like thorns. We could see the wink of red from jacketed marines. There was little sound from the British ships, either, but they were a magnificent sight. Every sail had been set to catch the whispers of wind. They were like birds stretching their wings, straining to rush down on us, and yet advancing slower than a walk. I’ve never known such agonizing tedium as that long morning. Two fleets waited to duel, and the wind had gone on leave. The world seemed glacial.
Yet slowly we drifted toward collision.
The sun was entirely lost now in milky overcast. At eleven thirty A.M., Villeneuve ordered French or Spanish pennants flown to identify each ship. Now there was a great rumble of drums, the soldiers aboard presenting arms. I snapped to attention without thinking about it, surprising myself, and looked about to see if anyone had noticed. None had, but I remembered Duhésme’s advice to join a unit, a cause, and a country. I was trapped, yet part of something, the thrill as oddly exciting as love.
Everyone was rigid from anticipation.
On the Spanish ships, a huge wooden cross was raised to hang from the mizzen boom, the religious symbol swaying over the taffrail at the ships’ rear. The French Catholics crossed themselves and kissed their own crucifixes.
On Redoutable, one of Napoleon’s new imperial eagles was brought from the captain’s cabin and presented to the crew to elicit shouts of “Vive l’empereur.” The standard was lashed to the mainmast.
The cheers gave spirit. The long months of chase and wait were finally over.
“You’d better take your place in the fighting top, Monsieur Gage,” Lucas said quietly behind me, making me jump.
I tilted my head back. “Up there?”
“As safe a place as any. Safer, if you use your rifle to good effect. Discourage the enemy by picking off his best men.”
I’d fixed a sling to my gun. Now I slung it over my shoulder, walked to the rail, and swung out over the ship’s side to stand on the wooden rails called chains, the water foamy far below. The tarred ropes attached there were reassuringly sticky, angling upward in a triangle to join the mizzenmast. My rifle bumped clumsily. I wore my worldly possessions: a few coins from Smith, the broken sword stub from Talleyrand, and my tomahawk, all tightly secured beneath my clothing.
Taking a breath, I began climbing the netlike ratlines that led aloft. The swells made the mast top pivot through ten degrees, and it was unnerving as we swayed. The higher I went, the wider the pendulum. I paused, steadied, took breath, and then kept going. Dozens of sharpshooters were doing the same. Looking neither up nor down but only where my hands must grab, I slowly ascended to the lubber’s hole next to the mast, clumsily squeezed through, and came up on the mizzen platform that would be my station. Ahead were similar platforms at main and foremast, crowded with soldiers. Each top extended three feet from the mast like a tree house, ratlines and rails giving security. The mast, wrapped with rope, was a comforting trunk at our back, extending far higher to more yards and sails above. A canvas screen had been lashed around the perimeter to hide us from view when we crouched to reload.
From here we would shoot to the enemy’s deck.
“It’s the American and his golden gun!”
“Now we’ll see if you shoot as fast as you talk, Gage.”
I had a splendid view of grandeur. Even Astiza, wise as she was about the insanity of war, would appreciate its beauty. I wished for the millionth time that she were beside me.
More than seventy ships were in view, sixty big enough to hammer it out in the main battle, and the fleets combined carried forty-one thousand men and thirty times the weight of artillery that would be used in a comparable land battle. We were riding the most complex, beautiful, and magnificent machines civilization had yet produced, works of art dedicated to the utter destruction of their counterpart. Each ship had acres of canvas, miles of ropes, and a city’s worth of stores. The English ships were painted like wasps, their black and yellow stripes broken by the yawning red mouths of gunport lids. The Combined Fleet was black and red. The clouds of canvas were massive as icebergs, and pennants seemed to float in the light breeze with the suspension of balloons. The Santisima Trinidad was a castle, looming over lesser ships.