The wave came on after them, swift and dreadfully silent for all its great size. With frantic wing-beats he pulled away, trying to gain a little more room in which to turn around. The ships were so close now that he could read their names off their prows, and see men in their rigging. Temeraire was dripping with the spray, his wings streaming as he flew and flew. He could not gain enough elevation, and he had not time to draw much breath, but he had gained all the ground there was to be gained; he turned himself around, and roared out, with all his might.

‘Dear God have mercy,’ Laurence said, or thought he said, when he had wiped the salt from his eyes and looked back.

Temeraire had broken them through a hole in the wave. For an instant, a great watery hollow stood open like a window, where through they could still see a glimpse of Victory with her pennants, and all the line-of-battle, their white sails gleaming like pearl against the thunderstorm colour of the ocean. And then doom was upon them.

The great Neptune, broadside to the wave, fired her guns in a flaming golden roar before she was struck, a last shout of defiance; then she was gone. The ships facing into the wave rose up its shining face, their prows driving sea-foam gouges into the monster; climbing bravely until one after another they were overturned in cataracts of white and swallowed into the green.

The wave slouched onward, subsiding gradually as it ran. One solitary ship, the Superb, still bobbed at anchor, all her masts snapped and water pouring from her sides; two frigates, who had dropped their anchors in time, were on their beam-ends and struggling to right themselves before they sank. A few human specks in the water were clinging to wreckage. Nothing else remained of fourteen ships of the line.

No cannon spoke, nor guns; even the small knots of fighting stilled. The last of the French dragons came flying into the silence. They made a desperate arrow-head lunge into the sudden gap in the cross-fire, and the Guard, packed around Napoleon, ran forward to meet them.

‘Temeraire!’ Laurence called; a frantic trumpet-signal was blowing the alarm. Temeraire struggled wearily to turn, calling out to the other dragons. Already a small, lithe Chasseur-Vocifère was leaping away from the ground, and Napoleon was on her back.

Temeraire made for the party, but four of the French dragons wheeled to meet them. They were small Pêcheur-Rayés but valiant, clawing and shrieking heedless of how they themselves were cut about. Ballista dived into the fray, lashing a couple of them across the heads with her tail, and Requiescat charged in to join them, roaring in fury; but the Chasseur was away, fleeing across the Channel, and after her went five others burdened with dozens of Guardsmen. They were clear.