Sharpe's Trafalgar (25 page)

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?”