Sharpe 3-Book Collection 3: Sharpe's Trafalgar, Sharpe's Prey, Sharpe's Rifles (31 page)

‘Sir?’ The midshipman looked pale.

‘I will trouble you, Mister Collier, to take this notebook and pencil and to make a copy of any signals you see this day.’

‘Aye aye, sir!’ Collier said, taking the book and pencil from Chase.

Lieutenant Connors, the signal lieutenant, overheard the order from his place on the poop deck. He looked offended. He was an intelligent young man, quiet, red-haired and conscientious, and Chase, seeing his unhappiness, climbed to him. ‘I know that logging the signals is your responsibility, Tom,’ he said quietly, ‘but I don’t want young Collier brooding. Keep him busy, eh? Let him think he’s doing something useful and he won’t worry so much about being killed.’

‘Of course, sir,’ Connors said. ‘Sorry, sir.’

‘Good fellow,’ Chase said, slapping Connors’s back, then he ran back down to the quarterdeck and stared at the
Conqueror
which had just completed her turn. ‘There goes Pellew now!’ he cried. ‘See how well his fellows spread their wings?’ The
Conqueror
’s studdingsails, projecting far outboard on either side of her huge square sails, fell to catch the small wind and were sheeted home.

‘It’s a race now,’ Chase said, ‘and the devil take the foremost. Lively now! Lively!’ He was shouting at the men on the main yard who had been slow to release the
Pucelle
’s studdingsail yards, and doubtless Chase was thinking that Israel Pellew, the Cornishman commanding the
Conqueror
, would be watching him critically, but the yards were run out handily enough and, the eastwards turn completed, the sails fell with a great slap and flap before the men on deck hauled them tight. The enemy was still hull down on the horizon and the wind scarce more than a whisper. ‘It’ll be a long haul,’ Chase said ruefully, ‘a long, long haul. Are you sure there are no more coffee beans?’ he asked his steward.

‘Only the furry ones, sir.’

‘Try them, try them.’

The British ensigns broke out at the sterns of the ships. Today, respecting Nelson’s wishes, every ship flew the white ensign. Chase had been ready to hoist the red up his mizzen, for the commander of the East Indian station had been a rear admiral of the red, but when he saw the white break at the
Conqueror
’s stern he ordered that flag brought up from the storeroom. Even Collingwood, Vice Admiral of the Blue, had hoisted Nelson’s beloved white at the mizzen of the huge three-decked
Royal Sovereign
. Union flags were hoisted to the fore topgallant mast and to the main topmast stay so that every ship flew three flags. Two masts might be shot away, but the British colours would still fly.

The marines were coiling down the lines of the grapnels that they had hung on the hammock nettings. The grapnels were triple-barbed hooks that could be hurled into an enemy’s rigging to drag her close for boarding. The wooden tubs on the deck, in which the sail sheets were usually coiled, were being carried down below. Some ships had jettisoned theirs, but Chase deemed that a waste of money. ‘Though by sundown, God willing, we’ll be the owners of enough French and Spanish chandlery to fit out a couple of warships.’ He turned and took off his hat to greet Lady Grace who had appeared on deck with her husband. ‘I apologize, milady, that your cabin has been dismantled.’

‘It seems Britain has a better use for the space today,’ she said, amused.

‘We shall restore your privacy as soon as we have dealt with those fellows,’ Chase said, nodding towards the enemy fleet, ‘but once we are within gunshot, milady, I shall have to insist that you go below the water line.’

‘I would prefer to offer my services to the surgeon,’ Lady Grace said.

‘The cockpit can come under fire, ma’am,’ Chase said, ‘especially if the enemy depress their guns. I would be remiss if I did not insist you shelter in the hold. I shall have a place made ready for you.’

‘You will go to the hold, Grace,’ Lord William said, ‘as the captain orders you.’

‘As must you, my lord,’ Chase said.

Lord William shrugged. ‘I can fire a musket, Chase.’

‘Doubtless you can, my lord, but we must gauge whether you are more valuable to Britain alive than dead.’

Lord William nodded. ‘If you say so, Chase, if you say so.’ Was he relieved? Sharpe could not tell, but certainly Lord William was making no great effort to persuade Chase to let him stay on deck. ‘How long till you close on them?’ Lord William asked.

