Winds of Folly (43 page)

‘She is a good friend to us,' Fremantle said, but they left it at that.

They dined off salt pork and eggs washed down with pints of hot coffee, and Nathan was on his second cup when word came that he was required in the Captain's cabin.

He found the Viceroy somewhat the worse for wear, wrapped in a blanket with his smelling salts to hand, but he said he was bearing up and was as anxious as the Commodore to hear Nathan's report from Venice.

It was what Nathan told them about the French intentions towards the Ionian Islands that interested them the most.

‘You had not heard?' he said, looking from one to the other.

‘How could we have heard?' demanded Nelson. ‘Who else did you tell?'

‘Only Mr Duncan – but I thought he had been in Naples …' But if he had, clearly he had not thought to convey Nathan's report to Sir William Hamilton. ‘He must have been bringing the news to you when he died,' he told Nelson.

‘So these documents you found in the
Jean-Bart
,' Elliot prompted him, ‘they were with the
Unicorn
when she foundered?'

‘I thought they were safer with the
Unicorn
than with me,' Nathan told him.

‘And did they give any reason for the survey?' demanded Nelson.

Nathan shook his head. But then he revealed what Junot had told him.

‘He was Bonaparte's sergeant at Toulon,' he explained. ‘When Bonaparte was imprisoned as a terrorist Junot stood by him, took him food, even planned his escape. Then he came with him to Paris. He was his only companion there all those months when Bonaparte was unemployed. Bonaparte called him his aide-de-camp.'

They looked at each other. Nathan asked himself again how much they knew of his own time in Paris.

‘So he is in Bonaparte's confidence?' Elliot said.

‘Absolutely,' said Nathan. He wondered privately if this was entirely true, but he let it go for the time being.

‘But the Ionian Islands are a long way from India,' Nelson pointed out unnecessarily. ‘He would have to march across Turkey. Would the Directory want war with the Sultan?'

Nathan mentioned what Junot had said about Barras.

‘This is true,' Elliot agreed eagerly. ‘Barras was in the French Army of India.'

The Viceroy was surprisingly ready to believe the report. Soon it became clear why. He wanted the Army to stay in Elba. It would give Britain a toehold in the Mediterranean. ‘For when the fleet returns,' he said.

Nelson looked doubtful. ‘I am not sure when that will be,' he said.

‘But the Admiralty must think again,' Elliot insisted, ‘especially when they hear about this. They cannot afford to let the French take the Ionian Islands. And a threat to march overland to India …'

‘Is a pipe-dream,' Nelson declared coldly. ‘Even if we can believe the report. I do not doubt you personally,' he assured Nathan, ‘and you do right to alert us to the possibility. But who is this Junot? Besides, there is a much greater threat to England at present.'

‘I think it is imperative that Captain Peake returns to London,' the Viceroy argued, ‘and reports directly to their lordships. For without the document itself …'

He left it unsaid but Nelson finished it for him. ‘Their lordships will take some persuading,' he said.

But the Viceroy was firm about Elba. He had no authority, he said, to order General De Burgh to evacuate his troops. If the Navy wanted to pull out, that was their concern, but the Army must remain until they had direct orders from their own Commander-in-Chief, the Duke of York. Nelson had no choice but to concur. A small naval force would remain under Fremantle.

‘Ridiculous!' Fremantle complained to Nathan when he heard the news. ‘I will be like a fish in a net.'

Privately Nathan agreed. It was a nonsense. Elliot, it was clear, still had hopes of uniting Italy against the French. But if he thought 5,000 British troops in Elba would persuade the Italian princes to take up arms against Bonaparte he was an even greater dreamer than Spiridion had implied.

Nathan was by no means reluctant to return to England, however. He had had quite enough of Italy for the time being. And for the first time since the war began he was without a ship.

They sailed for Gibraltar at the end of January and arrived ten days later without incident. Nelson waited only a day at the Rock. He was impatient to rejoin the fleet off Lisbon. His sixth sense told him there was a battle in the offing, he said, and he could not bear the thought of missing it.

Nathan thought there was little chance of that, but it might not be the battle Nelson desired. There was a Spanish squadron in the bay, waiting for them to come out.
La Minerve
was a fine ship – a captured French frigate of 38 guns – but she was no match for an entire squadron including two ships of the line, and Nathan reckoned she would need all her much-vaunted sailing qualities to outrun them. To make matters worse, she had to fight the currents coming out of Gibraltar, and the Spanish ships had the benefit of a steady Levanter wind blowing from the east.

Looking back at the Rock, Nathan saw it was crowded with spectators come to watch the fight. He doubted they would enjoy it much more than the men aboard.

The ship was cleared for action and Nathan asked Captain Cockburn was there anything he wanted him to do.

‘Aye, you can make yourself useful by talking to the wee man there, and keeping him from talking to me,' the Captain instructed him grimly, without taking his eyes from the sails. This was the longest conversation Nathan had enjoyed with him since coming aboard. He gathered the wee man was Nelson.

It was the Levanter that saved them. It was blowing up too much of a storm for the Spaniards to aim their guns with any degree of accuracy, and as soon as the frigate reached the middle of the Strait, Cockburn ordered the studding sails set and they began to put some clear water between them. Nelson was confident enough to propose the other officers join him for dinner and they were sitting down to it in the day cabin a little after three when they were perturbed to hear the cry of ‘Man overboard!'

‘It's Barnes,' the midshipman of the watch informed Cockburn when the officers emerged on deck. ‘Lieutenant Hardy has gone to look for him, sir.'

Nathan could see the jolly boat about a cable's length astern, apparently searching for the missing man. He glanced back towards the Spaniards. They were still at a reasonable distance but in his own humble opinion it would not do to hang about too long, and judging from the look on Cockburn's face he shared it.

