Sharpe 3-Book Collection 3: Sharpe's Trafalgar, Sharpe's Prey, Sharpe's Rifles (29 page)

‘They can sail to China so long as we catch them,’ Chase said, then collapsed his telescope and disappeared down the futtock shrouds. Sharpe stayed in the maintop until a squall of rain blotted the far fleet from view.

The
Pucelle
turned westwards, but the fickle wind turned with her so that she had to beat her way out into the Atlantic, thumping the cold waves to spatter spray down the holy-stoned decks. The enemy fleet was soon lost to sight, but Chase’s course took the
Pucelle
past two more frigates which formed the fragile chain connecting Nelson’s fleet with the enemy. The frigates were the scouts, the cavalry, and, having found the enemy, they stayed with her and sent messages back down the long windy links of their chain. Connors watched the bright coloured flags and passed on their news. The enemy, he reported, was still sailing south and the
Euryalus
had counted thirty-three ships of the line and five frigates, but two hours later the total was increased by one ship of the line because the
Revenant
, as Chase had foreseen, had been ordered to join the enemy’s fleet.

‘Thirty-four prizes!’ Chase said exultantly. ‘My God, we’ll hammer them!’

The last link in the chain was not a single-decked frigate, but a ship of the line which, to Sharpe’s amazement, was identified even before her hull showed above the horizon. ‘It’s the
Mars
,’ Lieutenant Haskell said, peering through his glass. ‘I’d know that mizzen topsail anywhere.’

‘The
Mars
?’ Chase’s spirits were flying high to the heavens now. ‘Georgie Duff, eh! He and I were midshipmen together, Sharpe. He’s a Scotsman,’ he added as though that were relevant. ‘Big fellow, he is, big enough to be a prize fighter! I remember his appetite! Never had enough to eat, poor fellow.’

A string of flags appeared at the
Mars
’s mizzen. ‘Our number, sir,’ Connors reported, then waited a few seconds. ‘What brings you home in such a hurry?’

‘Give Captain Duff my compliments,’ Chase said happily, ‘and tell him I knew he’d need some help.’ The signal lieutenant dragged flags from their lockers, a midshipman bent them on to the halliard and a seaman hauled them up.

‘Captain Duff assures you, sir, that he will not permit us to come to any harm,’ Connors reported after a moment.

‘Oh, he’s a good fellow!’ Chase said, delighted with the insult. ‘A good fellow.’

An hour later another cloud of sail appeared, only this one was on the western horizon and it grew from a blurred smear into the massed sails of a fleet. Twenty-six ships of the line, not counting the
Mars
or the
Pucelle
, were sailing northwards and Chase took his ship towards the head of the line while his officers crowded at the quarterdeck’s lee rail and gazed at the far ships. Lord William and Lady Grace, both bundled in heavy cloaks, had come on deck to see the British fleet.

‘There’s the
Tonnant
!’ Chase exulted. ‘See her? A lovely ship, just lovely! An eighty-four. She was captured at the Nile. God, I remember seeing her come into Gibraltar afterwards, all her topmasts gone and blood crusted at her scuppers, but don’t she look wonderful now? Who has her?’

‘Charles Tyler,’ Haskell said.

‘What a good fellow he is, to be sure! And is that the
Swiftsure
?’

‘It is, sir.’

‘My God, she was at the Nile too. Ben Hallowell had her then. Dear Ben. She’s under Willy Rutherford now,’ he said to Sharpe, as though Sharpe would know the name, ‘and he’s a good fellow, a capital fellow! Look at that copper on the
Royal Sovereign
! New, eh? She’ll be sailing quick as you like.’ He was pointing to one of the bigger warships, a great brute with three gundecks and Sharpe, peering through his glass, could see the bright gleam of her newly coppered hull whenever she leaned to the wind. The other ships, when they tilted to the breeze, showed a band of copper turned green by the sea, but the
Royal Sovereign
’s lower hull shone like gold. ‘She’s Admiral Collingwood’s flagship,’ Chase told Sharpe, ‘and he’s a good fellow. Not as nice as his dog, but a good fellow.’

To Chase they were all good fellows. There was Billy Hargood who was sailing the
Belleisle
, a seventy-four that had been captured from the French, and Jimmy Morris of the
Colossus
and Bob Moorsom of the
Revenge
. ‘Now there’s a fellow who knows how to train a ship,’ Chase said warmly. ‘Wait till you see her in battle, Sharpe! She can fire broadsides faster than anyone.’

‘The
Dreadnought
’s faster,’ Peel suggested.

‘The
Revenge
is much quicker!’ Haskell said, irritated by the second lieutenant’s comment.

‘The
Dreadnought
’s quick, no doubt of it, she’s quick.’ Chase tried to mediate between his senior lieutenants. He pointed out the
Dreadnought
to Sharpe, who saw another three-decker. ‘Her guns are quick,’ Chase said, ‘but she’s painful slow on the wind. John Conn has her, doesn’t he?’

