Sails on the Horizon: A Novel of the Napoleonic Wars
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THE SETTING SUN painted the underbellies of the clouds in spectacular hues of orange and gold to the horizon. Charles felt content and blissfully tired; there were only a few more things he had to see to. He found an intact section of the weather rail and leaned on it, enjoying the sunset and wishing Penny could be with him to share it. He felt Bevan’s presence on the rail beside him. “What day is it?” Charles asked idly.
“February fourteenth, seventeen hundred and ninety-eight,” Bevan answered.
“One year to the day,” Charles observed, remembering their first meeting with the Santa Brigida at Cape St. Vincent.
“That’s true,” Bevan said dryly. “But, far more importantly, it’s a day you’d better write to your wife. I’m told they expect such things on St. Valentine’s Day.”
“Beg your pardon, sirs,” said Midshipman Beechum, “but Captain Manuel de Santa María de la Valencia is here to surrender his sword. He insisted, sir.”
“Show him aft and stay to translate,” Charles said.
The Spanish captain loped across the deck purposefully toward them, bowed to Charles with a flourish, said something lengthy to Beechum, and held his sword out in front of him.
“He says you are a most worthy opponent,” Beechum summarized. “He is honored to surrender his sword to a man such as yourself. He said more, sir, much more, but that’s the gist of it.”
Charles bowed equally deeply in return. “Tell him he can keep his sword. Tell him…hell, tell him all the proper things he said to me, with the necessary embellishments and niceties. Invite him to dinner in my cabin this evening so that he can meet my officers. Tell him I’d be honored. You come, too. I want to propose an exchange of prisoners—he and his men for the British held captive in Ferrol.”
He had wanted to add: “Tell him he’d needlessly murdered young Billy Bowles a year ago this day,” but he didn’t. That was over now.
LATE THAT NIGHT, after the dinner was concluded and the cabin cleared, he sat down with quill, ink, and paper to write a letter to his wife. In it he told her of his love and how she was constantly in his mind and in his heart, how much he longed to be with her, ending it with, “And I captured a Spanish ship today…”
PHOTO: © PETER WORRALL
Born into a military family and raised as a Quaker, JAY WORRALL grew up on a number of continents around the world, in Africa and Europe as well as the United States. During the Vietnam War he worked with refugees in the central highlands of that country and afterward taught English in Japan. Later, he worked in developing innovative and humane prison programs, policies, and administrations. He has also been a carpenter. Married and the very proud father of five sons, he currently lives and writes in Pennsylvania.
This is a work of fiction. Though some characters, incidents, and dialogue are based on the historical record, the work as a whole is a product of the author’s imagination.
2006 Random House Trade Paperback Edition
Copyright © 2005 by Jay Worrall
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Random House Trade Paperbacks, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
RANDOM HOUSE TRADE PAPERBACKS and colophon are trademarks of Random House, Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Worrall, Jay.
Sails on the horizon : a novel of the Napoleonic Wars / Jay Worrall.
p. cm.
eISBN-13: 978-1-58836-514-9
eISBN-10: 1-58836-514-X
1. First Coalition, War of the, 1792–1797—Naval operations—Fiction. 2. Great Britain—History, Naval—18th century—Fiction. 3. Great Britain. Royal Navy—Officers—Fiction. 4. Quaker women—Fiction. 5. Farm life—Fiction. 6. England—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3623.O77S35 2005
813’.6—dc22 2004052033
www.atrandom.com
v1.0
Table of Contents
COVER PAGE
TITLE PAGE
DEDICATION
FOREWORD
A NOTE ON MEASUREMENTS AND VALUES
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
COPYRIGHT