Sharpe 3-Book Collection 3: Sharpe’s Trafalgar, Sharpe’s Prey, Sharpe’s Rifles. Bernard Cornwell

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СКАЧАТЬ stung to the protest, ‘is that the government permits ill-founded ships to be given to good men!’ He swung away from Lord William, frowning, but his good spirits were restored by the sight of the British fleet’s black and yellow hulls.

      Sharpe just gazed at the fleet in awe, doubting he would ever see a sight like this again. This was the majesty of Britain, her deep-sea fleet, a procession of majestic gun batteries, vast, ponderous and terrible. They moved as slowly as fully laden harvest waggons, their bluff bows subduing the seas and the beauty of their black and yellow flanks hiding the guns in their dark bellies. Their sterns were gilded and their figureheads a riot of shields, tridents, naked breasts and defiance. Their sails, yellow, cream and white, made a cloud bank, and their names were a roll call of triumphs: Conqueror and Agamemnon, Dreadnought and Revenge, Leviathan and Thunderer, Mars, Ajax and Colossus. These were the ships that had cowed the Danes, broken the Dutch, decimated the French and chased the Spanish from the seas. These ships ruled the waves, but now one last enemy fleet challenged them and they sailed to give it battle.

      Sharpe watched Lady Grace standing tall beside the mizzen shrouds. Her eyes were bright, there was colour in her cheeks and awe on her face as she stared at the stately line of ships. She looked happy, he thought, happy and beautiful, then Sharpe saw that Lord William also watched her, a sardonic expression on his face, then he turned to gaze at Sharpe who hastily looked back to the British fleet.

      Most of the ships were two-deckers. Sixteen of those, like the Pucelle, carried seventy-four guns, while three, like the Africa, only had sixty-four guns apiece. One two-decker, the captured French Tonnant, carried eighty-four guns, while the other seven ships of the fleet were the towering triple-deckers with ninety-eight or a hundred guns. Those ships were the brute killers of the deep, the slab-sided gun batteries that could hurl a slaughterous weight of metal, but Chase, without showing any alarm at the prospect, told Sharpe there was a famous Spanish four-decker, the largest ship in the world, that carried over a hundred and thirty guns. ‘Let’s hope she’s with their fleet,’ he said, ‘and that we can lay alongside her. Think of the prize money!’

      ‘Think of the slaughter,’ Lady Grace said quietly.

      ‘It hardly bears contemplation, milady,’ Chase said dutifully, ‘hardly bears it at all, but I warrant we shall do our duty.’ He put his telescope to his eye. ‘Ah,’ he exclaimed, staring at the leading British ship, a three-decker with ornate giltwork climbing and wreathing her massive stern. ‘And there’s the best fellow of them all. Mister Haskell! A seventeen-gun salute, if you please.’

      The leading ship was the Victory, one of the three hundred-gun ships in the British fleet and also Nelson’s flagship, and Chase, gazing at the Victory, had tears in his eyes. ‘What I wouldn’t do for that man,’ he exclaimed. ‘I never fought for him myself and thought I’d never have the chance.’ Chase cuffed at his eyes as the first of the Pucelle’s guns banged from the weather deck in salute of Lord Horatio Nelson, Viscount and Baron Nelson of the Nile and of Burnham Thorpe, Baron Nelson of the Nile and of Hilborough, Knight of the most Honourable Order of the Bath and Vice Admiral of the White. ‘I tell you, Sharpe,’ Chase said, still with tears on his cheeks, ‘I would sail down the throat of hell for that man.’

      The Victory had been signalling to the Mars, which, in turn, was passing the messages on down the chain of frigates to the Euryalus, which lay closest to the enemy, but now the flagship’s signal came down and a new ripple of bright flags ran up her mizzen. The Pucelle’s guns still fired the salute, the shots screaming out to fall in the empty ocean to starboard.

