The Emperor (57 page)

He entered the cabin, his face stern with concentration,
and told her the situation briskly, with the faintest tremor of excitement in his voice.

‘
My love, we are going to attack at once, to take them by
surprise. We'll cut through their line and attack from the
landward side – the admiral thinks they won't have cleared
away their portside guns. You must go below now to the
orlop. Ask Daniels to put you somewhere safe – and for
God's sake, don't go trying to help him, not this time! I wish
to God you were safe on shore somewhere, but there's no
point in repining now. We must do the best we can.’

Mary forced a smile to her face. It felt like a ghastly grin,
but fortunately he was too preoccupied to notice its quality.

‘
I shall be perfectly all right, my darling,' she said, rising
with difficulty and putting her hands to his shoulders. ‘I'm
glad to be here, and not the least afraid, and you must put
me completely out of your thoughts from this moment, and
concentrate on winning a famous victory.' She kissed him, and calling to Farleigh, took herself out of his way. By the
time she had gathered what she thought she needed, he was
on the quarter-deck giving orders, and she was fairly sure he
had forgotten her entirely.

The ship was in an orderly pandemonium as bulkheads
were knocked away and equipment stowed, fire buckets
filled and sand strewn on the decks. She and Farleigh picked
their way through it all and went below into the stinking
blackness of the 'tween decks. Here the hands scurried back
and forth in near darkness, and bent almost double, which
seemed to trouble them not a whit. On the lower deck, they
stepped aside to let the gunner's party go down the com
panion first, heading for the powder room. The gunner and
his mates were followed by the marine sentry, tramping and
rattling in his uniform and boots, and by the soft rat-
pattering of half a dozen powder boys and three women, all barefoot. The women glanced at Mary with sharp interest as
they passed. They must all have heard of her, but it was
quite likely that they had never set eyes on her before.

On the orlop they were below the waterline, which was
traditionally thought to be the safest place. French gunners
tended to aim high – it was their battle tactic to try to
cripple a ship by destroying its masts and sails, whereas
English gunners were trained to fire into the enemy's hull
and sink her. It was for this reason that the sick and
wounded were brought to this airless place, and clearing for
action here included the grisly preparations of the after-
cockpit.

Daniels was supervising the creation of an operating table
out of sea-trunks and a table-top when Mary arrived. He
looked up and frowned with annoyance. 'For God's sake,
ma'am,' he began, but Mary forestalled him with a gesture.

‘
No, no, I haven't come to help. I've come to take
shelter. Can you find a place for me? I think I ought to
mention that – that I seem to be in labour.’

Daniel's jaw dropped, more in outrage than surprise.
‘Dear God, woman, what a time to choose!' he cried, quite
forgetting himself.

‘
I assure you, I had no choice
in
the matter,' she said
tautly.

‘
But you realize that once we join battle, I shall have
more wounded down here than I can cope with? I won't be
able to help you. You'll have to get on with it yourself. It
isn't your first, however, is it?'

‘
Madam and I will manage,' Farleigh said, deeply
disapproving. 'We only need a safe place for madam to lie
down in.’

He ran a distracted hand through his hair, and said,
‘Everything's been knocked away, don't you understand? Wait, let me think. You, Wibley, go and rig a canvas for
them between the ship's knees to the side of the lamp-room.
That'll be out of the way. A hammock's no good to you,' he
added, looking at Mary critically. 'It'll have to be a mattress
on the deck. Wibley, drag mine out and lay it for them; and
find them a lamp.' The loblolly-boy darted off to perform these tasks, and Daniels dismissed them with a wave of a hand. 'I've done my best for you. It will be no place for a
woman down here, but then there is no place for a woman
on a man o'war.’

Mary had a number of things to think about, all of which
were more important than Daniel's rudeness, which in any
case she understood and forgave. Just then the idea of a
bare mattress on the deck sounded close to Heaven.

*

The English ships sailed in line-ahead towards the van of the
French fleet. The
Culloden
went aground on the shoaling
edge of the island, and remained there, a marker for the
other ships, but there were no other mishaps.
Goliath
led
the way and together with
Zealous
and
Theseus
cut the
French line to the stern of the first ship;
Orion, Audacious
and the
Africa
passed between the second and third ships. It
was about half past six, and the sun was setting.

The admiral had been right about the French ships being
unprepared on the landward side. Within a quarter of an
hour, the leading English ships had anchored themselves
alongside the enemy, and were pounding them without a
shot being fired in return, as the French struggled to clear
away, load and run out their portside battery in the middle
of that hellish bombardment.

The first French ship,
Le Guerrier,
had already been dis
masted, and
Goliath
and
Orion
had shifted anchor to attack
new ships further down the line, when the rear of the
English line, led by the flagship, joined the attack on the
starboard side, so that the French were being pounded from
both sides. At the end of only two hours, five French ships
had surrendered, and within another hour two more had
struck, and the great treasure-ship,
L'Orient,
had caught
fire.

