“We’re murdering the bastards, Sergeant.”
The dead lay where they fell now, for there were not enough men to throw them overboard, or rather the men who remained were too busy fighting. The worst of that fight was below decks where the two ships, matched gun to gun, mangled each other. The lower deck was dark now, for the Revenant blotted out the daylight on the starboard side and the larboard gunports were closed. Smoke filled the low deck, curling under beams splashed with blood from the Revenant’s first raking broadside. Now the Frenchman’s shots broke open the hull, screamed across the deck and crashed out to leave patches of newly created daylight where they holed the larboard side. Thick dust and thicker smoke drifted in the shafts of light. The Pucelle’s guns returned the fire, roaring back on their breeching ropes to fill the deck with thunder. The ships touched here, their gunports almost coinciding so that when a British gunner tried to swab his cannon a French cutlass half severed his arm, then the lambs-wool swab on its staff was seized and carried aboard the French ship. The French shots were heavier, for they carried larger guns, but larger guns took longer to reload and the British fire was noticeably quicker. Montmorin’s crew was probably the best trained in all the enemy’s fleet, yet still Chase’s men were faster, but now the enemy tossed grenades through the open gunports and fired muskets to slow the British guns.
“Fetch marines!” Lieutenant Holderby shouted at a midshipman, then had to go right up to the boy and cup his hands over the midshipman’s ear. “Fetch marines!” A round shot killed the lieutenant, spewing his intestines across the gratings where the thirty-two-pound round shots were stored. The midshipman stayed still for a second, disoriented. Flames were rising to his left, then a gunner threw sand across the remnants of the grenade and another tossed a cask of water to douse the fire. Another gunner was crawling on the deck, vomiting blood. A woman was hauling on a gun tackle, spitting curses at the French gunners who were only a cutlass length away. A gun recoiled, filling the deck with noise and breaking its breeching rope so that it slewed around and crushed two men whose shrieks were lost in the din. Men heaved and rammed, their naked torsos gleaming with sweat that trickled through the powder residue. They all looked black now, except where they were spotted or streaked or sheeted with blood. The Revenant’s powder smoke belched into the Pucelle, choking men who struggled to return the favor.
The midshipman scrambled up the companionway to the weather deck that shook from the recoil of its twenty-four-pounder guns. Wreckage of the rigging lay across the central part of the deck which was so thick with smoke that the midshipman climbed to the forecastle instead of to the quarterdeck. His ears were ringing with the sound of the guns and his throat was as dry as ash. He saw an officer in a red coat. “You’re wanted below, sir.”
“What?” Sharpe shouted.
“Marines, sir, needed below.” The boy’s voice was hoarse. “They’re coming through the gunports, sir. Lower deck.” A bullet smacked into the deck beside his feet, another ricocheted off the ship’s bell.
“Marines!” Sharpe bellowed. “Pikes! Muskets!”
He led his ten men down the companionway, stepped over the body of a powder monkey who lay dead though there was not a mark on his young body that Sharpe could see, then down to the hellish dark and thick gloom of the lower deck. Only half of the starboard cannons were firing now, and they were being impeded by the French who slashed through the gunports with cutlasses and pikes. Sharpe fired his musket through a gunport, glimpsed a Frenchman’s face dissolve into blood, ran to the next and used the butt of the empty musket to hammer an enemy’s arm. “Simmons!” he shouted at a marine. “Simmons!”
Simmons stared at him, wide-eyed. “Go to the forward magazine,” Sharpe shouted. “Fetch the grenades!”
Simmons ran, grateful for a chance to be beneath the water line even if only for an instant. Three of the Pucelle’s heavy guns fired together, their sound almost stunning Sharpe, who was going from gunport to gun-port and stabbing at the French with his cutlass. A huge crash, dreadful in its loudness and so prolonged that it seemed to go on forever, broke through Sharpe’s deafened ears and he reckoned a mast had gone overboard, though whether it was another of the Pucelle’s or one of the Revenant’s he could not tell. He saw a Frenchman ramming a cannon, half leaning out of the opposing gunport, and he skewered the man’s arm with the cutlass. The Frenchman sprang back and Sharpe skipped aside for he could see the gunner holding the linstock to the touch-hole. Sharpe registered that the French did not use flintlocks, was surprised to have noticed such a thing in battle, then the gun fired and the rammer, left in the barrel, disintegrated as it was driven across the Pucelle’s deck. A midshipman fired a pistol into an enemy gunport. A flintlock sparked and the sound of the heavy gun pounded Sharpe’s ears. Some of the men had lost the scarves they had tied about their heads and their ears dribbled blood. Others had bleeding noses caused by nothing more than the sound of the guns.
Simmons reappeared with the grenades and Sharpe took a linstock from one of the remaining water barrels, lit its fuse, then waited until the vagaries of the ocean swells brought a French gunport into view. The fuse sputtered. He could see the Revenant’s yellow planking, then the opposing ship ground against the Pucelle’s hull and a gunport came into sight and he hurled the glass ball into the Revenant. He dimly heard an explosion, saw flames illuminate the black smoke filling the enemy’s gundeck, then he left Simmons to throw the other grenades while he went back down the deck, stepping past bodies, avoiding the gunners, checking each gunport to make sure no more Frenchmen were trying to reach through with cutlass or pike. The big capstan in the middle of the deck, used to haul the ship’s anchor cables, had an enemy round shot buried in its wooden heart. Blood dripped from the deck above. A gun, crammed with grapeshot, recoiled across his path and Frenchmen screamed.
Then another scream pierced Sharpe’s ringing ears. It came from above, from the weather deck that was slick with so much blood that the sand no longer gave men a secure footing. “Repel boarders! Repel boarders!”
“Marines!” Sharpe shouted at his few men, though none heard him in the noise, but he reckoned some might follow if they saw him climb the companionway. He could hear steel striking steel. No time to think, just time to fight.
He climbed.
Lord William frowned at the sound of the carronade, then flinched as the Pucelle’s larboard broadside began to fire, the sound rolling down the ship to fill the lady hole with thunder. “I perceive we are still in action,” he said, lowering the pistol. He began to laugh. “It was worth pointing a gun at your head, my dear, just to see your expression. But was it remorse or fear that actuated your misery?” He paused. “Come! I wish an answer.”
“Fear,” Lady Grace gasped.
“Yet I should like to hear you express remorse, if only as evidence that you possess some finer feelings. Do you?” He waited. The guns fired, the sound becoming louder as the nearer cannon recoiled two decks above their refuge.
“If you had any feelings,” Grace said, “any courage, you would be on deck sharing the dangers.”
Lord William found that very amusing. “What a strange idea you do have of my capabilities. What can I do that would be useful to Chase? My talents, dearest, lie in the contrivance of policy and, dare I say, its administration. The report I am writing will have a profound influence on the future of India and, therefore, on the prospects of Britain. I confidently expect to join the government within a year. Within five years I might be Prime Minister. Am I to risk that future just to strut on a deck with a pack of mindless fools who believe a brawl at sea will change the world?” He shrugged and looked up at the lady hole’s ceiling. “Toward the end of the fight, my dear, I shall show myself, but I have no intention of running any unnecessary or extraordinary risks. Let Nelson have his glory today, but in five years I shall dispose of him as I wish and, believe me, no adulterer will gain honor from me. You know he is an adulterer?”