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.’
A string of flags appeared at the Mars’s mizzen. ‘Our number, sir,’ Connors reported, then waited a few seconds. ‘What brings you home in such a hurry?’
‘Give Captain Duff my compliments,’ Chase said happily, ‘and tell him I knew he’d need some help.’ The signal lieutenant dragged flags from their lockers, a midshipman bent them on to the halliard and a seaman hauled them up.
‘Captain Duff assures you, sir, that he will not permit us to come to any harm,’ Connors reported after a moment.
‘Oh, he’s a good fellow!’ Chase said, delighted with the insult. ‘A good fellow.’
An hour later another cloud of sail appeared, only this one was on the western horizon and it grew from a blurred smear into the massed sails of a fleet. Twenty-six ships of the line, not counting the Mars or the Pucelle, were sailing northwards and Chase took his ship towards the head of the line while his officers crowded at the quarterdeck’s lee rail and gazed at the far ships. Lord William and Lady Grace, both bundled in heavy cloaks, had come on deck to see the British fleet.
‘There’s the Tonnant!’ Chase exulted. ‘See her? A lovely ship, just lovely! An eighty-four. She was captured at the Nile. God, I remember seeing her come into Gibraltar afterwards, all her topmasts gone and blood crusted at her scuppers, but don’t she look wonderful now? Who has her?’
‘Charles Tyler,’ Haskell said.
‘What a good fellow he is, to be sure! And is that the Swiftsure?’
‘It is, sir.’
‘My God, she was at the Nile too. Ben Hallowell had her then. Dear Ben. She’s under Willy Rutherford now,’ he said to Sharpe, as though Sharpe would know the name, ‘and he’s a good fellow, a capital fellow! Look at that copper on the Royal Sovereign! New, eh? She’ll be sailing quick as you like.’ He was pointing to one of the bigger warships, a great brute with three gundecks and Sharpe, peering through his glass, could see the bright gleam of her newly coppered hull whenever she leaned to the wind. The other ships, when they tilted to the breeze, showed a band of copper turned green by the sea, but the Royal Sovereign’s lower hull shone like gold. ‘She’s Admiral Collingwood’s flagship,’ Chase told Sharpe, ‘and he’s a good fellow. Not as nice as his dog, but a good fellow.’
To Chase they were all good fellows. There was Billy Hargood who was sailing the Belleisle, a seventy-four that had been captured from the French, and Jimmy Morris of the Colossus and Bob Moorsom of the Revenge. ‘Now there’s a fellow who knows how to train a ship,’ Chase said warmly. ‘Wait till you see her in battle, Sharpe! She can fire broadsides faster than anyone.’
‘The Dreadnought’s faster,’ Peel suggested.
‘The Revenge is much quicker!’ Haskell said, irritated by the second lieutenant’s comment.
‘The Dreadnought’s quick, no doubt of it, she’s quick.’ Chase tried to mediate between his senior lieutenants. He pointed out the Dreadnought to Sharpe, who saw another three-decker. ‘Her guns are quick,’ Chase said, ‘but she’s painful slow on the wind. John Conn has her, doesn’t he?’
‘He does, sir,’ Peel said.
‘What a good fellow he is! I wouldn’t like to bet a farthing on which of them is swifter with their guns. Conn or Moorsom. Pity the enemy ships that draw them as dancing partners, eh? Look! The Orion, she was at the Nile. Edward Codrington has her now. What a good fellow he is! And his wife Jane’s a lovely woman. Look! Is that the Prince? It is. Sails like a haystack!’ He was pointing to another three-decker that thumped her way northwards. ‘Dick Grindall. What a first-rate fellow he is.’
Behind the Prince was another seventy-four that, even to Sharpe’s untutored eye, looked just like the Revenant or the Pucelle. ‘Is she French?’ he asked, pointing.
‘She is, she is,’ Chase said. ‘The Spartiate, and she’s bewitched, Sharpe.’
‘Bewitched?’
‘Sails faster at night than she does by day.’
‘That’s because she’s built of stolen timbers,’ Lieutenant Holderby opined.
‘Sir Francis Laforey has her,’ Chase said, ‘and he’s a capital fellow. Look, there’s a minnow! Which is she?’
‘The Africa,’ Peel answered.
‘Only sixty-four guns,’ Chase said, ‘but she’s under the command of Harry Digby and there isn’t a finer fellow in the fleet!’
‘Or a richer,’ Haskell put in drily, then explained to Sharpe that Captain Henry Digby had been monstrous fortunate in the matter of prize money.
‘An example to us all,’ Chase said piously. ‘Is that the Defiance? By God, it is! She was badly cut about at Copenhagen, wasn’t she? Who’s her captain now?’
‘Philip Durham,’ Peel said, then silently mouthed Chase’s next four words.
‘What a fine fellow!’ Chase explained. ‘And look, the Saucy!’
‘The Saucy?’ Sharpe asked.
‘The Temeraire.’ Chase dignified the vast three-decker with her proper name. ‘Ninety-eight guns. Who has her now?’
‘Eliab Harvey,’ Haskell answered.
‘So he does, so he does. Odd sort of name, eh? Eliab? I’ve never met him, but I’m sure he’s a prime fellow, prime! And look! The Achille! Dick King has her, and what a splendid fellow he is. And look, Sharpe, the Billy Ruffian! All’s well if the Billy Ruffian is here!’
‘The Billy Ruffian?’ Sharpe asked, puzzled by the name that was evidently attached to a two-decker seventy-four that otherwise looked quite unremarkable.
‘The Bellerophon, Sharpe. She was Howe’s flagship at the Glorious First of June and she was at the Nile, by God! Poor Henry Darby was killed there, God rest his soul. He was an Irishman and a capital soul, just capital! John Cooke has her now, and he’s as stout a fellow as ever came from Essex.’
‘He came into money,’ Haskell said, ‘and moved to Wiltshire.’
‘Did he now? Good for him!’ Chase said, then trained his glass on the Bellerophon again. ‘She’s a quick ship,’ he said enviously, though his Pucelle was just as fast. ‘A lovely ship. Medway-built. When was she launched?’
‘’Eighty-six,’ Haskell answered.
‘And she cost £30,232 14s and 3d,’ Midshipman Collier interjected, then looked ashamed for his interruption. ‘Sorry, sir,’ he said to Chase.