‘Five hours at least,’ Chase said, ‘probably six.’ A seaman was casting the log that brought ill news with every throw. Two knots slipped through his fingers, sometimes three, but it was slow going even though Chase was cramming every sail onto the masts. Sharpe stood ten paces from Lady Grace, not daring to look at her, but acutely aware of her. Pregnant! He felt his heart leap with a strange happiness, then he flinched as he realized that they must soon be parted and what would happen to his child then? He stared fixedly down into the weather deck where two gunners were attaching the flintlocks to the guns. Another gunner received permission to come to the quarterdeck to arm the twelve eighteen-pounder cannons and the four thirty-two-pounder carronades. Two more of the brutal carronades squatted on the forecastle. They were short-barrelled and wide-mouthed, capable of belching a terrible onslaught of musket and cannon balls at an enemy’s deck.

A dozen gunners were now in Chase’s quarters, marvelling at the gilded beams and delicately carved windows. Small tubs of water for swabbing the guns or slaking the men’s thirst were placed beside every cannon, while other men threw water on the decks and the ship’s sides so that the dampened timber would be slow to catch fire. Match tubs were readied, half filled with water and capped with a pierced lid through which a slow match hung in case a flintlock should break. Down in the orlop deck men coiled an anchor cable to make a gigantic bed on which the wounded could be laid as they waited to see Pickering, the surgeon, who was singing as he laid out his knives, saws, probes and pincers. The carpenter was putting shot plugs all about the orlop deck. The plugs were great cones of wood, thickly smeared with tallow, that could be rammed into any hole punched close to the water line. Relieving ropes were laid for the rudder so that if the wheel was shot away, or the tiller rope severed by a round shot, the ship could be steered from the weather deck. Leather fire buckets, most filled with sand, stood in clusters. The powder monkeys, small boys of ten or eleven, brought up the first charges from the magazines. Chase had ordered blue bags, which were the middle size of charge. The biggest powder charges, in black bags, were used when firing at long range, the blue were more than adequate for a close-range fight, while even the red bags, which had the smallest charge and were usually used for signalling, could smash a shot through an enemy ship’s side at point-blank range. ‘By day’s end,’ Chase said wistfully, ‘we’ll probably be double-loading reds.’ He suddenly brightened. ‘My God, it’s my birthday! Mister Haskell! You owe me ten guineas! You recall our wager? I said, did I not, that we should come up with the
Revenant
on my birthday?’

‘I shall pay gladly, sir.’

‘You’ll pay nothing, Mister Haskell, nothing. If Nelson hadn’t been here then the
Revenant
would have escaped us. It ain’t fair for a captain to win a bet with an admiral’s help. This coffee tastes good! The fur adds piquancy, don’t you think?’

The galley cooked a last burgoo, a generous one, with great chunks of pork and beef floating in the greasy oats. It would be the last hot meal the men would enjoy before battle, for the galley fires would have to be doused in case an enemy shot struck the oven and scattered fire across a gundeck where the powder bags waited to be loaded. The men ate the meal sitting on the deck, while the bosun’s mates took round a double ration of rum. A band began playing on the
Conqueror
. ‘Where’s our band?’ Chase demanded. ‘Have them play! Have them play! I’d like some music.’

But before the band could gather, the
Victory
signalled to
Pucelle
, a signal that was repeated by the
Euryalus
. ‘Our number, sir!’ Lieutenant Connors shouted, then watched the frigate that sailed wide out on the larboard side of Nelson’s column. ‘You’re invited to take breakfast with the admiral, sir.’

‘I am?’ Chase sounded delighted. ‘Inform his lordship I’m on my way.’

The barge crew was summoned while the barge itself, which was already on tow behind the ship, was hauled up to the starboard side. Lord William stepped forward, plainly expecting to accompany Chase to the
Victory
, but the captain turned to Sharpe instead. ‘You’ll come, Sharpe? Of course you will!’

‘Me?’ Sharpe blinked in astonishment. ‘I’m not dressed to meet an admiral, sir!’

‘You look fine, Sharpe. Ragged, perhaps, but fine.’ Chase, blithely ignoring Lord William’s ill-concealed indignation, dropped his voice. ‘Besides, he’ll expect me to bring a lieutenant, but if I take Haskell, Peel will never forgive me and if I take Peel, Haskell will feel slighted, so you’ll have to do.’ Chase grinned, pleased with the idea of introducing Sharpe to his beloved Nelson. ‘And you’ll divert him, Sharpe. He’s a perverse man, he likes soldiers.’ Chase drew Sharpe forward as the barge crew, led by the huge Hopper, scrambled down the steps built into the
Pucelle
’s side. ‘You go first, Sharpe,’ Chase said. ‘The boys will make sure you don’t get a bath.’