‘He does, sir,’ Peel said.

‘What a good fellow he is! I wouldn’t like to bet a farthing on which of them is swifter with their guns. Conn or Moorsom. Pity the enemy ships that draw them as dancing partners, eh? Look! The
Orion
, she was at the Nile. Edward Codrington has her now. What a good fellow he is! And his wife Jane’s a lovely woman. Look! Is that the
Prince
? It is. Sails like a haystack!’ He was pointing to another three-decker that thumped her way northwards. ‘Dick Grindall. What a first-rate fellow he is.’

Behind the
Prince
was another seventy-four that, even to Sharpe’s untutored eye, looked just like the
Revenant
or the
Pucelle
. ‘Is she French?’ he asked, pointing.

‘She is, she is,’ Chase said. ‘The
Spartiate
, and she’s bewitched, Sharpe.’

‘Bewitched?’

‘Sails faster at night than she does by day.’

‘That’s because she’s built of stolen timbers,’ Lieutenant Holderby opined.

‘Sir Francis Laforey has her,’ Chase said, ‘and he’s a capital fellow. Look, there’s a minnow! Which is she?’

‘The
Africa
,’ Peel answered.

‘Only sixty-four guns,’ Chase said, ‘but she’s under the command of Harry Digby and there isn’t a finer fellow in the fleet!’

‘Or a richer,’ Haskell put in drily, then explained to Sharpe that Captain Henry Digby had been monstrous fortunate in the matter of prize money.

‘An example to us all,’ Chase said piously. ‘Is that the
Defiance
? By God, it is! She was badly cut about at Copenhagen, wasn’t she? Who’s her captain now?’

‘Philip Durham,’ Peel said, then silently mouthed Chase’s next four words.

‘What a fine fellow!’ Chase explained. ‘And look, the
Saucy
!’

‘The
Saucy
?’ Sharpe asked.

‘The
Temeraire
.’ Chase dignified the vast three-decker with her proper name. ‘Ninety-eight guns. Who has her now?’

‘Eliab Harvey,’ Haskell answered.

‘So he does, so he does. Odd sort of name, eh? Eliab? I’ve never met him, but I’m sure he’s a prime fellow, prime! And look! The
Achille
! Dick King has her, and what a splendid fellow he is. And look, Sharpe, the
Billy Ruffian
! All’s well if the
Billy Ruffian
is here!’

‘The
Billy Ruffian
?’ Sharpe asked, puzzled by the name that was evidently attached to a two-decker seventy-four that otherwise looked quite unremarkable.

‘The
Bellerophon
, Sharpe. She was Howe’s flagship at the Glorious First of June and she was at the Nile, by God! Poor Henry Darby was killed there, God rest his soul. He was an Irishman and a capital soul, just capital! John Cooke has her now, and he’s as stout a fellow as ever came from Essex.’

‘He came into money,’ Haskell said, ‘and moved to Wiltshire.’

‘Did he now? Good for him!’ Chase said, then trained his glass on the
Bellerophon
again. ‘She’s a quick ship,’ he said enviously, though his
Pucelle
was just as fast. ‘A lovely ship. Medway-built. When was she launched?’

‘ ’Eighty-six,’ Haskell answered.

‘And she cost £30,232 14s and 3d,’ Midshipman Collier interjected, then looked ashamed for his interruption. ‘Sorry, sir,’ he said to Chase.

‘Don’t be sorry, lad. Are you sure? Of course you’re sure, your father’s a surveyor in the Sheerness dockyard, ain’t he? So what was the threepence spent on?’

‘Don’t know, sir.’

‘A ha’penny nail, probably,’ Lord William said acidly. ‘The peculation in His Majesty’s dockyards is nothing short of scandalous.’

‘What is scandalous,’ Chase retorted, stung to the protest, ‘is that the government permits ill-founded ships to be given to good men!’ He swung away from Lord William, frowning, but his good spirits were restored by the sight of the British fleet’s black and yellow hulls.

Sharpe just gazed at the fleet in awe, doubting he would ever see a sight like this again. This was the majesty of Britain, her deep-sea fleet, a procession of majestic gun batteries, vast, ponderous and terrible. They moved as slowly as fully laden harvest waggons, their bluff bows subduing the seas and the beauty of their black and yellow flanks hiding the guns in their dark bellies. Their sterns were gilded and their figure-heads a riot of shields, tridents, naked breasts and defiance. Their sails, yellow, cream and white, made a cloud bank, and their names were a roll call of triumphs:
Conqueror
and
Agamemnon
,
Dreadnought
and
Revenge
,
Leviathan
and
Thunderer
,
Mars
,
Ajax
and
Colossus
. These were the ships that had cowed the Danes, broken the Dutch, decimated the French and chased the Spanish from the seas. These ships ruled the waves, but now one last enemy fleet challenged them and they sailed to give it battle.

