He went to the starboard rail, slung the big gun on his shoulder and pulled himself up the foremast shrouds. He could see a marine lying on the
Pucelle
’s quarterdeck with a rivulet of blood seeping from his body along the planks. Another marine was being carried to the rails. He could not see Chase, but then a bullet struck the shroud above him, making the tarred rope tremble like a harp string and he climbed desperately, his ears buffeted by the sound of the big guns. Another bullet whipped close by, a second struck the mast and, bereft of force, thumped against the volley gun’s stock. He reached the futtock shrouds and, without thinking, hurled himself upwards and outwards, the quickest way to the maintop. There was no time to be frightened; instead he scrambled up the ratlines as nimbly as any sailor and then rolled onto the grating to find that he was now level with the Frenchmen in their maintop. There were a dozen men there, most reloading, but one fired and Sharpe felt the wind of the ball whipping past his cheek. He unslung the volley gun, cocked and aimed it.

‘Bastards,’ he said, and pulled the trigger. The recoil of the gun hurled him back against the topmast shrouds. The volley gun’s smoke filled the sky, but no shots came from the Frenchman’s maintop. Sharpe slung the empty gun on his shoulder and lowered himself off the grating. His feet flailed for a heartbeat, then found the inward-sloping futtock shrouds and he went back down to the
Pucelle
’s deck and, when he looked back up, all he could see at the
Redoutable
’s maintop was a body hanging off the edge. He threw the volley gun down, picked up a musket and walked to the larboard rail.

A dozen marines were left. The others were dead or wounded. Sergeant Armstrong, his face bleeding from three cuts and his trousers a deep red from a bullet wound, was sitting with his back against the foremast. He had a musket at his shoulder and, though his right eye was closed by blood, he did his best to aim the musket, then fired. ‘You should go below, Sergeant!’ Sharpe shouted.

Armstrong gave a monosyllabic opinion of that advice and pulled a cartridge from his pouch. A bullet had grazed Clouter’s back leaving a bloody welt like the stroke of a lash, but the big man was paying it no heed. He was stuffing another cask of musket balls into the carronade, though by now the
Pucelle
had gone beyond the
Redoutable
and the Frenchman was out of Clouter’s range.

Captain Chase still lived. Connors, the signal lieutenant, had lost his right forearm to a cannon ball and was down in the cockpit, while Pearson, a midshipman who had twice failed his lieutenant’s examination, had been killed by the musketry. The marine lieutenant was wounded in the belly and had been taken below to die. A dozen gunners were dead and two marines had been thrown overboard, but Chase reckoned the
Pucelle
had still been lucky. She had destroyed the
Redoutable
just as that ship had been on the point of boarding the
Victory
, and Chase felt an exultation as he looked back to see the terrible damage his guns had done. They had filleted her, by God! Chase had half considered laying alongside the
Redoutable
and boarding her, but she was already lashed to the
Victory
and doubtless the flagship’s crew would take her surrender, then he saw the French
Neptune
ahead and he shouted at the helmsman to steer for her. ‘She’s ours!’ he told Haskell.

The first lieutenant was bleeding from a bullet wound in his left arm, though he refused to have it treated. The arm hung useless, but Haskell claimed it did not hurt and, besides, he said, he was right-handed. Blood dripped from his fingers. ‘At least get the arm bandaged,’ Chase suggested, staring at the
Neptune
, which was making surprising speed despite the loss of her mizzenmast. She must have sailed clean round the western edge of the mêlée while the
Pucelle
passed to its east, and now the Frenchman was heading landwards as though trying to escape the battle.

‘I’m sure Pickering is quite busy enough without having to be detained by scratched lieutenants,’ Haskell answered testily.

Chase took off his white silk stock and beckoned to Midshipman Collier. ‘Tie that round Lieutenant Haskell’s arm,’ he ordered the midshipman, then turned to the quartermaster. ‘Starboard, John,’ he said, gesturing, ‘starboard.’ The
Neptune
was threatening to cross the
Pucelle
’s bows and Chase needed to avoid that, but he reckoned he had speed enough to catch the Frenchman, lay her alongside and fight her muzzle to muzzle, and, because she carried eighty-four guns and he only had seventy-four, his victory would be all the more remarkable.

Then disaster struck.

