Sharpe said, ‘too many rules.’ He wondered whether Lady Grace would risk coming to his cabin, but he doubted it, for the night-shrouded ship was unnaturally busy as men readied themselves for the morning. A seaman brought him a cup of Scotch coffee and he drank the bitter liquid, then chewed on the sweetened bread crumbs that gave the coffee its flavour.
‘This will be my first battle,’ Peel admitted suddenly.
‘My first at sea,’ Sharpe said.
‘It makes you think,’ Peel said wistfully.
‘It’s better once it starts,’ Sharpe suggested. ‘It’s the waiting that’s hard.’
Peel laughed softly. ‘Some clever bugger once remarked that nothing concentrates the mind so much as the prospect of being hanged in the morning.’
‘I doubt he knew,’ Sharpe said. ‘And besides, we’re the hangmen tomorrow.’
‘So we are, so we are,’ Peel said, though he could not hide the fears that gnawed at him. ‘Of course nothing might happen,’ he said. ‘The buggers might give us the slip.’ He went to look at the compass, leaving Sharpe to stare into the darkness. Sharpe stayed on deck until he could abide the cold no longer, then went and shivered in his confining cot that felt so horribly like a coffin.
He woke just before dawn. The sails were flapping and he put his head out of his cabin door and asked Chase’s steward what was happening. ‘We’re wearing ship, sir. Going north again, sir. There’s coffee coming, sir. Proper coffee. I saved a handful of beans because the captain does like his coffee. I’ll bring you shaving water, sir.’
Once he had shaved, Sharpe pulled on his clothes, draped his borrowed cloak about his shoulders and went on deck to find that the fleet had indeed turned back to the north. Lieutenant Haskell now had the watch and he reckoned that Nelson had been running southwards to keep out of the enemy’s sight so that they would not use the excuse of his presence to return to Cadiz, but as the first grey light seeped along the eastern horizon the admiral had turned his fleet in an attempt to get between the enemy and the Spanish port.
The wind was still light so that the line of great ships lumbered northwards at less than a man’s walking pace. The sky brightened, burnishing the long swells with shifting bands of silver and scarlet. Euryalus, the frigate which had dogged the enemy fleet ever since it had left harbour, was now back with the fleet, while to the east, almost in line with the burning sky where the sun rose, was a streak of dirty cloud showing against the horizon. That streak was the topsails of the enemy, blurred by distance.
‘Good God.’ Captain Chase had emerged on deck and spotted the far sails. He looked tired, as though he had slept badly, but he was dressed for battle, doing honour to the enemy by wearing his finest uniform which was normally stored deep in a sea chest. The gold on the twin epaulettes gleamed. His tasselled hat had been brushed till it shone. His white stockings were of silk, his coat was neither faded by the sun nor whitened by salt, while his sword scabbard had been polished, as had the silver buckles on his clean shoes. ‘Good God,’ he said again, ‘those poor men.’
The decks of the British ships were thick with men, all staring eastwards. The Pucelle had seen the French and Spanish fleet on the previous day, but this was the first glimpse for the other crews of Nelson’s ships. They had crossed the Atlantic in search of this enemy, then sailed back from the West Indies and, in the last few days, they had tacked and worn ship, sailed east and west, north and south, and some had wondered if the enemy was at sea at all, yet now, as if summoned by a demon of the sea, thirty-four enemy ships of the line showed on the horizon.
‘You’ll not see its like again,’ Chase told Sharpe, nodding towards the enemy fleet. His steward had brought a tray with mugs of proper coffee onto the quarterdeck and Chase gestured that his officers should be served first, then took the last cup. He looked up at the sails which alternately stretched in the wind then slackened as the fitful gusts passed. ‘It will take hours to come up with them,’ he said moodily.
‘Maybe they’ll come to us,’ Sharpe said, trying to raise Chase’s spirits that seemed dampened by the dawn and the pitiful wind.
‘Against this sorry excuse for a breeze? I doubt it.’ Chase smiled. ‘Besides, they won’t want battle. They’ve been stuck in harbour, Sharpe. Their sail handling will be poor, their gunnery rusty, their morale down in the mud. They’d rather run away.’
‘Why don’t they?’
‘Because if they run east from here they’ll end up on the shoals of Cape Trafalgar, and if they run north or south they know we’ll intercept them and beat them to smithereens, and that means they have nowhere to go. Nowhere to go, Sharpe. We have the weather gauge, and that’s like having the higher ground. I just pray we catch them before dark. Nelson fought the Nile in the dark and that was a triumph, but I’d rather fight in daylight.’ He drained his coffee. ‘Is that really the last of the beans?’ he asked the steward.
‘It is, sir, except for those that got wetted in Calcutta, sir, and they’re growing fur.’
‘They might grind, though?’ Chase suggested.
‘I wouldn’t feed ’em to a pig, sir.’
The Victory had been flying a signal which ordered the British column to form their proper order, which was little more than an encouragement for the slower ships to press on more sail and close the intervals in the line, but now that signal was hauled down and another flew in its place.
‘Prepare for battle, sir,’ Lieutenant Connors reported, though it was scarcely necessary, for every man aboard except the landlubbers like Sharpe had recognized the signal. And the Pucelle, like the other warships, was already preparing, indeed the men had been readying their ship all night.
Sand was scattered on the decks to give the bare-footed gunners a better grip. The men’s hammocks, as they were every morning, were rolled tight and brought on deck where they were laid in the hammock nettings that surmounted the gunwale. The packed hammocks, secured in the net trough and lashed down under a canvas rain cover, would serve as a bulwark against enemy musket fire. Up aloft a bosun was leading a dozen men who were securing the ship’s great yards, from which the vast sails hung, with lengths of chain. Other men were reeving spare halliards and sheets so that heavy coils of rope were forever tumbling through the rigging to thump on the decks. ‘They like slashing our rigging to bits,’ Captain Llewellyn told Sharpe. ‘The Dons and the Frogs both, they like to fire at the masts, see? So the chains stop the yards falling and the spare sheets are there if the others are shot through. Mind you, Sharpe, we’ll lose a stick or two before the day’s out. It rains blocks and broken spars in battle, it does!’ Llewellyn anticipated that dangerous downpour with relish. ‘Is your cutlass sharp?’
‘It could do with a better edge,’ Sharpe admitted.
‘Forrard on the weather deck, ‘Llewellyn said, ‘by the manger, there’s a man with a treadle wheel. He’ll be glad to hone it for you.’
Sharpe joined a queue of men. Some had cutlasses, others had boarding axes while many had fetched down the boarding pikes which stood in racks about the masts on the upper decks. The goats, sensing that their routine had changed, bleated piteously. They had been milked for the last time and now a seaman rolled up his sleeves before slaughtering them with a long knife. The manger, with its dangerously combustible straw, was being dismantled and the goats’ carcasses would be packed in salt for a future meal. The first beast struggled briefly, then the smell of fresh blood
