Sharpe's Trafalgar

by Bernard Cornwell

  Chain shot looked at first glance like ordinary round shot, but the ball was split into two halves and when it left the gun the halves separated. They were joined by a short length of chain and the two hemispheres whirled through the air, the chain between them, to slice and tear at the enemy’s rigging. “Long range for chain shot,” the gunner told Chase.

  “We’ll get closer,” Chase said. He was hoping to disable the Revenant’s sails, then close and finish her with solid shot. “We’ll get closer,” he said again, stooping to the gun and staring at the enemy that was now almost within range. The gilding on her stern reflected the sunlight, the tricolor hung limp from the mizzen gaff and her rail was crowded with men who must have been wondering why the wind was fickle enough to favor the British. Sharpe was staring through a telescope, hoping for a glimpse of Peculiar Cromwell’s long hair and blue coat, or of Pohlmann and his servant, but he could not make out the individuals who stood watching the Pucelle glide closer. He could see the ship’s name on her stern, see the water being pumped from her bilges and the copper, now pale green, at her water line.

  Then the longboats towing the Revenant were suddenly called back. Chase grunted. “They probably plan to tow her head around,” he suggested, “to show us her broadside. Drummer!”

  A marine boy stepped forward. “Sir?”

  “Beat to quarters,” Chase said, then held up a hand. “No, belay that! Belay!”

  The wind was not so fickle after all, and the Revenant’s boats had not been recalled to turn the ship, but rather because Montmorin had seen the flickering cat’s-paws of wind ruffling the water at his stern. Now her sails lifted, stretched and tightened and the Frenchman was suddenly sliding ahead, just out of cannon range. “Damn,” Chase said mildly, “damn and blast his French luck.” The flintlock was dismounted, the tompion hammered into the muzzle, the gunport closed and the twenty-four-pounder secured.

  Next day the Revenant pulled ahead again, the beneficiary of an unfair breeze, and by the end of the week of calms the two ships were again almost an horizon apart, though now the French ship was directly ahead of the Pucelle. “Far enough,” Chase said bitterly, “to see her safe into harbor.”

  The next few days saw contrary currents and hard winds from the northeast so that both ships beat up as close as they could. Chase called it sailing on a bowline and the Pucelle proved the better sailor and slowly, so slowly, she began to make up the lost ground. The ship smacked hard into the waves, shattering the seas across the decks and sails. Rain squalls sometimes blotted the Revenant from the Pucelle’s view, but she always reappeared and, through his telescope, Sharpe could see her pitching like the Pucelle. Once, gazing at the black and yellow warship, he saw strips of canvas flutter at her bow and she seemed to slew toward him for a few seconds, but in another few heartbeats the Frenchman had hoisted a new sail to replace the one that had blown out. “Worn canvas,” the first lieutenant commented. “Reckon that’s why we’re faster on the wind. His foresails are threadbare.”

  “Or his stays aren’t tight enough,” Chase muttered, watching as the Revenant resumed her previous course. “But he made that sail change quickly,” he acknowledged ruefully.

  “He probably had the new sail bent on ready, sir,” Haskell suggested.

  “Like as not,” Chase agreed. “He’s good, our Louis, ain’t he?”

  “Probably got English blood,” Haskell said in all seriousness.

  They passed the Cape Verde Islands which were mere blurs on a rain-smudged horizon and, a week later, in another rainstorm, they glimpsed the Canaries. There was plenty of local shipping about, but the sight of two warships sent them all scurrying for shelter.

  There was just one more week, maybe a day less, to Cadiz. “She’ll make port on my birthday,” Chase said, staring through his glass, then he collapsed the telescope and turned away to hide his bitterness for, unless a miracle intervened, he knew he faced utter failure. He had one week to catch the Frenchman, but the wind had backed and for the next few days the Revenant kept her lead so that the sun-faded tricolor at her stern was a constant taunt to her pursuers.

  “What will Chase do if we don’t catch her?” Grace asked Sharpe that night.

  “Sail on to England,” he said. Plymouth, probably, and he imagined landing on a wet autvimn afternoon on a stone quay where he would be forced to watch Lady Grace going away in a hired four-wheeler.

  “I shall write to you,” she said, reading his thoughts, “if I know where.”

  “Shorncliffe, in Kent. The barracks.” He could not hide his misery. The stupid dreams of a ridiculous love were fading into a grim reality, just as Chase’s hopes of catching the Revenant were fading.

  Grace lay beside him, gazing up at the deck, listening to the hiss of rain falling on the deadlight of the cabin’s scuttle. She was dressed, for it was almost time for her to slip out of his door and go down to her own cabin, yet she clung to him and Sharpe saw the old sadness in her eyes. “There is something,” she said softly, “that I was not going to tell you.”

  “Not going to tell me?” he asked. “Which means you will tell me.”

  “I was not going to tell you,” she said, “because there is nothing to be done about it.”

  He guessed what she was going to say, but let her say it.

