04 Sharpe's Trafalgar by Bernard Cornwell

04 Sharpe's Trafalgar by Bernard Cornwell

Author:Bernard Cornwell
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Historical Fiction
ISBN: 9780007235162
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2006-12-03T16:00:00+00:00


CHAPTER 8

The hap­py days fol­lowed. The far ship was in­deed the Revenant. Chase had nev­er seen the French war­ship at close quar­ters and, try as he might, he could not bring the Pu­celle near enough to see her name, but some of the sea­men pressed from the Cal­liope rec­og­nized the cut of the French­man’s spanker sail. Sharpe stared through his glass and could see noth­ing strange about that vast sail which hung at the stern of the en­emy ship, but the sea­men were cer­tain it had been ill-​re­paired and, as a con­se­quence, hung un­even­ly. Now the French­man raced the Pu­celle home­ward. The ships were al­most twins and nei­ther could gain an ad­van­tage on the oth­er with­out the help of weath­er and the god of winds sent them an equal share.

The Revenant was to the west and the two ships sailed north­west to clear the great bulge of Africa and Chase reck­oned that would grant the Pu­celle an ad­van­tage once they were north of the equa­tor for then the French­man must come east­ward to make his land­fall. At night Chase wor­ried he would lose his prey, but morn­ing af­ter morn­ing she was there, ev­er on the same bear­ing, some­times hull down, some­times near­er, and none of Chase’s sea­man­ship could close the gap any more than Mont­morin’s skills could open it. If Chase edged west­ward to try and nar­row the dis­tance be­tween them then the French ship would inch ahead and Chase would re­vert to his pre­vi­ous course and curse the lost ground. He prayed con­stant­ly that Mont­morin would turn east­ward to of­fer bat­tle, but Mont­morin re­sist­ed the temp­ta­tion. He would take his ship to France, or at least to a har­bor be­long­ing to France’s al­ly, Spain, and the men he car­ried would spur the French in­to an­oth­er at­tempt to make In­dia a British grave­yard.

“He’ll still have to get through our block­ade,” Chase said af­ter sup­per one evening, then shrugged and tem­pered his op­ti­mism. “Though that shouldn’t be dif­fi­cult.”

“Why not?” Sharpe asked.

“It ain’t a close block­ade off Cadiz,” Chase ex­plained. “The big ships stay well out to sea, be­yond the hori­zon. There’ll on­ly be a cou­ple of frigates in­shore and Mont­morin will brush those aside. No, we have to catch him.” The cap­tain frowned. “You can’t move a pawn side­ways, Sharpe!”

“You can’t?” They spoke dur­ing the first watch which, per­verse­ly, ran from eight in the evening un­til mid­night, a time when Chase craved com­pa­ny, and Sharpe had be­come ac­cus­tomed to shar­ing brandy with the cap­tain who was teach­ing him to play chess. Lord William and La­dy Grace were fre­quent guests, and La­dy Grace en­joyed play­ing the game and was ev­ident­ly good at it, for she al­ways made Chase frown and fid­get as he stared at the board. Lord William pre­ferred to read af­ter sup­per, though he did once deign to play against Chase and check­mat­ed him in­side fif­teen min­utes. Holder­by, the fifth lieu­tenant, was a keen play­er, and when he was in­vit­ed for sup­per he liked help­ing Sharpe play against Chase. Sharpe and La­dy Grace scrupu­lous­ly ig­nored each oth­er dur­ing those evenings.



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