“This next one’s already dead,” a seaman reported.
“We’ve no room,” Beatty snapped. “Throw him overboard.”
I inched farther away. As my vision cleared I saw more than I wanted to. Cracked bone jutting from broken flesh. Skin roasted from flash or fire. Discarded legs and arms piled like pallid sausage. An eye gone, a foot crushed, and a man sucking breath with a three-foot wood splinter impaled between his ribs like a spear. A mouth opened to groan that had no teeth. A boy no more than twelve sobbed, looking at a wrist that no longer was attached to a hand.
All this glory I had failed to prevent.
There was a bustle of men stiffening to brief attention and a new officer came bent into the cockpit to confer with Nelson. This was Thomas Hardy, I recognized, having seen him after the Battle of the Nile. His uniform was tattered, slivers of wood hanging in fabric that was spattered with blood, but he otherwise seemed to be unhurt. He knelt next to the admiral. Nelson’s eyes focused for a moment in recognition, and he reached with his one remaining arm to clasp Hardy’s, left to left. You could see his body shaking as he gathered strength to talk. Thank God Emma couldn’t watch.
“Well, Hardy, how goes the battle?” It was a croak. “How goes the day with us?”
“Very well, my lord. We’ve twelve or fourteen of the enemy’s ships in our possession, but five of their van have tacked and show an intention of bearing down upon the Victory. I’ve therefore called two or three of our fresh ships round us, and have no doubt of giving them a drubbing.”
Nelson managed a weak smile. “I hope none of our ships have struck, Hardy.”
“No, my lord, no fear of that.”
His head rolled back. “I’m a dead man. I’m going fast; it will all be over with me soon. Come nearer to me.”
The captain leaned in.
“Pray let my dear Lady Hamilton have my hair, and all other things belonging to me.”
“I hope that Dr. Beatty can hold out some prospect of life.” The captain’s voice shook with emotion. He glanced at the surgeon.
“Oh, no, it’s impossible! My back is shot through. Beatty will tell you so.”
The hero was drowning in his own blood. You could hear his struggle for breath. In a melee slaughtering thousands, here was the pathos summed up in one man, one life, and one death. We were all weeping, and I realized I was witnessing something as historic as Napoleon’s coronation. We’d never see Nelson’s like again.
Beatty came over to probe the admiral’s legs. The admiral reported no feeling. “My lord, unhappily for our country, nothing can be done for you.”
“I know it. God be praised, I’ve done my duty.”
Duty! It was what General Duhésme called me to as well in the Boulogne camp. But duty to which side? Duty to slaughter, endlessly repeated through history? I shifted and dragged myself a good foot toward the exit.
“Fourteen or fifteen enemy ships surrendered,” Nelson muttered. “I’d bargained for twenty.”
I didn’t see the admiral die. Witnessing history is all very fine, but not if it risks your own survival. I kept creeping. Another bustle and a bosun burst in, one ear trickling blood from the concussions, face black from powder, eyes wide and straining. He looked anxiously about and then pointed at me. “There’s the one! That’s the frog bastard!”
A dozen heads swiveled. I gasped my protest. “I’m no Frenchman,” I said in quite fluent English. I dragged myself by my arms half outside the chamber. My hospital stay was over.
The bosun followed me out. “He came over with the Redoutable’s mainmast, carrying a pretty gun from Boney hisself! Could’a been ’im who fired the fatal shot!”
“I’m sure you’re confused . . .”
“Let’s hang him!”
“Come, Jack,” a saner seaman said, “the poor sod’s just another prisoner.”
“We’ve no masts or yards left to hang anybody from anyway.”
“Bloody hell, then I’ll rig one meself!”
“Aye. I won’t have a damned jack traitor lying near our saintly admiral!”
“I’m trying to leave . . .” I wheezed.
“Maybe we should just shoot him with his own damned rifle.”
I was the only man in a dozen miles to try to keep out of this battle and now was being proposed for execution by both sides. By the devil’s horns, why are my accusers so unjust, and so enthusiastic? I’d promoted myself from spy to diplomat, but I was the only person who