  “I’m pregnant,” she said and sounded forlorn.

  He squeezed her hand, said nothing. He had known what she was going to say, but was now surprised by it.

  “Are you angry?” she asked nervously.

  “I’m happy,” he said, and laid a hand on her flat belly. It was true. He was filled with joy, even though he knew that joy had no future.

  “The child is yours,” she said.

  “You know that?”

  “I know that. Maybe it’s the laudanum, but ... “ She stopped and shrugged. “It’s yours. But William will think it’s his.”

  “Not if he can’t ... “

  “He will think what I tell him!” she interrupted fiercely, then began to cry and put her head on Sharpe’s shoulder. “It is yours, Richard, and I would give the world for the child to know you.”

  But they would be home soon, and she would go away and Sharpe would never see the child for he and Grace were illicit lovers and there was no future for them. None. They were doomed.

  And next morning everything changed.

  It was a chill, wet day. The wind was north of northwest, so that the Pucelle sailed hard on her bowline. Rain squalls swept across the sea, seethed on the deck and dripped from the sails. The water was green and gray, streaked by foam and whipped by the wind. The officers on the quarterdeck looked unfamiliar for they were in thick oiled coats, and Sharpe, feeling the cold for the first time since he had gone to India, shivered. The ship bucked and shuddered, fighting sea and wind, and sometimes heeled far over as a gusting squall strained the sails. Seven men manned the double wheel and it needed all their combined strength to hold the heavy ship up into the wind’s teeth. “A touch of autumn in the air,” Captain Chase greeted Sharpe. Chase’s cocked hat was covered with canvas and tied beneath his chin. “Did you have breakfast?”

  “I did, sir.” It was not much of a breakfast for supplies were getting low on the Pucelle and the officers, like the men, subsisted on short rations of beef, ship’s biscuit and Scotch coffee which was a vile concoction of burned bread dissolved in hot water and sweetened with sugar.

  “We’re gaining on him,” Chase said, nodding toward the distant Revenant which was evidently having as hard a time as the Pucelle, for she was shattering the seas with her bluff bow and smothering her hull in spray as she pushed as near northward as her helmsman could manage. The Pucelle closed the gap relentlessly, as she always did when the ships were hard on the wind, but just after the second bell of the forenoon watch the breeze went into the south-southwest and the Revenant was no longer struggling into the wind, but could sail with her canvas spread to the treacherous wind’s kindness and so keep her lead. Then, just a
half hour later, she unexpectedly turned to the east which meant she was heading toward the Straits of Gibraltar instead of Cadiz.

  “Starboard, starboard!” Chase called to the helmsman.

  Haskell ran up to the quarterdeck as the seven men spun the Pucelle’s wheel. Sail handlers ran about the deck, loosing sheets. The sails flapped, spattering rainwater across the deck. “Has she blown out her foresails again?” Haskell shouted over the noise of the beating canvas.

  “No,” Chase said. The Frenchman was traveling faster and easier now, sliding across the waves to leave a track of ragged white water at her stern. “He’s making for Toulon!” Chase decided, but no sooner had he spoken than the Revenant turned back onto her old course and the Pucelle’s watch, who had just loosened her sheets, had to haul them tight again.

  “Follow him!” Chase called to the quartermaster and pulled out his glass again, unhooded the lens and stared at the Frenchman. “What the devil is he doing? Is he taunting us? Knows he’s safe and wants to mock us? Blast him!”

  The answer came ten minutes later when a lookout called that a sail was in sight. Twenty minutes more and there were two sails out on the northern horizon and the closer of the two had been identified as a British frigate. “Can’t be the blockading squadron,” Chase said, puzzled, “because we’re too far south.” A moment later the second ship came into clearer view and she too was a Royal Navy frigate.

  The Revenant had plainly changed course to avoid the two ships, fearing from her first glimpse of their topsails that they might be British ships of the line, but then, realizing that she was faced by two mere frigates, she had decided to fight her way through to Cadiz. “She’ll have no trouble brushing them aside,” Chase said gloomily. “Their only hope of stopping her is by laying themselves right across her course.”

  Signals were suddenly flying in the breeze. Sharpe could not even see the distant frigates, but Hopper, the bosun of Chase’s crew, could not only see them, but could identify the nearer ship. “She’s the Euryalus, sir!”

  “Henry Blackwood, by God,” Chase said. “He’s a good man.”

  Tom Connors, the signal lieutenant, was halfway up the mizzen ratlines where he gazed through a glass at the Euryalus which was flying a string of bright flags from her mizzen yard. “The fleet’s out, sir!” Connors called excitedly, then amended his report. “Euryalus wants us to identify ourselves, sir. But she also says the French and Spanish fleets are out.”

  “My God! Bless me!” Chase, his face suddenly stripped of all its tiredness and disappointment, turned to Sharpe. “The fleet’s out!” He sounded disbelieving and exultant at the same time. “You’re certain, Tom?” he asked Connors, who was now running up to the flag lockers on the poop. “Of course you’re sure. They’re out!” Chase could not resist dancing two or three celebratory steps that were made clumsy by his heavy tarpaulin coat. “The Frogs and Dons, they’re out! By God, they’re out!”