      ‘Our numeral, sir!’ Lieutenant Connors called to Captain Chase. ‘He makes us welcome, sir, and says we are to paint our mast hoops yellow. Yellow?’ He sounded puzzled. ‘Yellow, sir, it does say yellow, and we are to take station astern of the Conqueror.’

      ‘Acknowledge,’ Chase said, and turned to stare at the Conqueror, a seventy-four which was sailing some distance ahead of a three-decker, the Britannia. ‘She’s a slow ship,’ Chase muttered of the Britannia, then he waited for the last of the seventeen guns to sound before seizing the speaking trumpet. ‘Ready to tack!’

      He had some tricky seamanship ahead, and it would have to be done under the eyes of a fleet that prized seamanship almost as much as it valued victory. The Pucelle was on the starboard tack and needed to go about so that she could join the column of ships which sailed north on the larboard tack, yet as she turned into the wind she would inevitably lose speed and, if Chase judged it wrong, he would end up becalmed and shamed in the wind-shadow of the Conqueror. He had to turn his ship, let her gather speed and slide her smoothly into place and if he did it too fast he could run aboard the Conqueror and too slow and he would be left wallowing motionless under the Britannia’s scornful gaze. ‘Now, quartermaster, now,’ he said, and the seven men hauled on the great wheel while the lieutenants bellowed at the sail handlers to release the sheets. ‘Israel Pellew has the Conqueror,’ Chase remarked to Sharpe, ‘and he’s a fine fellow and a wonderful seaman. Wonderful seaman! From Cornwall, you see? They seem to be born with salt in their veins, those Cornish fellows. Come on, my sweet, come on!’ He was talking to the Pucelle which had turned her bluff bows into the wind and for a second it seemed she would hang there helplessly, but then Sharpe saw the bowsprit moving against the cavalcade of British ships, and men were running across the deck, seizing new sheets and hauling them home. The sails flapped like demented things, then tightened in the wind and the ship leaned, gathered speed and headed docilely into the open space behind the Conqueror. It had been done beautifully.

      ‘Well done, quartermaster,’ Chase said, pretending he had felt no qualms during the manoeuvre. ‘Well done, Pucelles! Mister Holderby! Muster a work party and break out some yellow paint!’

      ‘Why yellow?’ Sharpe asked.

      ‘Every other ship has yellow hoops,’ Chase said, gesturing back down the long line, ‘while ours are like the French hoops, black.’ Only the upper masts were made from single pine trunks while the lower were formed from clusters of long timbers that were bound and seized by the iron hoops. ‘In battle,’ Chase said, ‘maybe that’s all anyone will note of us. And they’ll see black hoops and think we’re a Frog ship and pour two or three decks of good British gunnery into our vitals. Can’t have that, Sharpe! Not for a few slaps of paint!’ He turned like a dancer, unable to contain his elation, for his ship was in the line of battle, the enemy was at sea and Horatio Nelson was his leader.

      CHAPTER NINE

      The British fleet tacked after dark, the signal passed on from ship to ship by lanterns hung in the rigging. Now, instead of sailing northwards, the fleet headed south, staying parallel to the enemy ships, but out of their sight. The wind had dropped, but a long swell ran from the western darkness to lift and drop the ponderous hulls. It was a long night. Sharpe went on deck once and saw the stern lanterns of the Conqueror reflecting from the seas ahead, then he gazed eastwards as a brilliant flame showed briefly on the horizon. Lieutenant Peel, bundled against the cold, reckoned it was one of the frigates setting off a firework to confuse the enemy. ‘Keeping them awake, Sharpe, keeping them worried.’ Peel slapped his gloved hands together and stamped his feet on the deck.

      ‘Why are they sailing south?’ Sharpe asked. He was shaking. He had forgotten just how the cold could bite.

      ‘The good Lord alone knows,’ Peel said cheerfully, ‘and He ain’t telling me. They aren’t going to cover an invasion force in the Channel, that’s for certain. They’re probably heading СКАЧАТЬ