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

It was an immensely long signal, so long that when the Euryalus repeated the message the flags needed to be flown from all three of the frigate’s masts where the pennants made bright splashes of color against the white sails. “Well?” Chase demanded of Connors.

The signal lieutenant waited for the feeble wind to spread some of the flags, then paused as he tried to remember the flag code. It was a recent code, and simple enough, for each flag corresponded to a letter, but some combinations of flags were used to transmit whole words or sometimes phrases, and there were over three thousand such combinations to be memorized and it was evident that this long signal, which required no less than thirty-two flags, was using some of the more obscure words of the system. Connors frowned, then suddenly made sense of it. “From the admiral, sir. England expects that every man will do his duty.”

“I should damn well think so,” Chase said indignantly.

“What about the Welsh?” Llewellyn asked with an equal indignation, then smiled. “Ah, but the Welsh need no encouragement to do their duty. It’s you bloody English who have to be chivvied.”

“Pass the message on to the men,” Chase ordered his officers and, in contrast to the resentful reception the message had received on the quarterdeck, it provoked cheers from the crew.

“He must be bored,” Chase said, “sending messages like that. Is it in your notebook, Mister Collier?”

The midshipman nodded eagerly. “It’s written down, sir.”

“You noted the time?”

Collier reddened. “I will, sir, I will.”

“Thirty-six minutes past eleven, Mister Collier,” Chase said, inspecting his pocket watch, “and if you are uncertain of the time of any message you will find the wardroom’s clock has been conveniently placed under the poop on the larboard side. And by consulting that clock, Mister Collier, you will be hidden from the enemy and so might stop them from removing your head with a well-aimed round shot.”

“It’s not a very big head, sir,” Collier said bravely, “and my place is near you, sir.”

“Your place, Mister Collier, is where you can see both the signals and the clock, and I suggest you stand under the break of the poop.”

“Yes, sir,” Collier said, wondering how he was expected to see any signals while standing in the shelter of the poop deck.

Chase was staring at the enemy, drumming his fingers on the rail. He was nervous, but no more so than any other man on the Pucelle. “Look at the Saucy\” Chase said, pointing ahead to where the Temeraire was trying to overtake the Victory, but the Victory had unfurled her topgallant stud-dingsails and so held onto her lead. “He really shouldn’t go first through their line,” Chase said, frowning, then turned. “Captain Llewellyn!”

“Sir?”

“Your drummer can beat to quarters, I think.”

“Aye aye, sir,” Llewellyn replied, then nodded to his drummer boy who hitched his instrument up, raised his sticks, then beat out the rhythm of the song “Hearts of Oak.”

“And God preserve us all,” Chase said as the men crowding the weather deck began to disappear down the hatchways to man the lower-deck euns. The drummer kept on beating as he went down the quarterdeck steps. The boy would beat the call to arms all about the ship, though not one sailor aboard needed the summons. They had long been ready.

“Open gunports, sir?” Haskell asked.

“No, we’ll wait, we’ll wait,” Chase said, “but tell the gunners to load another shot on top of the first, then put in a charge of grape.”

“Aye aye, sir.”

The Pucelle’s guns would now be double-shotted, with a cluster of nine smaller balls ahead of the bigger round shot. Such a charge, Chase explained to Sharpe, was deadly at close range. “And we can’t fire till we’re in the thick of them, so we might as well hurt them badly with our opening broadside.” The captain turned to Lord William. “My lord, I think you should go below.”

“Not yet, surely?” It was Lady Grace who answered. “No one has fired.”

“Soon,” Chase said, “soon.”

Lord William scowled, as if disapproving of his wife questioning the captain’s orders, but Lady Grace just stared ahead at the enemy as if she was memorizing the extraordinary sight of an horizon filled by ships of the line. Lieutenant Peel was surreptitiously sketching her in his notebook, trying to capture the tilt of her profiled face and its expression of intent fascination. “Which is the enemy admiral’s ship?” she asked Chase.

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