  Haskell, normally so stern, looked delighted. The news was racing around the ship, bringing off-duty men up to the deck. Even Cowper, the purser, who normally stayed mole-like in the lower depths of the ship, came to the quarterdeck, hurriedly saluted Chase, then gazed northward as though expecting to see the enemy fleet on the horizon. Pickering, the surgeon, who normally did not stir from his cot till past midday, lumbered on deck, glanced at the far frigates, then muttered that he was going out of range and went back below. Sharpe did not quite understand the excitement and surprise that had quickened the crew, indeed it seemed to him that the news was grim. Lieutenant Peel slapped Sharpe’s back in his joy, then saw the confusion on the soldier’s face. “You don’t share our delight, Sharpe?”

  “Isn’t it bad news, sir, if the fleet’s out?”

  “Bad news? Good Lord above, no! They won’t be out without our permission, Sharpe. We keep ‘em bottled up with a close blockade, so if they’re out it means we let ‘em out, and that means our own fleet’s somewhere close by. Monsieur Crapaud and Senor Don are dancing to our tune now, Sharpe. Our tune! And it’ll be a hot one.”

  It seemed Peel was right, for when the Pucelle hoisted a string of flags that identified her and described her mission, there was a long wait while that message was passed on by the British frigates to other ships that evidently lay beyond the horizon, and if there were other ships across that gray skyline then it could only mean that the British fleet was also out. All the fleets were out. The battleships of Europe were out, and Chase’s quarterdeck rejoiced. The Revenant sailed on, ignored by the two frigates which had bigger fish to fry than one lone French seventy-four. The Pucelle still dutifully pursued her, but then another flurry of color broke out among the sails of the Euryalus and everyone on the quarterdeck stared at the signal lieutenant, who in turn gazed through a glass at the frigate. “Hurry!” Chase said under his breath.

  “Vice Admiral Nelson’s compliments, sir,” Lieutenant Connors said, scarce able to conceal his excitement, “and we’re to bear north northwest to join his fleet.”

  “Nelson!” Chase said the name with awe. “Nelson! By God, Nelson!”

  The officers actually cheered. Sharpe stared at them in astonishment. For over two months they had pursued the Revenant, using every ounce of seamanship to close on her, yet now, ordered to abandon the chase, they cheered? The enemy ship was just to sail away?

  “We’re a gift from heaven, Sharpe,” Chase explained. “A ship of the line? Of course Nelson wants us. We add guns! We’re in for a battle, by God, we are too! Nelson against the Frogs and the Dons, this is heaven!”

  “And the Revenant?” Sharpe asked.

  “If we don’t catch her,” Chase asked airily, “what does it matter?”

  “It might matter in India.”

  “That’ll be the army’s problem,” Chase said dismissively. “Don’t you understand, Sharpe? The enemy fleet’s out! We’re going to pound them to splinters! No one can blame us for abandoning a chase to join battle. Besides, it’s Nelson’s decision, not mine. Nelson, by God! Now we’re in good company!” He danced another brief and clumsy hornpipe before picking up his speaking trumpet to call out the orders that would turn the Pucelle toward the British fleet that lay beyond the horizon, but before he could even draw breath a shout came from the main crosstrees that another fleet was visible on the northern horizon.

  “Stand on,” Chase ordered the quartermaster at the wheel, then ran for the main shrouds, followed by a half-dozen officers. Sharpe went more slowly. He climbed the rain-soaked ratlines, negotiated the lubber’s hole and trained his telescope north, but he could see nothing except a wind-broken sea and a mass of clouds on the horizon.

  “The enemy.” Captain Llewellyn of the marines had arrived beside Sharpe on the maintop’s grating. He breathed the words. “My God, it’s the enemy.”

  “And the Revenant will join them!” Chase said. “That’s my guess. They’ll be as glad of Montmorin’s company as Nelson is of ours.” He turned and grinned at Sharpe. “You see? We may not have lost her after all!”

  The enemy? Sharpe could still see nothing but clouds and sea, but then he realized that what he had mistaken for a streak of dirty white cloud on the horizon was in fact a mass of topsails. A fleet of ships was on that horizon and sailing straight toward his glass so that their sails coalesced into a blur. God alone knew how many ships were there, but Chase had said that the combined navies of France and Spain had put out to sea. “I see thirty,” Lieutenant Haskell said uncertainly, “maybe more.”

  “And they’re coming south,” Chase said, puzzled. “I thought the rascals were supposed to be going north to cover the invasion?”

  “It’s French navigators,” Lieutenant Peel, the rotund man who had sung so beautifully at the concert, said. “They think Britain’s off Africa.”

  “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 vie
w.

  The Pucelle turned westward, 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 colored 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.”