The side of a warship leaned steeply inwards, for the ships were built to bulge out close to the water line, and that generous slope made the first few steps easy enough, but the nearer Sharpe came to the water line the steeper the narrow steps became and, though there was scarcely any wind, the
Pucelle
was rising and falling in the big swells, while the barge was falling and rising, and Sharpe could feel his boots sliding on the lower wooden ledges that were slimy with growth. ‘Hold it there, sir,’ Hopper growled at him, then shouted, ‘Now!’ and two pairs of hands unceremoniously grasped Sharpe by his breeches and jacket and hauled him safe into the barge. Clouter, the escaped slave, was one of his helpers and he grinned as Sharpe found his feet.

Chase came nimbly down the steps, glanced once at the pitching barge, then stepped gracefully onto the rear thwart. ‘It’ll be a stiff pull, Hopper.’

‘It’ll be easy enough, sir, easy enough.’

Chase took the tiller himself while Hopper sat at an oar. It was indeed a hard pull and a long one, but the barge crept past the intervening ships and Sharpe could stare up at their massive striped sides. From the white and red barge, low down among the swells, the ships looked vast, cumbersome and indestructible.

‘I also brought you,’ Chase grinned at Sharpe, ‘because your inclusion will annoy Lord William. He doubtless thinks he should have been invited, but bless me, how he would bore Nelson!’ Chase waved to an officer high on the stern of a seventy-four. ‘That’s the
Leviathan
,’ he told Sharpe, ‘under Harry Bayntun. He’s a prime fellow, prime! I served with him in the old
Bellona
. I was only a youngster, but they were happy days, happy days.’ The swell lifted the
Leviathan
’s stern, revealing an expanse of green copper and trailing weed. ‘Besides,’ Chase went on, ‘Nelson can be useful to you.’

‘Useful?’

‘Lord William don’t like you,’ Chase said, not bothering that he was being overheard by Hopper and Clouter who had the two stroke oars nearest the stern, ‘which means he’ll try and obstruct your career. But I know Nelson’s a friend of Colonel Stewart, and Stewart’s one of your strange riflemen, so perhaps his lordship will put in a word for you? Of course he will, he’s the very soul of generosity.’

It took a half-hour to reach the flagship, but at last Chase steered the barge into the
Victory
’s starboard flank and one of his men hooked onto its chains so that the small boat was held just beneath another ladder as steep and perilous as the one Sharpe had descended on the
Pucelle
. A gilded entryway was halfway up the ladder, but its door was closed, meaning Sharpe must climb all the way to the top. ‘You first, Sharpe,’ Chase said. ‘Jump and cling on!’

‘God help me,’ Sharpe muttered. He stood on a thwart, twisted the cutlass out of his way, and leaped for the ladder when the barge was heaved up by a wave. He clung on desperately, then climbed past the entryway’s gilded frame. A hand reached down from the weather deck and hauled him through the entry port where a line of bosun’s mates waited to welcome Chase with their whistles.

Chase was grinning as he scrambled up the side. A lieutenant, immaculately uniformed, saluted him, then inclined his head when Sharpe was introduced. ‘You’re most welcome, sir,’ the lieutenant told Chase. ‘Another seventy-four today is a blessing from heaven.’

‘It’s good of you to let me join the celebrations,’ Chase said, removing his hat to salute the quarterdeck. Sharpe hurriedly followed suit as the bosun’s whistles made their strange twittering sound. The
Victory
’s upper decks were crowded with gunners, sail-handlers and marines who ignored the visitors, though one older man, a sailmaker, judging from the big needles thrust into his grey hair which was bundled on top of his head, did bob down as Chase was led towards the quarterdeck. Chase stopped, clicked his fingers. ‘Prout, isn’t it? You were on the
Bellona
with me.’

‘I remembers you, sir,’ Prout said, tugging the hair over his forehead, ‘and you was just a boy, sir.’

‘We grow old, Prout,’ Chase said. ‘We grow damned old! But not too old to give the Dons and Frenchmen a drubbing, eh?’

‘We shall beat ’em, sir,’ Prout said.

Chase beamed at his old shipmate, then went to the quarterdeck, which was thickly crowded with officers who politely removed their hats as Chase and Sharpe were ushered aft past the great wheel and under the poop to the admiral’s quarters, which were guarded by a single marine in a short red jacket crossed by a pair of pipe-clayed belts. The lieutenant opened the door without knocking and led Chase and Sharpe through a small sleeping cabin which had been stripped of its furniture and then, again without knocking, into a massive cabin that stretched the whole width of the ship and was lit by the wide array of stern windows. This cabin had also been emptied of its furniture, so that only a single table was left on the black and white chequered canvas floor. Two massive guns, already equipped with their flintlocks, stood on either side of the table.