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

“I shall take care,” he promised, though he doubted that his life or death were in his own keeping this day.

“If the ship is taken … “ Lady Grace said hesitantly.

“It won’t be,” Sharpe interrupted her.

“If it is,” she said earnestly, “I do not want to meet another man like that lieutenant on the Calliope. I can use a pistol.”

“But you have none?” Sharpe asked. She shook her head and Sharpe drew out his own pistol and held it toward her. They were standing close together at the quarterdeck rail and no one behind could see the gift which Lady Grace took, then pushed into a pocket of the heavy cloak. “It’s loaded,” Sharpe warned her.

“I shall take care,” she promised him, “and I doubt I will need it, but it gives me a comfort. It’s something of yours, Richard.”

“You already have something of mine,” he said.

“Which I will protect,” she said. “God bless you, Richard.”

“And you, my lady.”

She walked away from him, watched by her husband. Sharpe stared doggedly forward. He would borrow another pistol from Captain Llewellyn whose marines were lining the forecastle rails and sometimes leaning outboard to see the distant enemy.

Chase had gathered his officers and Sharpe, curious, went to listen as the captain outlined what Nelson had told him on board the Victory. The British fleet, Chase said, was not going to form a line parallel to the enemy, which was the accepted method of fighting a sea battle, but intended to sail its two columns directly into the enemy’s line. “We shall chop their line into three pieces,” Chase said, “and destroy them piecemeal. If I fall, gentlemen, then your only duty is to stand on, pass through their line, then lay the ship alongside an enemy.”

Captain Llewellyn shuddered, then drew Sharpe to one side. “I don’t like it,” the Welshman said. “It’s none of my business, of course, I am merely a marine, but you will have noticed, Sharpe, surely, that we have no guns to speak of in the bow of the ship?”

“I had noticed,” Sharpe said.

“The foremost guns can fire somewhat forward, but not directly forward, and what the admiral is proposing, Sharpe, is that we sail straight toward the enemy who will have their broadsides pointing at us!” Llewellyn shook his head sadly. “I don’t have to spell that out to you, do I?”

“Of course not.”

Llewellyn spelled it out nonetheless. “They can fire at us and we cannot return the fire! They will rake us, Sharpe. You know what raking is? You rake an enemy when your broadside faces his defenseless stern or bow, and it is the quickest way to reduce a ship to kindling. And for how long will we be defenseless under their guns? At this speed, Sharpe, for at least twenty minutes. Twenty minutes! They can pour round shot into us, they can tear our rigging to pieces with chain and bar, they can dismast us, and what can we do in return?”

“Nothing, sir.”

“You have grasped the point,” Llewellyn said, “but as I said it is none of my business. But the fighting tops, Sharpe, they are my business. Do you know what the captain has ordered?”

“No men in the tops,” Sharpe said.

“How could he order such a thing?” Llewellyn demanded indignantly. “The Frogs, now, they’ll have men in the rigging like spiders in a web, and they’ll be pouring nastiness on us, and we must just cower on the deck? It isn’t right, Sharpe, it isn’t right. And if I cannot put men up the masts then I cannot use my grenades!” He sounded aggrieved. “They are too dangerous to keep on deck, so I’ve left them in the forward magazine.” He stared at the enemy fleet which was now less than two miles away. “Still,” Llewellyn went on, “we shall beat them.”

The Britannia, which followed the Pucelle, was a slow ship and so a long gap had opened between the two. There were similar gaps in both columns, but none so wide as the gap between Collingwood’s Royal Sovereign and the rest of his squadron. “He’ll be fighting alone for a time,” Llewellyn said, then turned because Connors, the signal lieutenant, had called that the flagship was signaling.

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