Sharpe watched Lady Grace standing tall beside the mizzen shrouds. Her eyes were bright, there was colour in her cheeks and awe on her face as she stared at the stately line of ships. She looked happy, he thought, happy and beautiful, then Sharpe saw that Lord William also watched her, a sardonic expression on his face, then he turned to gaze at Sharpe who hastily looked back to the British fleet.

Most of the ships were two-deckers. Sixteen of those, like the
Pucelle
, carried seventy-four guns, while three, like the
Africa
, only had sixty-four guns apiece. One two-decker, the captured French
Tonnant
, carried eighty-four guns, while the other seven ships of the fleet were the towering triple-deckers with ninety-eight or a hundred guns. Those ships were the brute killers of the deep, the slab-sided gun batteries that could hurl a slaughterous weight of metal, but Chase, without showing any alarm at the prospect, told Sharpe there was a famous Spanish four-decker, the largest ship in the world, that carried over a hundred and thirty guns. ‘Let’s hope she’s with their fleet,’ he said, ‘and that we can lay alongside her. Think of the prize money!’

‘Think of the slaughter,’ Lady Grace said quietly.

‘It hardly bears contemplation, milady,’ Chase said dutifully, ‘hardly bears it at all, but I warrant we shall do our duty.’ He put his telescope to his eye. ‘Ah,’ he exclaimed, staring at the leading British ship, a three-decker with ornate giltwork climbing and wreathing her massive stern. ‘And there’s the best fellow of them all. Mister Haskell! A seventeen-gun salute, if you please.’

The leading ship was the
Victory
, one of the three hundred-gun ships in the British fleet and also Nelson’s flagship, and Chase, gazing at the
Victory
, had tears in his eyes. ‘What I wouldn’t do for that man,’ he exclaimed. ‘I never fought for him myself and thought I’d never have the chance.’ Chase cuffed at his eyes as the first of the
Pucelle
’s guns banged from the weather deck in salute of Lord Horatio Nelson, Viscount and Baron Nelson of the Nile and of Burnham Thorpe, Baron Nelson of the Nile and of Hilborough, Knight of the most Honourable Order of the Bath and Vice Admiral of the White. ‘I tell you, Sharpe,’ Chase said, still with tears on his cheeks, ‘I would sail down the throat of hell for that man.’

The
Victory
had been signalling to the Mars, which, in turn, was passing the messages on down the chain of frigates to the
Euryalus
, which lay closest to the enemy, but now the flagship’s signal came down and a new ripple of bright flags ran up her mizzen. The
Pucelle
’s guns still fired the salute, the shots screaming out to fall in the empty ocean to starboard.

‘Our numeral, sir!’ Lieutenant Connors called to Captain Chase. ‘He makes us welcome, sir, and says we are to paint our mast hoops yellow. Yellow?’ He sounded puzzled. ‘Yellow, sir, it does say yellow, and we are to take station astern of the
Conqueror
.’

‘Acknowledge,’ Chase said, and turned to stare at the
Conqueror
, a seventy-four which was sailing some distance ahead of a three-decker, the
Britannia
. ‘She’s a slow ship,’ Chase muttered of the
Britannia
, then he waited for the last of the seventeen guns to sound before seizing the speaking trumpet. ‘Ready to tack!’

He had some tricky seamanship ahead, and it would have to be done under the eyes of a fleet that prized seamanship almost as much as it valued victory. The
Pucelle
was on the starboard tack and needed to go about so that she could join the column of ships which sailed north on the larboard tack, yet as she turned into the wind she would inevitably lose speed and, if Chase judged it wrong, he would end up becalmed and shamed in the wind-shadow of the
Conqueror
. He had to turn his ship, let her gather speed and slide her smoothly into place and if he did it too fast he could run aboard the
Conqueror
and too slow and he would be left wallowing motionless under the
Britannia
’s scornful gaze. ‘Now, quartermaster, now,’ he said, and the seven men hauled on the great wheel while the lieutenants bellowed at the sail handlers to release the sheets. ‘Israel Pellew has the
Conqueror
,’ Chase remarked to Sharpe, ‘and he’s a fine fellow and a wonderful seaman. Wonderful seaman! From Cornwall, you see? They seem to be born with salt in their veins, those Cornish fellows. Come on, my sweet, come on!’ He was talking to the
Pucelle
which had turned her bluff bows into the wind and for a second it seemed she would hang there helplessly, but then Sharpe saw the bowsprit moving against the cavalcade of British ships, and men were running across the deck, seizing new sheets and hauling them home. The sails flapped like demented things, then tightened in the wind and the ship leaned, gathered speed and headed docilely into the open space behind the
Conqueror
. It had been done beautifully.