'Come, sir, that is no way to talk… Why, what of Antigone? Who the devil was she?'
'The daughter of Oedipus and Jocasta, sir. She buried the body of her brother after her uncle had ordered it to be left exposed and he had her bricked up behind a wall…'
'Enough of that, Mr Gillespy.' He fell silent. It was true that his own Antigone might as well be bricked up, stuck, as she was, with Louis off Gibraltar. If the Combined Fleet got through the Strait unmolested it would come upon the lone Antigone cruising to the eastward watching the eastern horizon for Salcedo! He groaned aloud, 'Oh, God damn it!'
'Are you all right, sir? Gillespy came forward solicitiously, but drew back at the sight of the captain's set face.
'Perfectly, Mr Gillespy,' Drinkwater said grimly, 'I am damning my ill-fortune.'
'I'm hungry, sir,' Gillespy said after a little, but this feeble appeal was lost in a sudden canting of the Bucentaure. Drinkwater strained to hear orders on deck but it was impossible as the hull creaked about them and the constant wash of the sea beyond the ship's side shut out any noise from the upper deck.
'We're wearing… God damn it, we're wearing, Mr Gillespy… yes, yes certainly we are… wait… see, we're steady again…' He gauged the way the hull reacted to the swell. It rolled them from the other side now, the larboard side. They were heading north and the rush of water past the hull was much less than it had been the day before. Either they had reduced sail or the wind had dropped significantly.
'What does it mean, sir?'
'I don't know,' snapped Drinkwater, trying to answer that very question himself. 'Either that Louis has appeared ahead of the Combined Fleet, or that Villeneuve has abandoned his intention and wishes to return to Cadiz… in which case I judge that the answer to your question is that our friends have sighted the main body of Lord Nelson's fleet.' As he spoke, Drinkwater's voice increased in strength with mounting conviction.
'By God!' he added, knowing Villeneuve's vacillation, 'that must be the explanation.' He smiled at the boy. 'I think you will have something to tell your grandchildren, my boy!'
Half an hour later Lieutenant Guillet appeared. He wore full dress uniform and was formally polite.
'Capitaine Drinkwater, I am ordered by His Excellency Vice-Admiral Villeneuve to remind you of your parole and the courtesy done you by permitting you to keep your sword. It is also necessary that I ask you that you will do nothing during the action to prejudice this ship. Without these assurances I 'ave orders to confine you in irons.' It was a rehearsed speech and he could see the hand of Magendie as well as the courtliness of Villeneuve.
'Lieutenant Guillet, it would dishonour both myself and my country if I was not to conform to your request. I assure you that both myself and my midshipman will do nothing to interfere with the Bucentaure. Will you convey my compliments to His Excellency and I thank you for your kind attentions to us and wish you good fortune in the hours ahead.'
They exchanged bows and Guillet departed. The forenoon dragged on. Drinkwater wrote in his journal and comforted the starving Gillespy. A strange silence hung over the groaning fabric of the warship, permeating down through her decks and hatchways. Even the men awaiting the arrival of the wounded in the orlop talked among themselves in whispers. About mid-morning they heard a muffled shout, drowned immediately in a terrific rumbling sound that startled them after the long and heavy silence.
'Running out the guns,' Drinkwater explained to Gillespy.
'Capitaine, will you come to the deck at once…' It was Guillet, his appearance hurried and breathless.
Drinkwater rose and put on his hat. He turned to Gillespy. 'Remain here, Mr Gillespy. You are in no circumstances to leave the orlop.'
'Aye, aye, sir.'
Drinkwater followed Guillet up through the lower gun-deck. It was flooded by shafts of sunshine coming in through the open gunports. Every cannon was run out and the crews squatted expectantly round them, one or two peering through at the approaching British. Lieutenants and aspirants paced along their divisions and a murmur ran up and down the guns. Guillet and Drinkwater emerged on deck and Guillet led him directly to where Villeneuve, Magendie and Prigny were staring westwards. His heart beating furiously, Drinkwater followed the direction of their telescopes.
Under a sky of blue and over an almost calm sea furrowed by a ponderous swell from the westward, the British fleet came down on the Combined Fleet in two loose groups, prevented from getting into any regular formation by the lightness of the westerly breeze. Drinkwater looked briefly round him to see the Franco-Spanish ships in almost as much disorder. The decision to wear, though two hours old, had thrown them into a confusion from which it would take them some time to recover. Instead of a single line with the frigates to leeward and Gravina's crucial detachment slightly to weather, the whole armada was a loose crescent, bowed away from the advancing British towards the distant blue outline of Cape Trafalgar on the horizon. The line had vast gaps in it, astern of the Bucentaure for instance, and in places the ships had bunched two and three abreast.
He turned his attention to the British again at the same time as Villeneuve lowered his glass and noticed his arrival. 'Ah, Captain Drinkwater. I desire your opinion as to the leading ships…' He handed Drinkwater his glass.
Drinkwater focused the telescope and the image leapt into the lenses with unbelievable clarity. The two groups of British ships were led by three-deckers. These ships were going to receive the brunt of the fire of several broadsides before they could retaliate and Drinkwater sensed a certain elation amongst the officers on Bucentaure's quarterdeck. They came on like a row of skittles, one behind the other. Knock the end one over and it would take them all down.
As he watched, flags soared up the mastheads and out to the yardarms of the leading British ships. Between the two groups he could see the frigates Naiad, Euryalus, Siruis and Phoebe, a cutter and schooner, standing by to repeat signals or tow a wounded battleship out of the line.
'Well, Captain?' Villeneuve was reminding him he was a prisoner and had been asked a question. He looked again at the leading ships. They had every stitch of sail set, their studding sails winged out on the booms, their slack sheets trailing in the water. The swell made the great ships pitch gently as they came on, their hulls black and yellow barred, their decorated figureheads bright with paintwork. The southern group was further advanced than the northern column. He closed the telescope with a snap.
'The southern column is led by Royal Sovereign, Your Excellency, flagship of Vice-Admiral Collingwood…'
'And Nelson?' Villeneuve's eagerness betrayed his anxiety.
'There, sir,' Drinkwater pointed with Villeneuve's telescope, the brass instrument gleaming in the sunshine, 'there is Victory, leading the northern column and bearing the flag of Lord Nelson.'
Villeneuve's hand was extended for his glass, but his eyes never left the black and yellow hull of Victory. As Drinkwater watched, the ship astern of Victory seemed to edge out of line, as if making to overtake. Then he saw her sails shake and she disappeared from view behind the flagship again. 'She seems to be supported by the Temeraire,' he added, 'of ninety-eight guns.'
Bucentaure's officers studied the menacing approach of the silent British ships. All along her own decks animated chatter had broken out. He noticed there was no check put to this and the men seemed in high spirits now that action was inevitable. Aware that at any moment he would be ordered below, he again looked round. The gap astern was a yawning invitation to the British, and Drinkwater's practised eye soon reckoned that Victory was heading for that gap. Collingwood, he judged, would strike the allied line well astern of the Bucentaure, somewhere about the position of the funereal black hull of the Spanish 112-gun Santa Ana with her scarlet figurehead of the saint. Ahead of the Bucentaure the mighty Santissima Trinidad, with her hull of red and white ribbands, seemed to wait placidly for the onslaught of the heretic fleet, a great wooden cross hanging over her stern beneath the red and gold ensign of Spain.