Sharpe's Trafalgar (35 page)

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 around the western edge of
the melee while the Pucelle passed to its east, and now the Frenchman was heading landward
as though trying to escape the battle.

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

Chase took off his white silk stock and beckoned to Midshipman Collier. “Tie that around
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
tricolor 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,
centered 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 FYench ship that had sailed out of the melee’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 melee 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 Mont-morin, as fine a captain as any in the French navy, was
determined to pluck some honor 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.

Collier looked alarmed at the order, as though he feared to throw something at his
captain, but he tossed the orange underhand as if he was bowling a cricket ball and Chase
had to lunge to one side to catch it single-handed. Some gunners cheered the catch and
Chase held the orange aloft like a trophy, then tossed it to Hopper.

Captain Llewellyn’s marines were firing at the French in their fighting tops, but the
French were more numerous and their lashing fire was thinning Llewellyn’s ranks. “Shelter
your men as best you can, Llewellyn,” Chase ordered.

“If I can take some to the maintop, sir?” the Welshman suggested.

“No, no, I gave my word to Nelson. Shelter them. Your time will come soon enough. Under
the break of the poop, Llewellyn. You can fire from there.”

“You should come with us, sir.”

“I feel like taking the air, Llewellyn,” Chase said with a smile. In truth he was
terrified. He kept thinking of his wife, his house, the children. In her last letter
Florence had said that one of the ponies had a sickness, but which one? The cob? Was it
better? He tried to think of such domestic things, wondering if the apple harvest was
good and whether the stable yard had been repaved and why the parlor chimney smoked so bad
when the wind was in the east, but in truth he just wanted to dash into the poop’s shadow
and so be protected from the musketry by the deck planks above. He wanted to cower, but
his job was to stay on his quarterdeck. That was why he was paid four hundred and eighteen
pounds and twelve shillings a year, and so he paced up and down, up and down, made
conspicuous by his cocked hat and gilded epaulettes, and he tried to divide four hundred
and eighteen pounds and twelve shillings by three hundred and sixty-five days and the
Frenchmen aimed their muskets at him so that Chase walked a strip of deck that became ever
more lumpy and ragged from bullet strikes. He saw the ship’s barber, a one-eyed Irishman,
hauling on a weather-deck gun. At this moment, Chase reckoned, that man was more valuable
to the ship than its captain. He paced on, knowing he would be hit soon, hoping it would not
hurt too badly, regretting his death so keenly and wishing he could see his children one
more time. He was frightened, but it was unthinkable to do anything else but show a cool
disdain for danger.

He turned and stared westward. The melee about the Victory had grown, but he could
distinctly see a British ensign flying above a French tricolor, showing that at least
one enemy ship had struck. Farther south there was a second melee where Collingwood’s
squadron had cut off the rear of the French and Spanish fleet. Away to the east, beyond the
Revenant, a handful of enemy ships shamefully sailed away, while to the north the enemy
vanguard had at last turned and was lumbering southward to help their beleaguered
comrades. The battle, Chase reckoned, could only get worse, for a dozen ships on either
side had yet to engage, but his fight was with Montmorin now.