Sails on the Horizon: A Novel of the Napoleonic Wars Read Online Free

standing on when a ball cut him in half. Charles heard Bowles sob and turned in time to see the boy throw up on the deck. He took the boy’s arm, led him to an overturned bucket, and sat him down on it.
    A dozen marines in their red coats and pipe-clayed belts stood behind what remained of the port railing, firing their muskets under the command of a young marine lieutenant who mechanically called out their orders: “Load cartridge…load ball…ram home…rammers out…cock your arms…shoulder arms…aim…fire…load cartridge…” as if it were a parade drill. A greater number of redcoats lay writhing or still on the deck in an untidy line behind them.
    Looking over the railing, he saw that the Argonaut had exacted a heavy toll in exchange for the damage she’d suffered. The two leading Spanish seventy-fours were both dismasted and badly battered, drifting helplessly leeward. The San Nicolás, her foremast and bowsprit hanging in a tangled ruin half in the sea, lay broadside-on opposite them. She still fired sporadically from this gun or that, but there were numerous and large holes in her side and several upward-pointing cannon muzzles indicating dismounted guns. A better-organized broadside from the Argonaut ’s gundecks sounded. Charles watched as the San Nicolás ’s mainmast shuddered and fell in a slow graceful arc, snapping stays and braces as it descended. It crossed Charles’s mind that perhaps Midshipman Winchester did know something about how to manage the guns.
    Behind and just to the north of the San Nicolás seemed to be the main body of the Spanish fleet. It was hard to tell—all Charles could see were masts and sails and smoke. A number of them had apparently become entangled behind the leading men of war when they were confronted and slowed by the Argonaut. Others, he could see, were working their way around the obstruction in order to flee, and some had already done so. The smaller Spanish lee squadron was hull down to the east with all sail set and disappearing fast. Of the British he could see little but two ships of the line, probably Barfleur and Britannia, both some way off. He guessed from the sound of cannon fire that some had finally gotten in behind and were engaging the Spanish rear.
    Lieutenant Bevan appeared from the ladderway, his familiar stocky form and face dark with burnt gunpowder. “Oh, my God, Charlie,” he said, surveying the wreck of the ship.
    “Collect that party midships,” Charles said quickly, “and finish clearing the mainmast away. Then scab on some sort of spar for a foremast. We’ve got to get steerageway.”
    “Aye aye,” Bevan said. As he turned to leave, he noticed Bowles sitting on his bucket with his face in his hands, sobbing in great heaves. Bevan looked at Charles quizzically.
    “You never saw that, Daniel,” Charles said. “If anybody asks I’m going to say that he did his job as well as he could. It was just more than he was able to deal with, is all.”
    Bevan nodded wordlessly and left.
    A Spanish frigate, small among the men of war but deadly with a broadside of twenty guns, crept around the bow of the San Nicolás under topgallants and jibs close enough that Charles could see her captain, a short, wiry man in a brilliant red-and-blue uniform, shouting orders. He watched with a helpless feeling as she crossed the Argonaut ’s undefended stern, her gunports open and her cannon waiting. “No, please don’t,” Charles breathed. The Spaniard’s broadside came in a tearing crescendo, sending ball after ball screaming the length of Argonaut’ s decks. Without the time or wit to flinch, Charles felt the concussion of a passing shot and saw Billy Bowles, struggling to stand, dissolve into a mist of gore. He swore savagely as the black-hulled ship backed her mainsail, methodically ran out her guns, and fired again. The Argonaut shuddered as iron shot smashed timbers, upset the few remaining gun carriages, killed, and maimed. Charles’s fear