afraid.’
I swallowed and looked again at the English ships, great leaning cloud castles of taut canvas, men inching along the yardarms like ants, every gun run out, their battle flags flapping red. Damned if they didn’t look like an eager lot. ‘The sun’s going down,’ I said uneasily. ‘Surely the British won’t attack in the dark.’
The admiral watched the approaching squadron with a mouth set in resignation. I decided now that he looked positively gaunt from his dysentery, and about as ready for a hard fight as a man who has just run twenty miles. ‘No sane man would,’ he replied. ‘But this is Nelson.’ He snapped the telescope shut. ‘I suggest you get back down to the treasury. It’s below the waterline and safest there.’
I didn’t want to fight the English, but it seemed cowardly not to. ‘If you could spare a rifle…’
‘No, don’t get in the way. This is the navy’s fight. You are a savant, and your mission is to return to Bonaparte with your information.’ He clapped my shoulder, turned, and began snapping more orders.
Too curious to scurry below yet, I moved to the rail, feeling perfectly useless and silently cursing the impatient Nelson. Any normal admiral would have shortened sail as the sky turned orange, manoeuvred his fleet into a tidy line of battle, and given his men a warm meal and a good night’s sleep before starting a tangle. But this was Nelson, who had famously boarded not just one French ship but the next one beyond, leaping from one to the other and capturing both. Once again, he showed no signs of slowing. The nearer he got, the more cries of consternation went up among the French sailors. This was madness! And yet it was increasingly obvious that the battle was going to begin at day’s end.
The sailors on shore were still climbing into the longboats, trying to get back to their ships.
A few cannon thumped, to no effect. I could see the lead English vessels making for the western end of the French line near Abukir Island, where the French had sited a land battery. That end of the bay was thick with shoals, and Brueys had been confident that the English fleet couldn’t negotiate it. Yet no one had told Nelson that, and two English battleships, aptly named Zealous and Goliath, were racing each other for the privilege of running aground. Insanity! The sun was on the horizon, blood red, and the French shore howitzers were firing, except they couldn’t reach the English ships with their arcing shells. The Goliath pulled ahead in its little race, nicely silhouetted against the sinking orb, and instead of striking a rock it slipped neatly between Le Guerrier and the shore. Then it turned smartly and sailed up the French line on the leeward side, between Brueys and the beach! It luffed sails as it came abreast the second ship of the formation, Le Conquerant, neatly dropped anchor as if it had arrived in port, and promptly let loose a broadside at the unready side of the French ship. There was a clap of thunder, a huge gush of smoke roiling out to envelop both vessels. Le Conquerant heeled as if punched by a fist. I could see great sprays of splinters arcing skyward as the French ship was pounded. Then screams began to float down the line. Anchored as we were, the wind against us, we could do nothing but wait our turn.
The Zealous anchored opposite Le Guerrier, and the British ships Orion, Audacious, and Theseus followed into Abukir Bay, also taking the French on their unprotected flank. Brueys’s formidable wall suddenly seemed hapless. Gunsmoke rose to form thunderheads, and what had at first been the distant thudding of guns drew closer and closer, climbing to a roar. The sun had gone down, the wind dying, the sky dusk. Now the rest of the English fleet slowed to a crawl and menacingly drifted down the seaward side, meaning each French ship at the head of Brueys’s anchored line was being raked from both sides, outnumbered two to one. While the first six French ships were being pounded, the ships in the rear of the assembly had no means of getting into battle. They sat at anchor, their crews watching helplessly. It was plain bloody murder. I could hear raw English cheering in the dusk, while the French cries were of horror and hatred at the growing butchery. Napoleon would be cursing if he could see it.
There is a horrible stateliness to a sea battle, a languid ballet that heightens the tension before each broadside. Boats materialise out of the smoke like looming giants. Cannons roar, and then long seconds tick by while batteries are reloaded, wounded dragged aside, and buckets thrown on smouldering fires. Here at the Nile, some of the ships hammered at each other from anchor. Smoke created a vast fog, barely penetrated by the light of a rising full moon. Those ships that remained mobile manoeuvred half blinded. I saw an English ship emerge near our own – Bellerophon, it read – and heard English shouts of aim. It drifted as ponderously as an iceberg.
