She was the Revenant. Chase recognized her, saw Montmorin standing coolly on his quarterdeck, saw the smoke of the Frenchman’s guns sweeping up into her undamaged rigging and heard the terrible sounds of his ship being battered beneath his feet, but at last the Pucelle responded to the drag of the mizzen and the tug of the tiller and Chase’s starboard broadside could begin to respond, though some of his guns had been dismounted and others had dead crews and so his first broadside was feeble. No more than seven guns fired. “Close the larboard ports,” Chase called down the weather deck. “All crews to starboard! Lively now!”
The Pucelle slowly came to life. She had been stunned by her raking, but Chase led a score of seamen up to the poop to cut away the mizzen’s wreckage, and below decks the surviving gunners from the larboard cannon went to make up the crews of the starboard broadside. The Revenant turned to larboard, plainly intending to run alongside the Pucelle. Her forecastle was crowded with men armed with cutlasses and boarding pikes, but the remaining starboard carronade on Chase’s quarterdeck ripped them away. John Hopper, the bosun of Chase’s barge crew, commanded that gun. Chase slashed through a last shroud with a boarding axe, left a petty officer to clear the mess on the poop deck and went back to his quarterdeck as the Revenant crept closer and closer. The Pucelle’s starboard guns were firing properly now, their crews reinforced at last, and the shots were splintering holes in the Revenant’s side, but then the first of the Frenchman’s guns were reloaded and Chase watched their blackened muzzles appear in the gunports. Smoke billowed. He saw the Revenant’s sails quiver to the shock of her guns, felt his own ship tremble as the balls struck home, saw young Collier standing at the starboard rail staring at the approaching enemy. “What are you doing here, Mister Collier?” Chase asked.
“My duty, sir.”
“I told you to watch the clock in the poop, didn’t I?”
“There ain’t no clock, sir. It went.” The boy, in mute proof, held up the twisted enamel of the clock’s face.
“Then go down to the orlop deck, Mister Collier, and don’t disturb the surgeon, but in his dispensary there is a net of oranges, a gift from Admiral Nelson. Bring them up for the gun crews.”
“Aye aye, sir.”
Chase looked back and saw the Victory. A signal flew from her rigging and Chase did not need a signal lieutenant to translate the flags. “Engage the enemy more closely.” Well, he was about to do that, and he was engaging a virtually undamaged enemy ship while his own had been grievously hurt, but by God, Chase thought, he would make Nelson proud. Chase did not blame himself for being raked. In this kind of battle, a wild melee with ships milling about in smoke, it would be a miracle if any captain was not raked, and he was proud that his men had turned the ship before the Revenant could empty her whole broadside into the Pucelle’s stern. She could still fight. Beyond the Victory, beyond the smoke that lay about her, beyond the embattled ships, some dismasted, he could see the undamaged rigging of the British vessels that formed the rearmost part of each squadron and those ships, not yet committed, were only just entering the battle. The Santisima Trinidad, towering over both fleets like a behemoth, was being raked and pounded by smaller ships that looked like terriers yapping at a bull. The French Neptune had vanished, and the Pucelle was threatened by the Revenant alone, but the Revenant had somehow escaped the worst of the fighting and Mont-morin, as fine a captain as any in the French navy, was determined to pluck some honor from the day.
Two seamen dragged the Pucelle’s soaking white ensign onto the quarterdeck, smearing Haskell’s blood with the sopping folds of the heavy flag. “Run it up to the main topsail yard, larboard side,” Chase ordered. It would look odd there, but by God he would fly it to show that the Pucelle was undefeated.
Musket balls began striking the deck. Montmorin had fifty or sixty men in his upperworks and they would now try to do what the Redoutable had done to the Victory. He would clear the Pucelle’s decks and Chase desperately wanted to retreat into the shelter of the damaged poop, but his place was here, in full view, and so he put his hands behind his back and tried to look calm as he paced up and down the deck. He resisted the temptation to extend each length of the deck until he was under the poop, but forced himself to turn a few paces short, though he did stop once to stare in fascination at the mangled remains of the binnacle and its compass. A musket ball thumped the deck by his feet and he turned and paced back. He should have summoned a lieutenant from below decks to replace Haskell, but he decided against it. If he fell then his men knew what to do. Just fight. That was all there was to do now. Just fight, and Chase’s life or death would make small difference to the outcome, whereas the lieutenants, commanding the guns, were doing something useful.
The crews of the two larboard carronades, which had no targets, were levering the fallen starboard carronade out of the way so that they could drag one of their two guns to replace it. Chase skipped out of their way, then saw Midshipman Collier on the weather deck where he was handing out oranges from his huge net. “Throw one here, lad!” he called to the boy.
Collier looked alarmed at the order, as though he feared to throw something at his captain, but he tossed the orange underhand as if he was bowling a cricket ball and Chase had to lunge to one side to catch it single-handed. Some gunners cheered the catch and Chase held the orange aloft like a trophy, then tossed it to Hopper.
Captain Llewellyn’s marines were firing at the French in their fighting tops, but the French were more numerous and their lashing fire was thinning Llewellyn’s ranks. “Shelter your men as best you can, Llewellyn,” Chase ordered.
“If I can take some to the maintop, sir?” the Welshman suggested.
“No, no, I gave my word to Nelson. Shelter them. Your time will come soon enough. Under the break of the poop, Llewellyn. You can fire from there.”
“You should come with us, sir.”
“I feel like taking the air, Llewellyn,” Chase said with a smile. In truth he was terrified. He kept thinking of his wife, his house, the children. In her last letter Florence had said that one of the ponies had a sickness, but which one? The cob? Was it better? He tried to think of such domestic things, wondering if the apple harvest was good and whether the stable yard had been repaved and why the parlor chimney smoked so bad when the wind was in the east, but in truth he just wanted to dash into the poop’s shadow and so be protected from the musketry by the deck planks above. He wanted to cower, but his job was to stay on his quarterdeck. That was why he was paid four hundred and eighteen pounds and twelve shillings a year, and so he paced up and down, up and down, made conspicuous by his cocked hat and gilded epaulettes, and he tried to divide four hundred and eighteen pounds and twelve shillings by three hundred and sixty-five days and the Frenchmen aimed their muskets at him so that Chase walked a strip of deck that became ever more lumpy and ragged from bullet strikes. He saw the ship’s barber, a one-eyed Irishman, hauling on a weather-deck gun. At this moment, Chase reckoned, that man was more valuable to the ship than its captain. He paced on, knowing he would be hit soon, hoping it would not hurt too badly, regretting his death so keenly and wishing he could see his children one more time. He was frightened, but it was unthinkable to do anything else but show a cool disdain for danger.