Sharpe 3-Book Collection 3: Sharpe's Trafalgar, Sharpe's Prey, Sharpe's Rifles (40 page)

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 parlour 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 westwards. The mêlée about the
Victory
had grown, but he could distinctly see a British ensign flying above a French tricolour, showing that at least one enemy ship had struck. Farther south there was a second mêlée 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 southwards 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.

The
Pucelle
shuddered as the
Revenant
slammed into her side. The force of the collision, broadside to broadside, two thousand tons meeting two thousand tons, drove the two ships apart again, but Chase shouted at the few remaining men on his top decks to throw the grapnels and make the
Revenant
fast. The hooks flew into the enemy’s rigging, but the enemy had the same idea and her crew was also hurling grappling hooks, while seamen in the Frenchman’s rigging were tying the
Pucelle
’s lower yards to their own. To the death, then. Neither ship could escape now, they could only kill each other. The rails of the two ships were thirty feet apart because their lower hulls bulged out so greatly, but Chase was close enough to see Montmorin’s expression and the Frenchman, seeing Chase, took off his hat and bowed. Chase did the same. Chase wanted to laugh and Montmorin was smiling, both men struck by the oddity of such courtesies even as they did their best to kill each other. Beneath their silver-buckled feet the great guns gouged and hammered. Chase wished he had an orange to throw to Montmorin who, he was sure, would appreciate the gesture, but he could not see Collier.

Chase did not know it, but his presence on the deck was directly useful, for the French marksmen in the fighting tops were obsessed by his death and so ignored the carronade crews which, seeing French seamen gather in the
Revenant
’s waist, fired down into the mass. The Frenchmen had been snatching boarding pikes from their racks about the mainmast, while others held axes or cutlasses, but one carronade forward and one aft provided a tangling crossfire that destroyed the boarding party. The French had no carronades, relying on the men in their fighting tops to clear an enemy’s deck with musket fire.

Ten marines were left on the
Pucelle
’s forecastle. Sergeant Armstrong, bleeding to death, still sat by the foremast and clumsily fired his musket up into the enemy rigging. Clouter, his black torso streaked and spattered by other men’s blood, had taken command of the starboard carronade after half its crew was killed by a grenade thrown from the
Revenant
’s foremast. Sharpe was firing up into the maintop, hoping his bullets would gouge through its timbers to kill the French marksmen perched on the platform. The wind seemed to have died completely so that the sails and flags hung limp. Powder smoke thickened between the ships, rising to hide and protect the
Pucelle
’s bullet-lashed deck. Sharpe was deaf now, his ears buffeted by the big guns and his world shrunken to this small patch of bloody deck and the smoke-wreathed enemy rigging soaring above him. His shoulder was bruised by the musket so that he flinched every time he fired. An orange rolled across the deck at his feet, its skin dimpling the blood on the planks. He brought the musket’s brass-bound stock hard down on the orange, squashing and bursting the fruit, then stooped and scooped up some of the pulped flesh. He ate some, grateful for the juice in his parched mouth, then scooped some more which he put into Armstrong’s mouth. The sergeant’s unbloodied eye was glassy, he was scarce conscious, but he was still trying to reload his musket. He coughed hoarsely, mingling bloody spittle with the orange juice that trickled down his chin. ‘We are winning, aren’t we?’ he asked Sharpe earnestly.

‘We’re murdering the bastards, Sergeant.’

The dead lay where they fell now, for there were not enough men to throw them overboard, or rather the men who remained were too busy fighting. The worst of that fight was below decks where the two ships, matched gun to gun, mangled each other. The lower deck was dark now, for the
Revenant
blotted out the daylight on the starboard side and the larboard gun-ports were closed. Smoke filled the low deck, curling under beams splashed with blood from the
Revenant
’s first raking broadside. Now the Frenchman’s shots broke open the hull, screamed across the deck and crashed out to leave patches of newly created daylight where they holed the larboard side. Thick dust and thicker smoke drifted in the shafts of light. The
Pucelle
’s guns returned the fire, roaring back on their breeching ropes to fill the deck with thunder. The ships touched here, their gunports almost coinciding so that when a British gunner tried to swab his cannon a French cutlass half severed his arm, then the lambswool swab on its staff was seized and carried aboard the French ship. The French shots were heavier, for they carried larger guns, but larger guns took longer to reload and the British fire was noticeably quicker. Montmorin’s crew was probably the best trained in all the enemy’s fleet, yet still Chase’s men were faster, but now the enemy tossed grenades through the open gunports and fired muskets to slow the British guns.

‘Fetch marines!’ Lieutenant Holderby shouted at a midshipman, then had to go right up to the boy and cup his hands over the midshipman’s ear. ‘Fetch marines!’ A round shot killed the lieutenant, spewing his intestines across the gratings where the thirty-two-pound round shots were stored. The midshipman stayed still for a second, disoriented. Flames were rising to his left, then a gunner threw sand across the remnants of the grenade and another tossed a cask of water to douse the fire. Another gunner was crawling on the deck, vomiting blood. A woman was hauling on a gun tackle, spitting curses at the French gunners who were only a cutlass length away. A gun recoiled, filling the deck with noise and breaking its breeching rope so that it slewed round and crushed two men whose shrieks were lost in the din. Men heaved and rammed, their naked torsos gleaming with sweat that trickled through the powder residue. They all looked black now, except where they were spotted or streaked or sheeted with blood. The
Revenant
’s powder smoke belched into the
Pucelle
, choking men who struggled to return the favour.

