The Victory (52 page)

‘
Here we are, sir,' said Dipton. 'Let me help you out of that
coat, sir. That's right. A glass of wine, sir, to warm you up. You must of got chilled in that wet coat. If you'd like to sit
down on your cot, sir, I could get those wet stockings off.
You'd be more comfortable in your sea-boots, sir, if you're
going back on deck.’

The wine heartened him enough to discover he was hungry
and he savaged a round of cold roast beef, some bread and a
bunch of grapes, while Dipton removed his stockings and
chafed his legs and feet with a coarse towel until they grew
warm. The comfort of dry clothes and the wine and food soon
reversed their effect, and he became very sleepy — intolerably
sleepy. He found himself drifting even between one mouthful
and the next, jerking awake where he sat as his head lolled
forward.

‘
Perhaps if you was just to lie down for five minutes, sir,'
murmured Dipton, like a siren. 'No need to take off your
clothes, then you can be back on deck in a jiffy, if you're
needed, sir. Let me help you ...’

Haworth didn't even feel his head touch the pillow, or
Dipton draw the blanket over him: he had swum backwards
and down into the black sleep of utter exhaustion.

*

Weston had hardly noticed the time pass since taking the
Fu
rieux in
tow. Everyone admired the French ships as being
more elegant and graceful than the English ones, but however
graceful a ship of the line was under sail, she was an unutter
able bitch to tow. Styles did his best, with his handful of a
prize-crew, keeping them at the sheets the whole time to try
to mitigate with the best possible use of the sails the
deadweight drag to leeward that the ship exerted on the
frigate; while Weston stood on the quarterdeck with the
speaking-trumpet in his hand, watching the swell, the cable, the two ships, and his own masts and sails, bellowing orders
until his voice cracked.

At one minute the
Furieux
would hang back sulkily so that
the cable rose from the water and tightened like an iron bar,
and the masts of the
Nemesis
would creak ominously under
the strain; and at the next the swell would bring her surging
forward, big and black and senseless as a boulder, bearing
down on the frail frigate like a mad bull bent on destroying
her.

The headway they made was pitiful; the lee shore was less
than ten miles away, and the wind backing dangerously, and
growing squally. Then, despite everyone's vigilance, just
before ten o'clock a sudden violent gust of wind together with
the running swell brought the
Furieux
surging up to fall on
board of the
Nemesis's
starboard beam.

Her murderous bowsprit tore through the main course like
a
sword, while her bows stove in the quarterdeck bulwarks
and smashed the jolly-boat and its davits. The
Nemesis
lurched horribly, taken aback, and there was a terrible rending
sound aloft as the main and mizzen topgallant masts were
torn away. A severed halliard whipped through the darkness
with a sound like a hornet, and Weston felt a sharp, cold pain
in his cheek, and putting up his hand, brought it away bloody. ‘All hands, fend off there! Afterguard, cut those hammocks
away! Mr Harris, slacken off those sheets! Helm a-lee!’

Five minutes of frantic activity, as the
Furieux
seemed bent
on mounting the frigate and cutting her in half, and the
hands strained and shoved at her great senseless bulk with
their puny spars; but then with a terrible tearing and snapp
ing of yards and running rigging, she suddenly sheered off,
and the
Nemesis
righted herself with a lurch.

‘
Towing cable's parted, sir,' Acton reported. 'She's going
down to lee.'

‘
Give her a hail before she's too far away, Mr Acton. Tell Mr Styles we've got to repair our rigging before we can take
her up again.'

‘Aye aye, sir.'

‘You're wounded, sir,' said Davie Reid in concern.

Weston dabbed at his face again, and then fumbled for a
handkerchief. 'It's nothing. Just a cut. I'll have it seen to by
and by.'

‘
Here, have mine, sir,' Reid said proffering a handker
chief.

Weston took it with a murmur of thanks. 'That'll spoil my
beauty, won't it, Reid?'

‘
Depends on your point of view, sir,' Reid said, meeting his
captain's eyes with a sudden access of sympathy, and they
both grinned.

*

Haworth woke with a violent start, tried to get up, and
couldn't. The bruising to his back had stiffened while he
slept, and he couldn't move. He tried hooking his hands
round the edge of his cot and dragging himself over, but the
pain made him sweat. He had not meant to sleep. Anything
might have happened. He bellowed for Dipton.

‘How long have I been asleep?'

‘Only about an hour, sir,' Dipton said soothingly.