The
Pucelle
had sailed past the
Victory
and the
Redoutable
, leaving a thick cloud of smoke that drifted after her, and out of that cloud there appeared the bows of an undamaged ship. Her figurehead showed a ghostly skeleton, scythe in one hand and a French tricolour in the other, and she was crossing behind the
Pucelle
, not a pistol’s length away, and the whole of her larboard broadside was facing the
Pucelle
’s decorated stern.

‘Hard to starboard!’ Chase shouted at the quartermaster who had already begun the turn which would bring the
Pucelle
’s larboard broadside to face the
Neptune
, but then the new enemy fired and the very first shot ripped away the tiller ropes so that the wheel spun uselessly in the quartermaster’s hands. The rudder, no longer tensioned by the ropes, centred itself and the
Pucelle
swung back to larboard, leaving her stern naked to the enemy guns. She would be raked.

A shot screamed down the weather deck, killing eight sailors and wounding a dozen more. The shot left a spattering trail of blood the whole length of the deck, and the next shot cut Haskell in half, leaving his torso on the starboard rail and his legs hanging from the quarterdeck’s forward rail. Collier, still holding the silk stock, was smothered in Haskell’s blood. The fourth shot shattered the
Pucelle
’s wheel and impaled the quartermaster on its splintered spokes. Chase leaned on the broken quarterdeck rail. ‘Tiller ropes!’ he shouted. ‘Mister Peel! Tiller ropes! And hard to starboard!’

‘Aye aye, sir! Hard to starboard!’

More shots broke through the stern. The
Pucelle
was shaking from the impact. Musket bullets cracked on her poop. ‘Walk with me, Mister Collier,’ Chase said, seeing that the boy seemed close to tears, ‘just walk with me.’ He paced up and down the quarterdeck, one hand on Collier’s shoulder. ‘We are being raked, Mister Collier. It is a pity.’ He took the boy under the break of the poop, close to the mangled remains of the wheel and the quartermaster. ‘And you will stay here, Harold Collier, and note the signals. Watch the clock! And keep an eye on me. If I fall you are to find Mister Peel and tell him the ship is his. Do you understand?’

‘Yes, sir.’ Collier tried to sound confident, but his voice was shaking.

‘And a word of advice, Mister Collier. When you command a ship of your own, take great care never to be raked.’ Chase patted the midshipman’s shoulder, then walked back into the musket fire that pitted the quarterdeck. The enemy’s cannons still raked the
Pucelle
, shot after shot demolishing the high windows, throwing down cannon and spraying blood on the deck beams overhead. The remains of the mizzenmast were cut through below the decks and Chase watched appalled as the whole mast slowly toppled, tearing itself out of the poop deck as it collapsed to starboard. It went slowly, the shrouds parting with sounds like pistol shots, and the mainmast swayed as the stay connecting it to the mizzen tightened, then that cable parted and the mizzen creaked, splintered and finally fell. The enemy cheered. Chase leaned over the broken quarterdeck rail to see a dozen men hauling on one of the spare tiller lines that had been rove before the battle. ‘Pull hard, lads!’ he shouted, bellowing to be heard above the sound of the enemy’s guns that still hammered into the
Pucelle
. A twenty-four-pounder cannon lay on its side, trapping a screaming man. One of the starboard carronades on the quarterdeck had been punched off its carriage. The great white ensign trailed in the water. None of the
Pucelle
’s guns could answer, nor could they until the ship turned. ‘Pull hard!’ Chase shouted and saw Lieutenant Peel, hatless and sweating, add his weight to the tiller rope. The ship began to turn, but it was the mizzenmast, with its sail and rigging that lay in the water off the
Pucelle
’s starboard quarter, that did most to drag the ship around. She came slowly, still being punished by the French ship that had sailed out of the mêlée’s smoke.

She was the
Revenant
. Chase recognized her, saw Montmorin standing coolly on his quarterdeck, saw the smoke of the Frenchman’s guns sweeping up into her undamaged rigging and heard the terrible sounds of his ship being battered beneath his feet, but at last the
Pucelle
responded to the drag of the mizzen and the tug of the tiller and Chase’s starboard broadside could begin to respond, though some of his guns had been dismounted and others had dead crews and so his first broadside was feeble. No more than seven guns fired. ‘Close the larboard ports,’ Chase called down the weather deck. ‘All crews to starboard! Lively now!’

