But the Pucelle was suddenly in a patch of open sea with no enemy near. She had pierced the line, but the Neptune had gone north while the Spaniard had disappeared in smoke astern and there were no ships in front except for an enemy frigate that was a quarter-mile off and ships of the line did not stoop to fight frigates when there were battleships to engage. A long line of French and Spanish battleships was coming from the south, but none was in close range and so Chase continued toward the churning smoke, lit by gunflashes, that marked where Nelson’s beleaguered flagship lay. There was honor to be gained in defeating a flagship and the Victory, like the Royal Sovereign, was drawing enemy ships like flies. Four other British ships were in action close to the Victory, but the enemy had seven or eight, and no more help would arrive for a time because the Britannia was such a slow sailor. The French Neptune looked to be going to join that melee, and so Chase followed. The sail-handlers, short numbered because so many were manning the guns, sheeted home the sails as the Pucelle swung around. The sea was littered with floating wreckage. Two bodies drifted past. A seagull perched on one, sometimes pecking at the man’s face which had been torn open by gunfire and washed white by the sea.
The Pucelle’s wounded were carried below and the dead jettisoned. The cannon barrel that had been thrown off its carriage was lashed tight so that it would not shift with the ship’s rolling and crush a man. Lieutenants redistributed gunners among the crews, making up the numbers where too many had died or been injured. Chase stared aft at the Spanish ship. “I should have laid alongside her,” he told Haskeli ruefully.
“There’ll be others, sir.”
“By God I want a prize today!” Chase said.
“Plenty to go around, sir.”
The nearest enemy ship now was a two-decker that was laid alongside the bigger Victory. Chase could see the smoke of the Victory’s guns spewing out from the narrow space between the two ships and he imagined the horror in the Frenchman’s lower decks as the three tiers of British guns mangled men and timber, but he also saw that the French upper decks were crowded. The French captain appeared to have abandoned his gundecks altogether and assembled his whole crew on the forecastle, open weather deck and quarterdeck where they were armed with muskets, pikes, axes and cutlasses. “They want to board Victory]” Chase exclaimed, pointing.
“By God, sir, so they do.”
Chase could not see the French ship’s name, for the powder smoke curled around her stern, but her captain was plainly a bold man, for he was willing to lose his own ship if, thereby, he could capture Nelson’s flagship. His seamen had grappled the bigger Victory and dragged her close, his gunners had closed their ports and seized their cutlasses and now the French sought a way across to Nelson’s deck. The Victory was higher than the Frenchman, and the two ships’ tumblehomes meant that even when their hulls were touching, the rails were still thirty or more feet apart. The Victory’s guns were pounding the Frenchman’s hull, while the French ship had scores of men in the rigging, and those men were pouring a lethal musket fire down onto the flagship’s exposed decks. They had almost cleared those decks, so that now the British fought from their lower decks while the French sought a way to cross to the flagship’s virtually unguarded upper decks. The French captain planned to pour hundreds of men onto the Victory. He would make his name, be an admiral by nightfall and carry Nelson as a prisoner back to Cadiz.
Chase had climbed a few feet up the mizzen shrouds to see what was happening, and what he saw appalled him. He could not see the admiral, or Captain Hardy. A few red-coated marines crouched under the cover of the carronades and put up a feeble fire to counter the lashing musketry that still ripped down from the French masts, while on the Victory’s farther side another enemy ship fired into her hull.