So I rolled and struck out for all I was worth, and when a bullet plunked nearby I dove and swam underwater for a spell. Thank the Lord for idiots.
When I surfaced, I looked back. One man shook his fist, but the wind was blowing Victory away. The others had lost interest or been ordered to other tasks. A swell lifted me and set me down again. The wind was picking up as the battle went from a boil to a simmer, and the black sky to the west foretold coming fury.
I set off swimming toward Redoutable.
It was drifting down on me even as Victory drifted away. For a mile in each direction battered battleships wandered, rigging trashed, guns thumping, men staggering. Everyone was exhausted. Firing cannon is bloody hard work.
One ship, presumably French, was burning like a bonfire. Many of the French and Spanish vessels had already surrendered, including the gigantic Santisima Trinidad. Redoutable had struck to the Téméraire. The two ships, still locked together, floated about a hundred yards from where I’d been flung. I swam to the vessel I’d started on fairly easily, initially hoping for more of a hero’s welcome from the French. But wait, those soldiers had wanted to shoot me, too, hadn’t they? And the British prize crew that had clambered aboard might be even less friendly if they got word of my exit from the Victory.
So I treaded water, thinking. For the first time I was in the neutral ocean, not attached to either side. No one was trying to enlist me, no one was trying to extinguish me. I was without any cause but my own, exempt from imperial passion, floating between both fleets. And somewhere my family waited, possibly in prison.
The French vessel was an even greater wreck than the British, the main and mizzen entirely gone and foremast shorn short. The stubs gaped with yellow shards of wood erupted like prickly flowers. Cannon tilted at crazy angles. Its perforated hull was draped in shot-off sails like the skirts of a forlorn bride.
The sea was a mess of floating spars, smashed boats, and bobbing bodies. Eddies were still tinted pink from the downspouts of blood. Remembering the threat of sharks, I needed to make a decision. I could hear English shouts and cheers across the water as enemy after enemy lowered their colors.
All that regal beauty destroyed in an afternoon. The destruction, of course, made the splendor more poignant.
How we love war! People will elect men who promise it. Napoleon understood this, and had his crown.
No one tried to help me back aboard the Redoutable. Casualties were so heavy that she drifted like a ghost ship. Smoke steamed from her shot holes. Cries for help echoed from her ports. Shrouds and halyards hung into the heaving sea like lifelines, but warships no longer tempted me. I speculatively floated along the hull of the captured French warship to its stern and beyond, to the towrope holding the ship’s boats. I could hear the “crews” aboard, chickens clucking and sheep bleating.
I rotated in the water. Captain Lucas had surrendered to some British officers who were pointing to a longboat to take him off. A new ship, the Swiftsure, was hove to off Redoutable’s stern, and lines were being rowed to take the prize in tow. The freshening wind made cat’s paws on the sea, and what would happen to these battered fleets when the storm fully struck? The clouds were getting blacker.
I was tired of waiting for passage to Venice. It was time to pirate a boat of my own. One of the craft being towed behind Redoutable would do just fine.
CHAPTER 32
I swam along the line of boats and hauled myself into the captain’s gig, the smartest sailor of the lot. I moved aside two hen coops and used a boat’s knife tethered on a cord to cut the towline, slipping away from the rest of the chain of small craft. I tensed for an angry shot from Redoutable but didn’t get one; its marines were occupied with greater tragedies than the loss of a captain’s gig. Or the loss of Ethan Gage. Far from being missed, I’d likely be counted as dead, I realized. I could later resurrect myself, at least briefly, as whomever I chose.
I drifted, coming to grips with the beauty and horror of the day. Nelson dead, England triumphant, the Combined Fleet destroyed. Napoleon would never seriously threaten England with invasion again.