On the orlop deck of the Africa, the noise of the battle
was continuous and maddening. The loose thunder of the gun-trucks rumbling over the decks above, the deafening boom of the broadside, the irregular and horrible thuds and
crashes of enemy shot striking — all were transmitted
through the fabric of the ship's timbers, drowning out the
other, more familiar ship noises, the pattering of horny bare feet, the squeal of the jeers, the creak of the yards coming
round as course was changed. Nearer to hand there was the
confusion of screams and groans and babblings of the
wounded, waiting for or enduring the attentions of the
surgeon and his mates.

The motion of the ship was strange, at anchor in a
shallow bay, reeling and heaving like a netted bull from the recoil of her own broadsides and the irregular strikes of the enemy; but from what Mary could tell she had not been seriously damaged. It was insufferably hot in their tiny
screened-off alcove, and the lamp made it hotter still.
Farleigh knelt beside her mistress and wiped the trickling
sweat from her face, and as the hours extended, it all began
to seem unreal, and she felt that she was trapped in an extraordinary nightmare.

Then at ten o'clock there was a massive explosion, the concussion of which stunned their ears, and actually thrust the ship sideways through the water. It was followed by an
extraordinary, death-like silence. Even the wounded
stopped groaning for a matter of minutes; it was as though a giant, unseen hand had been clapped down over every ship
and every mouth.

‘Some ship has blown up,' Farleigh whispered at last, as
the sound of firing resumed. 'I wonder if it was one of ours
or one of theirs?' Mary did not reply. The quality of her
pains had changed: the baby was on its way out into the world. She reached for Farleigh's hand to warn her, but for once it was not there. The canvas screen had been drawn
hack, and a rough-looking woman, her hair escaping from
her cap and her sleeves rolled up to the elbow, stood there, holding an iron cup.

‘
Mr Daniels sent me to see if you was all right, mum,' she
said. 'I brought you a drink of water. All the wounded is
gettin' one. It's savage hot down here, ain't it, mum?
How're you gettin' on then? Any sign o' the babby?'

‘
What was that explosion?' Farleigh asked her, too glad
to see another human being to rebuke her for her boldness.

‘
That big Frenchy, what's been on fire this hour, the
treasure ship — blew up, miss,' she said with relish. ‘Gor, that
didn't half blow! You should 'a seen what come down on
deck — my friend Tilda, what's carrying powder, says it was
rainin' knives an' forks an' silver cups, an' all sorts! Stolen
out o' Malta off o' them Knights, so Mr Daniels says. Well,
that's all gorn to the bottom o' the bay now, Miss. That'll
larn that Froggy general — he won't be conquerin' no Egypt
now! We're givin’

‘em a hell of a lickin', miss. Here, shall I
give your missus this water?’

She made to come forward, but the smell of her preceded
her into the confined space, and Farleigh said sharply, 'Stop
there! There's no room for you in here. Give the water to
me.’

A hand as black and shiny as anthracite with ancient dirt
came forward into the lamplight, holding the cup, and then
the woman said in a different voice, 'Here, miss, if I ain't far
wrong, that babby's prac'ly come. You ain't been doing
your job, miss, an' that's a fact. I'll give a hand, shall I?’

Mary groaned, and Farleigh in her agitation thrust at the
woman with an outstretched hand. 'Go away! And drop
that curtain! Do you want everyone to see? Go away, I say.’

The woman sniffed offendedly, but obeyed, and Farleigh bent over her mistress in readiness.

‘
It was the explosion did it,' Mary said faintly. 'Frighte
ned it out of me.' And in a very few minutes, the baby had
emerged, and amongst the terrible noises of the battle
sounded a new and hopeful one, the lusty yelling of a
healthy baby.

‘
It's a girl, madam,' Farleigh said, sounding more relieved
than pleased. The curtain was twitched again, and the
surgeon stood there, attracted by the baby's cries, and
sparing one minute from his duties.

‘
Everything all right, here?' he said. His eyes took in the
situation, and all in one movement he squatted and reached
for the child, tied the ligature, and severed the birth-cord. He looked the baby over, and examined Mary briefly. 'All
in order,' he said. 'I dare say you can manage now, can't
you?' He stood up. 'Congratulations,' he said tersely, and
was gone.

*

The battle went on until three in the morning. When finally
the signal to discontinue was hoisted, the English ships drew
off, took the land breeze out of the bay just far enough to
get clear water, and hove to. The exhausted men dropped
where they stood, falling instantly asleep, their heads
pillowed on their hands, on each other, even on the iron
ring-bolts in the deck.

When dawn broke the results of the battle could be
properly assessed. Of the French fleet, two of the line and two frigates had run for it and escaped. One ship had sunk
and one had run aground, nine had been captured, and of
L'Orient
nothing remained but a few pieces of charred
driftwood. Of the nine ships taken, three were so hopelessly
battered that, along with the grounded ship, they would
have to be burnt, but the others would be sold as prizes, to
the comfort and profit of everyone in Nelson's squadron.

All the English ships were damaged, but none seriously
except the
Majestic,
and the poor old
Billy Ruffian,
which,
after a hopelessly mismatched engagement with
L'Orient,
was drifting out to sea hardly more than a dismasted hulk.
But no English ship had been lost, and casualties, for such a
battle, were light. On the
Africa
there were eighteen dead
and fifty-one wounded.