‘Get down!’ Brueys shouted to me. On the deck below I could hear Captain Casabianca crying, ‘Fire! Fire!’ I flattened myself on the quarterdeck and the world dissolved to a roar. L’Orient heeled, both from the discharge of her own guns and the weight of the answering English shot slamming home. The ship quaked beneath me and I could hear splintering sounds as our ship was gutted. Yet the French tactics of aiming for the rigging caused havoc on the other side as well. Like a fall of axed timber, Bellerophon ’s masts came down in a huge creaking tangle, smothering its top deck with a terrifying crash. The British battleship began to float away. Now it was the turn of the French sailors to cheer. I shakily stood up, embarrassed that no one else had dropped to the deck. Yet at least a score were dead or wounded, and Brueys was bleeding from head and hand. He refused to be bandaged, dripping bright blood on the deck.
‘I meant get down to the hold, Monsieur Gage,’ he amended.
‘Maybe I’m good luck,’ I said shakily, watching Bellerophon disappear in the bank of gun smoke.
Yet I’d no sooner said so than one of the British guns stabbed orange in the dark and a cannon ball came whistling across to clear the rail and neatly clip the admiral in the thigh. His lower leg was plucked off like a tooth jerked by a string, flying away into the night in a fine mist of blood, tumbling and white. Brueys stood momentarily on one leg, looking at his absent member with disbelief, and then slowly toppled like a broken stool, hitting the deck with a thud. His officers cried out and gathered around him. Blood ran like spilt sauce.
‘Get him to the infirmary!’ Captain Casabianca roared.
‘No,’ Brueys gasped. ‘I want to die where I can see.’
Everything was chaotic. A sailor staggered by with half his scalp gone. A midshipman lay thrown against a gun like a piece of litter, a one-foot splinter through his chest. The main deck had become a perfect hell of flying splinters, falling rigging, evisceration, and gore. Men trod on their companions’ ruptured organs. Powder boys skidded on sheets of lubricating blood, gushing faster than the sand thrown across it could soak it up. Cannons barked, muskets cracked, shot screamed by, and the sheer concentration of havoc seemed far worse than a land battle. The night throbbed with the flashes of the guns, so that one saw the battle in flickering glimpses. I could barely hear anymore, and all I could smell and taste was smoke. Two more British ships had anchored near us, I realised, and were beginning to pound us with fresh broadsides. L’Orient was shuddering from the impact of round shot like a chastened dog, and our own barking was slower as French cannon were disabled.
‘He’s dead,’ Casabianca announced, standing. I looked down at the admiral. He seemed white and empty, as if deflated by the blood that had poured out of him, but newly serene. At least he wouldn’t have to answer to Napoleon.
Then another British broadside and another explosion of splinters. This time Casabianca grunted and went down. Another officer’s head had simply disappeared, dissolving at the shoulders into red rain, and a lieutenant caught a ball midbody and was hurled overboard as if catapulted. I was too terrified to move.
‘Father!’ The midshipman who had guided me before suddenly appeared and rushed to Casabianca’s side, eyes wide with fright. In reply, the captain cursed and picked himself up. He was pattered with small splinter wounds, more angry than seriously hurt. ‘Get below like I told you,’ he growled.
‘I’ll not leave you!’
‘You’ll not leave your duty.’ He grasped his son’s shoulder. ‘We are examples to our men and to France!’
‘I’ll take him,’ I said, grabbing the youth and pulling. Now I was anxious to get off this slaughter deck myself. ‘Come, Giocante, you’re worth more fetching powder down there than dead up here.’
‘Let me go!’
‘Do as you’re ordered!’ his father shouted.
The boy was torn. ‘I’m afraid you’ll be killed.’
‘If I am, your responsibility is to help rally the men.’ Then he softened. ‘We’ll be alright.’
The boy and I descended into Hadean gloom. Each of the three gun decks were fogged with choking smoke and cacophonous with noise: the blast of guns, the crash of enemy shot, and the screams of the wounded. The concussions had left many of the gunners’ ears bleeding. The midshipman spied some useful duty and darted off, while I, with nothing to offer, descended farther until I was below the waterline once more. If L’Orient went down, at least I could take the calendar off the ship with me. Here in the pit the surgeons were sawing at limbs to screaming made bearable only by my relative deafness, their lanterns swinging to each rumble of the guns. Sailors passed buckets of water to wash away the blood.
There was a chain of boys like a line of apes passing up sausage-like bagged cartridges from the magazine. I
