“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?”