flagship and will need signals – I’ll see he gets ’em.’ He paused and added with gravity, ‘Mr Bowden, I’d be obliged should you inform L’tenant Pasco as we shall close up a team directly.’
The poop was a ruin of draped ropes and wreckage from aloft but the flag locker was still intact and somewhere signal halliards not shot away would be found. Bowden clattered down the ladder to the quarterdeck. It was in name and appearance a battlefield – decks torn up, shattered guns, wreckage and sanded blood-stains everywhere, but the men were still serving their guns and in the rigging passing stoppers to hold together vital shot-torn lines.
It took cold courage of an exceptional quality to leave the relative safety of the deck and mount the shrouds to expose their bodies in full view of snipers, staying to work there while a tempest of lethal langrel and chain-shot ripped through in an attempt to disable their ship.
At the main-hatchway the only ladder left in action was slippery with blood – it was by this route that the unfortunates were carried below.
On the gun-deck there was a different kind of hell: in the reeking, thunderous dimness it was the remorseless pain and labour of loading and heaving out the massive guns in a never-ending cycle. At any moment there could be the sudden eruption of a round-shot through the side in unstoppable killing violence.
In these acrid, smoke-filled confines the battle was being fought – and won – by the same gunners whose skill and tenacity had kept up a deadly fire the enemy could never match.
Bowden paused, awestruck at so much violence and noise in a confined space. The visceral rumble of the guns as they were run out, the squeals of their trucks as a counterpoint, their iron, now truly hot after hours of action, producing a violent recoil, some leaping insanely to strike the deckhead beams, their tons weight falling again with an appalling crash at extreme hazard to the tired men serving them.
The middle gun-deck was the same, a torment of clamour and darkness, and then to the lower gun-deck with the biggest guns of all, three-ton monsters chest-high to a man, bellowing out with a lightning flash and clap of thunder that hammered at the senses.
But nothing prepared Bowden for the Hades that was the orlop. No smoke hid the reality of suffering. The pitiless gleam of lanthorns played on the carpet of maimed bodies, the retching, moaning, bloody humanity waiting for their turn on stage – the concentration of light on the midshipmen’s mess table, where Surgeon Beatty was working on a spreadeagled man, who writhed and shrieked.
He finished his task. Bowden saw a brief glimpse of a piece of limb tossed into a tub with a meaty thump while the raw, pulsing stump was dealt with and the body, mad with pain, carried off by the loblolly boys. Straightening, Beatty wiped his forehead with the back of his hand and moved off to select the next, resembling an angel of death in his black smock, caked with blood and body fluids.
Bowden gulped, and in the gloom began stepping over the wretches in every state of agony, from uncontrollable convulsions to a deadly pale stillness. One man lay panting, his hands over the obscenity of his entrails, patiently waiting to die; another was propped up, his brutally mangled face unrecognisable, sobbing quietly. Everywhere Bowden looked, others were heroically controlling their suffering.
The blast and thunder of the guns on deck above was mercifully drowning the inhuman screeches and tormented moaning, but it was a scene that would stay with him for ever.
‘Er, L’tenant Pasco?’ he asked weakly, of a passing surgeon’s assistant.
‘There,’ the man said irritably, jerking his thumb over his shoulder. Bowden gingerly made his way over to the larboard side where a pair of lanthorns glimmered.
He saw Pasco by their light – but something about the tension in the group next to him caused him to hesitate. He made out Scott, the chaplain, and Burke, the purser, supporting someone against a broad knee at the ship’s side, one in a lace shirt with no indication of rank.
It was Nelson. Bowden’s gaze froze. Their cherished commander-in-chief was wounded. He couldn’t look away from the slight form, clearly in agony but with his eyes closed, Scott rubbing his chest and others hovering.
Bowden remembered himself and moved to Pasco, lying full length on an old sail close by with his eyes shut. Crouching down, he said, ‘L’tenant Pasco, sir. Sir – it’s Bowden, come to report.’
Not sure if he’d been heard, he was about to repeat it when Pasco stirred and groaned, feeling tenderly for his right side and arm. ‘Report then, Mr Bowden,’ he said hoarsely. For some reason the guns above had just ceased their heavy rumble and thunderclap din.
‘Mr Robins is certain he’ll have a signals team together directly, sir.’
‘As will serve a flagship?’
‘He’s confident it will be so, sir.’
In the cessation of noise a faint but clear burst of cheering could be heard from above. ‘How goes the battle, then?’
‘We’ve taken
Pasco slumped back with a smile. Bowden asked diffidently, ‘You’re wounded, sir?’
‘A grape-shot in the starb’d side is all,’ Pasco said, biting his lip. ‘Nothing as will stop me coming on deck when the sawbones lets me.’
Lowering his voice, Bowden ventured, ‘That’s Lord Nelson, sir. Is he – does he fare well, at all?’
‘I don’t know to be sure. The medical gentlemen are looking very grave, so I suppose it’s serious enough.’
Another muffled burst of cheering came down, longer than the first.
A peevish voice intervened: ‘What is the cause of that?’ It was Nelson, trying to rise.
Pasco levered himself up and told him, ‘It seems yet another enemy ship has struck to us, my lord. I have it from Mr Bowden here.’
‘That is good,’ Nelson said, his voice weak and gasping, clearly gratified. Scott helped him to a sip of lemonade and continued rubbing, while Burke on the other side held his shoulders.
