SHARPE’S TRAFALGAR. Bernard Cornwell. Sharpe’s Trafalgar: Richard Sharpe and the Battle of Trafalgar, October 21, 1805

“You’ll not see its like again,” Chase told Sharpe, nodding toward 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 harbor, 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 barefooted 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 cut through the ship’s usual stench.

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