“It’s French navigators,” Lieutenant Peel, the rotund man who had sung so beautifully at the concert, said. “They think Britain’s off Africa.”
“They can sail to China so long as we catch them,” Chase said, then collapsed his telescope and disappeared down the futtock shrouds. Sharpe stayed in the maintop until a squall of rain blotted the far fleet from view.
The Pucelle turned westward, but the fickle wind turned with her so that she had to beat her way out into the Atlantic, thumping the cold waves to spatter spray down the holy-stoned decks. The enemy fleet was soon lost to sight, but Chase’s course took the Pucelle past two more frigates which formed the fragile chain connecting Nelson’s fleet with the enemy. The frigates were the scouts, the cavalry, and, having found the enemy, they stayed with her and sent messages back down the long windy links of their chain. Connors watched the bright colored flags and passed on their news. The enemy, he reported, was still sailing south and the Euryalus had counted thirty-three ships of the line and five frigates, but two hours later the total was increased by one ship of the line because the Revenant, as Chase had foreseen, had been ordered to join the enemy’s fleet.
“Thirty-four prizes!” Chase said exultantly. “My God, we’ll hammer them!”
The last link in the chain was not a single-decked frigate, but a ship of the line which, to Sharpe’s amazement, was identified even before her hull showed above the horizon. “It’s the Mars,” Lieutenant Haskell said, peering through his glass. “I’d know that mizzen 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 northward and Chase took his ship toward 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 afterward, 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 suppested.
“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 northward. “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 dryly, 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 explaimed. “And look at 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!”