The
Pucelle
slowly came to life. She had been stunned by her raking, but Chase led a score of seamen up to the poop to cut away the mizzen’s wreckage, and below decks the surviving gunners from the larboard cannon went to make up the crews of the starboard broadside. The
Revenant
turned to larboard, plainly intending to run alongside the
Pucelle
. Her forecastle was crowded with men armed with cutlasses and boarding pikes, but the remaining starboard carronade on Chase’s quarterdeck ripped them away. John Hopper, the bosun of Chase’s barge crew, commanded that gun. Chase slashed through a last shroud with a boarding axe, left a petty officer to clear the mess on the poop deck and went back to his quarterdeck as the
Revenant
crept closer and closer. The
Pucelle
’s starboard guns were firing properly now, their crews reinforced at last, and the shots were splintering holes in the
Revenant
’s side, but then the first of the Frenchman’s guns were reloaded and Chase watched their blackened muzzles appear in the gunports. Smoke billowed. He saw the
Revenant
’s sails quiver to the shock of her guns, felt his own ship tremble as the balls struck home, saw young Collier standing at the starboard rail staring at the approaching enemy. ‘What are you doing here, Mister Collier?’ Chase asked.

‘My duty, sir.’

‘I told you to watch the clock in the poop, didn’t I?’

‘There ain’t no clock, sir. It went.’ The boy, in mute proof, held up the twisted enamel of the clock’s face.

‘Then go down to the orlop deck, Mister Collier, and don’t disturb the surgeon, but in his dispensary there is a net of oranges, a gift from Admiral Nelson. Bring them up for the gun crews.’

‘Aye aye, sir.’

Chase looked back and saw the
Victory
. A signal flew from her rigging and Chase did not need a signal lieutenant to translate the flags. ‘Engage the enemy more closely.’ Well, he was about to do that, and he was engaging a virtually undamaged enemy ship while his own had been grievously hurt, but by God, Chase thought, he would make Nelson proud. Chase did not blame himself for being raked. In this kind of battle, a wild mêlée with ships milling about in smoke, it would be a miracle if any captain was not raked, and he was proud that his men had turned the ship before the
Revenant
could empty her whole broadside into the
Pucelle
’s stern. She could still fight. Beyond the
Victory
, beyond the smoke that lay about her, beyond the embattled ships, some dismasted, he could see the undamaged rigging of the British vessels that formed the rearmost part of each squadron and those ships, not yet committed, were only just entering the battle. The
Santisima Trinidad
, towering over both fleets like a behemoth, was being raked and pounded by smaller ships that looked like terriers yapping at a bull. The French
Neptune
had vanished, and the
Pucelle
was threatened by the
Revenant
alone, but the
Revenant
had somehow escaped the worst of the fighting and Montmorin, as fine a captain as any in the French navy, was determined to pluck some honour from the day.

Two seamen dragged the
Pucelle
’s soaking white ensign onto the quarterdeck, smearing Haskell’s blood with the sopping folds of the heavy flag. ‘Run it up to the main topsail yard, larboard side,’ Chase ordered. It would look odd there, but by God he would fly it to show that the
Pucelle
was undefeated.

Musket balls began striking the deck. Montmorin had fifty or sixty men in his upperworks and they would now try to do what the
Redoutable
had done to the
Victory
. He would clear the
Pucelle
’s decks and Chase desperately wanted to retreat into the shelter of the damaged poop, but his place was here, in full view, and so he put his hands behind his back and tried to look calm as he paced up and down the deck. He resisted the temptation to extend each length of the deck until he was under the poop, but forced himself to turn a few paces short, though he did stop once to stare in fascination at the mangled remains of the binnacle and its compass. A musket ball thumped the deck by his feet and he turned and paced back. He should have summoned a lieutenant from below decks to replace Haskell, but he decided against it. If he fell then his men knew what to do. Just fight. That was all there was to do now. Just fight, and Chase’s life or death would make small difference to the outcome, whereas the lieutenants, commanding the guns, were doing something useful.

The crews of the two larboard carronades, which had no targets, were levering the fallen starboard carronade out of the way so that they could drag one of their two guns to replace it. Chase skipped out of their way, then saw Midshipman Collier on the weather deck where he was handing out oranges from his huge net. ‘Throw one here, lad!’ he called to the boy.