‘
You should have woken me. Help me to get up, damn it. I
can't move.'

‘
You needed a sleep, begging your pardon, sir. Can't you
rest a bit longer, sir?'

‘
Help me up, damn you,' Haworth said, hating his helpless
ness. He was like a woodlouse on its back.

Between them, he and Dipton managed to get him to a
sitting position, though not without a great deal of pain.

‘Shall I send for Mr Parry, sir?' Dipton said anxiously.

‘
It's only stiffness. It'll loosen up as I move around,'
Haworth said, without much inward conviction. But the
hour's sleep had refreshed him amazingly: he felt deeply
weary, but perfectly alert. 'Help me on with my boots. I
daren't bend.’

On deck he felt at once that the wind had freshened, and the next thing that caught his attention was the rhythmical
groan and thud as the mizzen-mast moved in
its
lashings with
the slow pitching of the ship on the swell. Webb was on deck,
and touched his hat as Haworth appeared.

‘
We'll have to get some of the strain off that mizzen-mast,
Mr Webb.'

‘Take in another reef, sir?'

‘
I think we'll goose-wing it,' Haworth said. That exposed
less sail than reefing.

‘Aye aye, sir. Hands to shorten sail!'

‘
We'll have to watch it carefully,' Haworth went on as the
topmen came running for the ratlines. He squinted upwards
apprehensively into the formless shadows of the rigging. 'If
the wind freshens much more, it could give us trouble.’

*

When dawn came at last, all forty-four ships were still in
sight, widely scattered over the heaving sea. Four of them, the
Defence
and three of the prizes, had anchored after Collingw
ood's preparatory signal, and were riding the swell off Cape
Trafalgar. The others, which had had no choice, were
struggling to claw away from the land against a rising wind.

The Admiral signalled for the frigates to relinquish the task of towing to some of the sound ships of the line, which would
be more equal to the task. All day the weather worsened. The
wind continued to rise to gale force, and at noon it began to
rain heavily, and the horizon disappeared behind sheets of
driving water.

During the afternoon, the prize
Redoutable
hoisted 314,
the
distress signal. She had been sandwiched between
Victory
and
Temeraire
during the battle, and to avoid firing straight
through her and into each other, the two English ships had
depressed their gun muzzles and fired downwards into her,
with the result that she had numerous holes below the water
line, and was leaking like a sieve.

The
Swiftsure,
which was towing her, sent boats to take off as many of her men as possible. By nightfall she was evidently
deeply waterlogged, wallowing heavily, but the sea was now
too rough, and the gale too fierce, for boats to be launched in
the dark. There must still, Weston knew, be hundreds of
wounded below decks, perhaps already drowning as the water
crept up inside the
Redoutable's
ravaged hull, but nothing
could be done for them. Just after ten that night, she sank by
the stern with her gruesome cargo.

By the morning of the 23rd the gale had risen almost to a
hurricane force, blowing from the south, and in the mountainous
seas the tow-cables parted again and again. The
Thunderer
had taken over the task of towing the
Furieux,
and just
after dawn the prize ship's foremast stays, which had been damaged in the battle and hastily repaired, parted, and the
foremast went over the side, shortly followed by the jury
mizzen which could not take the strain alone. Without sails or
rudder she was going down on to leeward fast, and
Thunderer
signalled urgently for assistance.

Under storm jib and triple-reefed topsails, Weston took
Nemesis
as close as he dared. The
Furieux
was lower in the
water now, too, and it was obvious that there was no hope of
saving her.
Thunderer
put out a boat to try to reach the
crippled ship in the hope of taking off at least the prize-crew, and Weston did the same. The seas were very heavy now, and
at times the boats disappeared altogether in the troughs of the
black-green waves, but however hard they pulled, the
crippled ship went down to leeward faster than they.

The crew of the
Nemesis
watched dry-mouthed and in
silence as those on board the
Furieux
managed, in spite of the
appalling difficulties, to rig a jury foremast and shew a scrap
of sail; but their pathetic struggle was unavailing. Without a
rudder, they could not keep her to the wind, and the
Furieux
was driven inexorably down to lee, to be wrecked on the
Spanish shore.

 
In the
Cetus,
Haworth and Tyler had decided to keep 'watch
and watch', four hours on and four hours off, so that one of
them should always be on deck. Haworth was on deck when
disaster overtook the
Furieux,
and watched with a sick feeling
of helplessness as she was driven to her doom, taking Styles,
Bittles and the rest of the prize crew with her.