“How many women are aboard?” Lady Grace had come to stand beside Sharpe. She was wearing a blue dress, a wide-brimmed hat, and a long black boat cloak.

Sharpe glanced guiltily toward Lord William, but his lordship was deep in conversation with Lieutenant Haskell. “Chase tells me there are at least a half-dozen,” Sharpe said. “They hide themselves.”

“And they will shelter in the battle?”

“Not with you.”

“It doesn’t seem fair.”

“Life isn’t fair,” Sharpe said. “How do you feel?”

“Healthy,” she said, and indeed she looked glowing. Her eyes were bright and her cheeks, that had been so pale when Sharpe first saw her in Bombay, were full of color. She touched his arm briefly. “You will take care, Richard?”

“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.

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.”