1805

the discharge of her own guns. In his imagination Drinkwater saw Victory looming ever larger as she made for that yawning gap astern of the French flagship. He tried to recall the two ships that were trying to fill it and thought that they should have been the Neptune and the Spanish San Leandro, but they were both to leeward, he remembered, and only Lucas in the Redoubtable was in direct line astern of the Bucentaure. Drinkwater felt a sympathy for Villeneuve. Gravina had let him down and now he went almost unsupported into action with a ship heavier than his own. Bucentaure was a new ship and Victory fifty years old, but the added elevation of her third gun-deck would make her a formidable opponent.

And then Drinkwater heard the most terrible sound of his life. The concussion was felt through the entire body rather than heard with the ears alone, a distant noise above the thunder of Bucentaure's cannon, a strange mixture of sounds that had about it the tinkle of imploding glass and the noise of a million bees driving down wind on the back of a hurricane. The whole of Bucentaure trembled, men standing were jerked slightly and the bees were followed by the whoosh and crash, the splintering, jarring shock of impact, as musket balls and double- and triple-shotted guns raked the whole length of the Bucentaure. It was over in a few seconds as Victory crossed their stern, pouring the pent-up fury of her hitherto silent guns through the Bucentaure's stern galleries and along her gun-decks, knocking men. over like ninepins. It took cannon off their carriages too, for above their heads they heard the crash of guns hitting the deck, but by this time the orlop had its own terrible part to play.

As the first wave of that raking broadside receded, Drinkwater released Gillespy whom he found himself clasping protectively. He could not stand idle and tore off his coat as the first wounded were stretched upon the canvas of the operating 'table'.

'Come, Mr Gillespy, come; let us do something in the name of humanity to say we were not idle when brave men did their duty.'

Ghostly pale, Gillespy came forward and held the arm of a man while Masson excised a splinter from his shoulder and shoved him roughly aside. It took four men to hold some of the wounded who were filling the space like a human flood so that for a second Drinkwater imagined they might drown under the press of bloody bodies that seemed to inundate them. Men screamed or whimpered or stared hollow-eyed. Pain robbed them of the last protest as their lives drained out into the stinking bilge beneath them.

'It is important we operate fast,' Masson shouted, the sweat pouring from him as he wiped a smear of blood across his forehead. 'Not him, Captain, he is too much gone… this man… ah, a leg… we must cut here…' The knife bit into the flesh, its passage marked by a line of blood, and Masson's practised wrist took the incision right around the limb, inclining the point towards the upper thigh.

'If I am quick, he is in shock… see how little his arteries bleed, they have closed, and I can do no more damage than his wound…' Masson nodded to the bunch of bleeding rags that had once been a leg. As he spoke his deft fingers tied thread around the blood vessels and then he picked up his saw, thrust it deep into the mess and quickly cut through the femur. He drew the skin together and swiftly sutured it. 'Do you know, Captain,' he bawled conversationally as he nodded and the wounded man was removed to be replaced by another, 'that the Russians and Prussians simply cut through, tie the ligatures and draw the flesh together, leaving the bone almost at the extremity of the amputation and the skin tight as a drum…' Masson glanced at his next patient, caught the eye of his assistant and made a winding motion with one finger. The assistant brought a roll of linen bandage and the great welling wound in the stomach was bound, the white quickly staining red. The man was moved to a corner, to lean against a great futtock and bleed out his life.

Drinkwater looked round. The wooden tubs were full of amputated limbs and still men arrived and were ministered to by Masson as he hacked and sawed, bound and bandaged. The surgeon was awash in blood and the foul air of the orlop was thick with the stink of it. Above their head Bucentaure was raked again, and then again at intervals as, following Victory, Tememire and then the British Neptune crossed her stern.

Another body appeared under the glimmer of the lanterns and Masson looked at his assistant busy amputating the arm of a negro. He called some instructions and then shouted at Drinkwater, 'Assistance, Captain. This one we will have to hold!' Masson tore the blood-soaked shirt off the frail body of the boy, a powder monkey or some such.

