pushed past them to the treasure room, where the light had gone out.
‘I need a lantern!’ I shouted to the sentry.
‘Not near the powder, you fool!’
Swearing, I groped in the dark for the calendar device. Here I was pawing over a king’s ransom, and the only way to get any of it out was through a hurricane of fire. What if we sank? Millions of francs of treasure would go to the bottom. Could I stuff some in my boot? I could feel the roll of L’Orient as each British broadside shoved the warship this way and that. The timbers of the ribs and deck trembled. I hunched like a child, moaning as I searched. The cannonade was like a ram battering a door, sure to eventually stave us in.
And then I heard a sailor’s most dreaded words: ‘Fire!’
I looked out. The magazine door had been slammed shut and the powder monkeys were scampering upward. That meant our own cannons would quickly go silent. Everything was orange overhead. ‘Open the cocks to flood the magazine!’ someone shouted, and I began to hear the gush of water. I put my hand to the deck overhead and flinched. It was already uncomfortably hot. The wounded were screaming in terror.
A head appeared in the hatch above. ‘Get out of there, you crazy American! Don’t you know the ship is on fire?’
There! The calendar! I felt its shape, grasped it, and mounted the ladder in fear, leaving a fortune behind. Flames were everywhere, spreading faster than I’d thought possible. Tar, hemp, paint, dry wood, and canvas: we were fighting on a heap of kindling.
A French marine loomed before me, bayonet fixed, eyes wild. ‘What’s that?’ He looked at the odd thing I carried.
‘A calendar for Bonaparte.’
‘You stole from the treasury!’
‘I’ve orders to save it.’
‘Show them!’
‘They’re with Brueys.’ Or, I thought, on fire.
‘Thief! It’s to the brig with you!’
He’d gone mad. I looked around in desperation. Men were leaping from the gun ports like fleeing rats.
I had only a second to decide. I could fight this lunatic for a ring of metal or trade it for my life. ‘Here!’ I pitched the calendar to him. He let his musket barrel droop to awkwardly catch it and I used the moment to shove past him, scrambling up to the next deck.
‘Come back, you!’
Here the fire and smoke were even worse. It was a charnel house of horror, a butcher’s banquet of mangled bodies beginning to roast in the heat. Sightless eyes stared at me, fingers clutching for succor. Many of the dead were in flames, their tissues sizzling.
I kept climbing and finally gained the quarterdeck again, coughing and gasping. All the rigging was alight, a great pyramid of fire, and even as smoke roiled upward to obscure the moon, burning bits rained down like pitch from hell. The grit of ash crunched under my feet. Gun carriages were smashed, marines lay toppled like ninepins, and gratings were crushed. I staggered toward the stern. On either bulwark, dark forms were hurling themselves into the sea.
I literally stumbled on Captain Casabianca. He was lying down now, a great new sucking wound on his chest, his son once more next to him, the boy’s leg twisted where it had broken. I’d tripped on a father who was a dead man, I knew, but there was still a chance for his son. I crouched next to them. ‘We’ve got to get you out of here, Giocante, the ship may be ready to blow.’ I coughed. ‘I’ll help you swim.’
He shook his head. ‘I won’t leave my father.’
‘You can’t help him now.’
‘I won’t leave my ship.’
There was a crash as a yardarm, flaming, hit and bounced on the deck. The British fired yet another salvo and the French flagship trembled, groaning and creaking.
‘You don’t have a ship anymore!’
‘Leave us, Americain, ’ the captain gasped.
‘But your son…’
‘It is over.’
The boy touched my face in sad farewell. ‘Duty,’ he said.
‘You’ve done your duty! You’ve a whole life ahead!’
‘ This is my life.’ There was a tremble to his voice but his face was as calm as an angel in a grotto of hell. So this is what deciding what to believe in is like, I thought. So this is duty. I felt horror, admiration, inferiority, fury. A wasted young life! Or was it wasted? Blind belief had been the cause of half of history’s miseries. And yet wasn’t it also what saints and heroes were made of? His eyes were as hard and dark as shale, and if I’d had time to look into them, perhaps I would have learnt all the secrets of the world.
‘Abandon ship! Abandon ship!’ It was being shouted again and again by the few surviving officers.
‘Damn it, I won’t let you kill yourself.’ I grabbed him.
The boy pushed me so hard I sprawled. ‘You are not France! Leave!’
And then I heard another voice.
‘You!’
It was the crazed marine, who had staggered to this top deck. His face was burnt, his clothes smoking. Blood soaked half his coat. And yet he was aiming at me!
I ran to the stern rail, veiled by smoke, and took one look back. Father and son were obscured, their forms wavering in the heat. It was insane how wedded they were to their ship, their duty, their fate. It was glorious, monstrous, enviable. Did I care for anything half as much? And was I fortunate not to do so? I prayed they’d go quickly. The marine beyond was blinded by smoke and blood, swaying so pitifully he couldn’t hold his aim, flames reaching to claim him.
So, unable to be anything but the man I am, I jumped.
It was a leap of faith into utter blackness; I couldn’t see a thing but knew the water below would be choked with thrashing men and chunks of debris. Somehow I missed all of it and plunged into the Mediterranean, salt gushing into my nose. The water was a shock of cool relief, a balm for my blisters. I sank into a womb of blackness, and then kicked. When I came up I struck out away from the burning battleship as fast as I could, knowing it was a lethal powder keg if the magazine didn’t flood in time. I could feel its heat on the crown of my head as I stroked. If I could ride some flotsam to shore…
And with that, L’Orient blew up.
None had ever heard such sound. It was a thunderclap in Alexandria some twenty-three miles distant, lighting the town as if by day. The concussion reached the Bedouin watching the contest from the beach and hurled them from their rearing horses. It slapped and deafened me. Masts shot up like rockets. Cannon were tossed like pebbles. There was am explosive penumbra of wood splinters and sea spray driven up and outward, a corona of debris, and then the bits of ship began to rain down for hundreds of yards in every direction, still hitting and killing men. Bent forks fell from the sky to stick into railings. Shoes banged down holding nothing but smoking feet. The very sea flexed, driving me away, and then the hulk below the waterline cracked and went under, sucking all of us back toward its swirling maw. I thrashed desperately and caught at a piece of wood before being yanked back down into darkness. I clung like a lover, feeling the pain in my ears as I spiralled deeper. Lord, it was like being gripped by a monster’s paw! At least the suction saved me from the bombardment of debris that pattered the surface like nails. Looking up at the orange water above, I saw the surface shatter like a broken stained-glass window. What seemed likely to be my last sight had an eerie beauty.
How deep I was dragged I don’t know. My head pounded, my lungs burnt. Then, just when I thought I could hold my breath no more, the sinking ship seemed to release its grasp and the buoyant wood I’d clung to finally began to carry me upward. I burst to the surface with my last air, shrieking with pain and fear, rolling with my stump of yard that had saved my life. And because of my sting and ache, I knew I’d survived once more, for better or worse. I lay on my back, blinking at stars. The smoke was drifting away. Dimly I became aware of what was around me. The sea was carpeted with wood and broken bodies. There was a stunned silence except for a few faint calls for help. So stupendous was the explosion of L’Orient that all firing stopped.
The crew of one British ship tried a cheer, but it stuck in their throats.