The midshipman scrambled up the companionway to the weather deck that shook from the recoil of its twenty-four-pounder guns. Wreckage of the rigging lay across the central part of the deck which was so thick with smoke that the midshipman climbed to the forecastle instead of to the quarterdeck. His ears were ringing with the sound of the guns and his throat was as dry as ash. He saw an officer in a red coat. ‘You’re wanted below, sir.’

‘What?’ Sharpe shouted.

‘Marines, sir, needed below.’ The boy’s voice was hoarse. ‘They’re coming through the gunports, sir. Lower deck.’ A bullet smacked into the deck beside his feet, another ricocheted off the ship’s bell.

‘Marines!’ Sharpe bellowed. ‘Pikes! Muskets!’

He led his ten men down the companionway, stepped over the body of a powder monkey who lay dead though there was not a mark on his young body that Sharpe could see, then down to the hellish dark and thick gloom of the lower deck. Only half of the starboard cannons were firing now, and they were being impeded by the French who slashed through the gunports with cutlasses and pikes. Sharpe fired his musket through a gunport, glimpsed a Frenchman’s face dissolve into blood, ran to the next and used the butt of the empty musket to hammer an enemy’s arm. ‘Simmons!’ he shouted at a marine. ‘Simmons!’

Simmons stared at him, wide-eyed. ‘Go to the after magazine,’ Sharpe shouted. ‘Fetch the grenades!’

Simmons ran, grateful for a chance to be beneath the water line even if only for an instant. Three of the
Pucelle
’s heavy guns fired together, their sound almost stunning Sharpe, who was going from gunport to gunport and stabbing at the French with his cutlass. A huge crash, dreadful in its loudness and so prolonged that it seemed to go on for ever, broke through Sharpe’s deafened ears and he reckoned a mast had gone overboard, though whether it was another of the
Pucelle
’s or one of the
Revenant
’s he could not tell. He saw a Frenchman ramming a cannon, half leaning out of the opposing gunport, and he skewered the man’s arm with the cutlass. The Frenchman sprang back and Sharpe skipped aside for he could see the gunner holding the linstock to the touch-hole. Sharpe registered that the French did not use flintlocks, was surprised to have noticed such a thing in battle, then the gun fired and the rammer, left in the barrel, disintegrated as it was driven across the
Pucelle
’s deck. A midshipman fired a pistol into an enemy gunport. A flintlock sparked and the sound of the heavy gun pounded Sharpe’s ears. Some of the men had lost the scarves they had tied about their heads and their ears dribbled blood. Others had bleeding noses caused by nothing more than the sound of the guns.

Simmons reappeared with the grenades and Sharpe took a linstock from one of the remaining water barrels, lit its fuse, then waited until the vagaries of the ocean swells brought a French gunport into view. The fuse sputtered. He could see the
Revenant
’s yellow planking, then the opposing ship ground against the
Pucelle
’s hull and a gunport came into sight and he hurled the glass ball into the
Revenant
. He dimly heard an explosion, saw flames illuminate the black smoke filling the enemy’s gundeck, then he left Simmons to throw the other grenades while he went back down the deck, stepping past bodies, avoiding the gunners, checking each gunport to make sure no more Frenchmen were trying to reach through with cutlass or pike. The big capstan in the middle of the deck, used to haul the ship’s anchor cables, had an enemy round shot buried in its wooden heart. Blood dripped from the deck above. A gun, crammed with grapeshot, recoiled across his path and Frenchmen screamed.

Then another scream pierced Sharpe’s ringing ears. It came from above, from the weather deck that was slick with so much blood that the sand no longer gave men a secure footing. ‘Repel boarders! Repel boarders!’

‘Marines!’ Sharpe shouted at his few men, though none heard him in the noise, but he reckoned some might follow if they saw him climb the companionway. He could hear steel striking steel. No time to think, just time to fight.

He climbed.

Lord William frowned at the sound of the carronade, then flinched as the
Pucelle
’s larboard broadside began to fire, the sound rolling down the ship to fill the lady hole with thunder. ‘I perceive we are still in action,’ he said, lowering the pistol. He began to laugh. ‘It was worth pointing a gun at your head, my dear, just to see your expression. But was it remorse or fear that actuated your misery?’ He paused. ‘Come! I wish an answer.’

‘Fear,’ Lady Grace gasped.

‘Yet I should like to hear you express remorse, if only as evidence that you possess some finer feelings. Do you?’ He waited. The guns fired, the sound becoming louder as the nearer cannon recoiled two decks above their refuge.

‘If you had any feelings,’ Grace said, ‘any courage, you would be on deck sharing the dangers.’

Lord William found that very amusing. ‘What a strange idea you do have of my capabilities. What can I do that would be useful to Chase? My talents, dearest, lie in the contrivance of policy and, dare I say, its administration. The report I am writing will have a profound influence on the future of India and, therefore, on the prospects of Britain. I confidently expect to join the government within a year. Within five years I might be Prime Minister. Am I to risk that future just to strut on a deck with a pack of mindless fools who believe a brawl at sea will change the world?’ He shrugged and looked up at the lady hole’s ceiling. ‘Towards the end of the fight, my dear, I shall show myself, but I have no intention of running any unnecessary or extraordinary risks. Let Nelson have his glory today, but in five years I shall dispose of him as I wish and, believe me, no adulterer will gain honour from me. You know he is an adulterer?’