The jolly boat was heading back, having apparently abandoned their quest. They watched it anxiously from the quarterdeck. It did not appear to be making much headway.

‘The current is against them,' Nelson observed. He looked worried.

Cockburn muttered something under his breath.

‘I'll not lose Hardy,' said the Commodore firmly. ‘Back the mizzen topsail.'

Cockburn looked grimmer even than usual, but he had no choice but to obey the order and it slowed them down sufficiently for the boat to catch up. Inexplicably, their pursuers held back.

‘They think we have sighted the British fleet,' Nelson speculated. But whatever the reason, the Spanish ships remained at a distance while the last light faded from the sky.

‘Well, gentlemen, shall we see if they have kept dinner for us?' suggested the Commodore.

They had given Nathan a tiny cabin off the gunroom but he found he could not sleep. The loss of his ship lay heavy on him and he counted the dead as he might have counted sheep. He saw the end as clearly as if he had been there. His beloved ship broken on the rocks of Montecristo. And the cold bodies strewn upon the shingle in the grey light of dawn.

After tossing and turning for most of the night and listening to the snores of his neighbours through the thin partitions, he decided to abandon the quest for sleep and go up on deck. It was just after six bells in the middle watch. The Levanter was
still blowing and a thick fog swirled around them in the darkness. He was reminded of his journey to Corsica and his fight with the privateers. But then he had been in the
Unicorn
and all his friends still alive. He looked about him and to his surprise he saw that Nelson and Cockburn were also up on deck. He opened his mouth to address them but Cockburn froze him with a fierce frown, raising his finger to his lips.

They seemed to be listening for something. Nathan squinted out into the night. Cliffs, breakers? But they were in open sea. There was nothing between here and America. Then there was a sudden flash in the gloom and a muffled report. A signal gun. Something lurched out of the murk to starboard. But not a cliff. It was a ship. The fog closed around it again. They heard voices. And with a shock Nathan realised they were Spanish.

He looked questioningly at Cockburn but the fierce frown enjoined him to silence. Another flash and boom. More sails to larboard. More voices, on both sides now. They were in the middle of a fleet. A fleet or a convoy. Dim, spectral shapes in the murk, and their own ship ghosting through. Not a sound from anyone on deck or aloft. Even the groaning of the ropes seemed strangely muted, the ship's bell struck dumb by Cockburn's frown. Then, at last, they were in open waters again. The signal guns a distant melancholy bark in the fog.

Nathan let out his breath. ‘What in God's name was that?' he said.

‘That, laddie, was the Spanish battle fleet,' said Cockburn. ‘You'll know it, no doubt, next time you see it.'

‘Next time we see it,' said Nelson, staring into the fog, ‘we will have company.'

They found them at dawn, sheltering under the lee of Cape St Vincent: fifteen ships of the line under Admiral Sir John Jervis – the British Mediterranean fleet that was.

Nelson went aboard the flagship to report, taking Nathan with him.

‘You should tell the Admiral what you told the Viceroy,' he said. ‘He'll not thank you if he learns it from the Admiralty.'

But when Nelson came out of his meeting with the Admiral, he simply said, ‘Now is not the time.' Jervis had too much on his mind with the present threat to be concerned with French ambitions in India or even the Adriatic. There could be only one reason, in his view, for the Spanish Mediterranean fleet to leave its base in Cartagena and come out into the Atlantic, and that was to combine with the French fleet at Brest. Together they could overwhelm Britain's last line of defence and land an army on the south coast of England.

‘I must return to my ship,' Nelson said. ‘You can stay aboard the flagship or come with me.'

When Nelson said his ship, he meant the
Captain
, the 74 that had been his flagship when they were off Leghorn.
La Minerve
had served only as his transport to Elba. Now he was anxious to return to his place in the line of battle.

‘I will come with you, sir,' Nathan said, ‘if I may.'

As night fell the fleet stood to the south-east with the fog once more closing around them. They could hear the muffled thump of signal guns from the Spanish fleet somewhere in the darkness ahead. The wind had shifted to the south-west and they were sailing close-hauled on the starboard tack in two columns. Nathan snatched a couple of hours' sleep in the wardroom but he was on deck again long before daylight to join the silent throng of officers on the quarterdeck, peering southward into the gloom, waiting for the battle they all knew was coming.

Dawn scarcely broke but seeped in through the ragged holes in the murky sky. And with it came a British sloop, hurrying from the south-east under a full press of sail and firing her
bow chasers to warn that the enemy was in sight. With a shock of recognition Nathan saw that she was the
Jean-Bart
. He leaned over the weather rail, peering through the murk for a glimpse of Tully or some other of his old crew, but the mist closed around her and she was gone.

At eight-thirty they had breakfast as usual. There was some discussion about the strength of the Spanish fleet. Noble, the signal officer, had seen it assembled at Cartagena before the war and claimed it numbered twenty-six ships of the line including six three-deckers of 112 guns apiece. The flagship, the
Santissima Trinidad
, was even bigger: she carried 130 guns and she was the only four-decker in the world. The biggest ship in the British fleet was their own flagship, the
Victory
, with 100 guns.

‘We all know they're big,' growled Berry, ‘but can they fight?' They all knew the answer to that, too. The press always said the Dons could not fight and nor could the French – and they were wrong on both counts. The only hope was that the Dons were out of practice.

A little after four bells in the forenoon watch they caught their first glimpse of them from the deck, strung out over several miles of ocean. The masthead lookout reported thirty sail, including twenty-five ships of the line. But they seemed to be in two separate divisions with a widening gap between.

‘Flagship is signalling, sir,' called out the officer of the watch.

It was flag number 31 –
form line of battle ahead and astern of the flagship
.

And they headed straight for the gap.