“Markav’s dead. Sergeant.”
“Then get rid of him!”
The third marine had lost an arm and the shot had also opened his chest so that his ribs showed in a jelly-like mass of torn muscle and blood. “He won’t live,” Armstrong said, stooping over the man, who was blinking through a mask of blood and breathing in juddering gasps. A round shot scattered the hammock netting, turned the quarterdeck rail to splinters and punched out through the stern without doing any injury to the crew. Another broke a topsail yard just as two shots banged through the weather deck to leave the ship’s waist strewn with timber scraps. A round shot banged into one of the lower-deck guns, throwing the three-ton barrel clean off its carriage, crushing two gunners and filling the ship with a sound like a vast hammer striking a giant anvil.
The enemy ships ahead were shrouded in smoke, but because the small wind was blowing from the west, that smoke was shredding through their rigging and sails like a bank of fog drifting before a sea breeze, yet the fog was fed continually and Sharpe could see the pulses of fresh gray, white and black smoke, and he could also see the dark brightness of the cannon flames appear like evanescent spearheads in the fog. The flames would stab, momentarily lighting the interior of the smoke bank, then vanish and the fog flowed over the enemy decks and the shots whipped out to thump into the Victory and the Temeraire and the Neptune and the Leviathan and the Conqueror and the Pucelle, and after those ships there was a gap before the lumbering three-decked Britannia which was still not under fire.
“Heave him over!” Armstrong commanded two of his men, gesturing at the third marine who had died. The man’s arm, its torn tendons, flesh and muscle trailing like wet offal from the red sleeve, lay forgotten under the small structure that held the ship’s bell and Sharpe picked it up, carried it to the larboard rail and hurled it into the sea. He could hear men singing from a gundeck below. One of the marines was kneeling in prayer, “Mary, Mother of God,” he said over and over again, crossing himself. Clouter spat a wad of chewed tobacco over the gunwale, then cut himself another plug. The carronade’s thirty-two-pound balls, each as large as a man’s head, were stored on a grating.
Sharpe went back to stand beside the foremast and suddenly remembered he had forgotten to load either of his weapons, and was grateful for saw a body being thrown off the Conqueror’s quarterdeck. He primed the musket as a round shot went close enough to his head to punch his scalp with the wind of its passing. The shot hit nothing, threading the Pucelle’s rigging to splash far aft. Three hammering blows in quick succession shuddered the ship’s timber as balls plowed through the twin layers of oak that formed her hull. Seamen scrambled up the ratlines to reeve broken lines. The mainsail had six great holes in it now, and shook as a seventh appeared. Chase was standing at the shattered quarterdeck rail, ? pearing as calm as though he were sailing the Pucelle into an empty inland sea. Sharpe rammed the musket and, between his feet, there appeared a trickle of blood, spilling from the flood released by the shot that had killed the three marines. The trickle looked very red against the white of the scrubbed timber. When the ship tilted slightly to larboard the trickle veered to the left, when the stern was raised by a following sea the trickle dashed ahead and when the bows raised to the swell it hesitated, then the red rivulet slid to the right as the ship leaned to starboard, and Sharpe scrubbed the trickle into oblivion with his foot, then pushed the ramrod back into its hoops. He loaded the pistol. A shot hit the foremast, making the rigging shake; a silver-painted splinter whirled into the sea as Joan of Arc was struck on her belly. The guns were loud enough to hurt Sharpe’s eardrums. There was blood on the weather deck where a ricocheting round shot had struck a crew and the air was filled with a shrieking, whistling, tearing noise that was chain shot and bar shot whipping through the masts to slice lines and rip sails. A rending crash sounded as a heavy shot tore up the poop deck and Sharpe could see Captain Llewellyn dragging a body toward the stern rail. Another thump from below, a second, a third, then screams made a shrill descant to the battering noise of the enemy guns. The enemy ships ahead were still in clumps, and where they were close together they looked like islands of guns. Or islands of smoke speared by gun-flames. Another gouging, tearing noise erupted from the starboard side and Sharpe leaned over to see a bright splinter of timber jutting from a band of black-painted hull. A body appeared in a gunport and was pushed overboard. A second body followed. The insides of the gunports were painted red and one of them was hanging from a single hinge until a man tore it away and let it drop.