'Hold him, Captain! He is fully conscious! They are always difficult!'

The white body arched as Masson began his curettage. 'We may save him, it's a fragment from a ball, perhaps it burst when it hit a gun, but it is deep. Hold him!' There was demonic strength in the tiny body and it wailed pitifully. Drinkwater looked at the face. It was Gillespy.

'Dear God…' The boy was staring up at him, his eyes huge and dark and filled with tears. Blood seeped from his mouth and Drinkwater was aware that he was biting his lip. Masson's mate had seen it and as Gillespy opened his mouth to scream, he rammed a pad of leather into it. Masson wrestled bloodily with the fragment, up to his wrist in the boy's abdomen until Drinkwater found himself shouting at the boy to faint.

'He will not stand the shock…' Drinkwater could see Masson was struggling. 'Merde!' The surgeon shook his head. 'I cannot waste time… he is finished…'

They dragged Gillespy aside and Drinkwater picked him up. He made for the cot in his cabin, but it was already occupied and, as gently as he could, Drinkwater laid the boy down in a dark corner and knelt beside him.

'There, there, Mr Gillespy…' He felt desperately inadequate, unable even to give the midshipman water. He could not understand how it had happened. The boy had been helping them… and then Drinkwater recollected, he had withdrawn, his hand over his mouth as though about to vomit. He looked at Gillespy. He had spat the leather pad out and his mouth moved. Drinkwater bent to hear him.

'The… the pain has all gone, sir… I went on deck, sir… to see for myself. I wanted to see something… to tell my grandchildren… disobeyed you…' Gillespy's voice faded into an incoherent gurgle. Drinkwater knew from the blood that suddenly erupted from his mouth that he was dead.

Another broadside raked Bucentaure and Drinkwater laid the body down and straightened up. He was trembling all over, his head was splitting from the noise, the damnable, thunderous, everlasting bloody noise. He stumbled over the recumbent bodies of the wounded and dying. Reaching into the cabin he had occupied, he picked up his sword and made for the ladder of the lower gun-deck. Nobody stopped him and he was suddenly aware that Bucentaure's guns had been silent for some time, that the continued bombardment was the echo in his belaboured head.

The lower gun-deck was a shambles. Swept from end to end by the successive broadsides of British battleships, fully half its guns were dismounted, their carriages smashed. The decks were ploughed up by shot, the furrows lined by spikes of wood like petrified grass. Men writhed or lay still in heaps, their bodies shattered into bloody mounds of flesh, brilliant hued and lit by light flooding in through the pulverised and dismantled stern. Drinkwater could not see a single man on his feet throughout the whole space. He made for the ladder to the upper deck and emerged into a smoke-stifled daylight.

Drinkwater stared around him. Bucentaure was dismasted, the stumps of her three masts incongruous, their shattered wreckage hanging all about her decks, over her guns and waist where a vain attempt was being made to get a boat out. A man was shouting from the poop. It was Villeneuve.

'Le Bucentaure a rempli sa tâche: la mienne n'est pas encore achevée.' Amidships a lieutenant gestured it was impossible to get a boat in the water. Villeneuve turned away and nodded at a smoke-begrimed man whom Drinkwater realised was Magendie. All together there were only a handful of men on Bucentaure's deck. Magendie waved his arm and shouted something. Drinkwater was aware of the masts and sails of ships all around them, towering over their naked decks, and in the thick grey smoke the brilliant points of fire told where the iron rain still poured into Bucentaure. It was quite impossible to tell friend from foe and Drinkwater stood bemused, sheltered by the wreckage of the mainmast which had fallen in a great heap of broken spars and rope and canvas.

A wraith of smoke dragged across Bucentaure's after-deck and Drinkwater saw Villeneuve again. He had been wounded and he stood looking forward over the wreckage of his ship. 'A Villeneuve