Deeds that Won the Empire Part 15

He changed his plans to suit the qualities of his new admiral--the Toulon and Rochefort squadrons were to break out, sail separately to a rendezvous in the West Indies, and, once joined, spread havoc through the British possessions there. "I think," wrote Napoleon, "that the sailing of these twenty ships of the line will oblige the English to despatch over thirty in pursuit." So the blockades everywhere would be weakened, and the Toulon and Rochefort squadrons, doubling back to Europe, were to raise the blockade off Ferrol and Brest, and the Brest squadron was to land 18,000 troops, under Augereau, in Ireland, while the Grand Army of Boulogne was to cross the Straits, with Napoleon at its head. Thus Great Britain and Ireland would be invaded simultaneously.

The trouble was to set the scheme going by the release of the Toulon and Rochefort squadrons. Nelson's correspondence shows that he guessed Napoleon's strategy. If the Toulon fleet broke loose, he wrote, he was sure its course would be held for the Atlantic, and thither he would follow it. In the meanwhile he kept guard so steadfastly that the great French strategy could not get itself started. In December 1804 war broke out betwixt Britain and Spain, and this gave Napoleon a new ally and a new fleet. Napoleon found he had nearly sixty line-of-battle ships, French or Spanish, to weave into his combinations, and he framed--to use Mahan's words--"upon lines equal, both in boldness and scope, to those of the Marengo and Austerlitz campaigns, the immense strategy which resulted in Trafalgar." The Toulon and Rochefort squadrons, as before, were to break out separately, rendezvous in the West Indies, return by a different route to European waters, pick up the French and Spanish ships in Ferrol, and then sweep through the narrow seas.

The Rochefort squadron duly escaped; Villeneuve, too, in command of the Toulon squadron, aided by the weather, evaded Nelson's watchfulness and disappeared towards the east. Nelson, however, suspected the real plan, and with fine insight took up a position which must have intercepted Villeneuve; but that admiral found the weather too rough for his ships, and ran back into Toulon. "These gentlemen," said Nelson, "are not accustomed to a Gulf of Lyons gale. We have faced them for twenty-one months, and not lost a spar!" The Rochefort squadron was, of course, left by its own success wandering in s.p.a.ce, a mere cl.u.s.ter of sea-vagrants.

By March 1805, Napoleon had a new combination prepared. In the ports between Brest and Toulon were scattered no less than sixty-seven French or Spanish ships of the line. Ganteaume, with his squadron, was to break out from Brest; Villeneuve, with his, from Toulon; both fleets were to rendezvous at Martinique, return by an unusual route, and appear off Boulogne, a great fleet of thirty-five French ships of the line.

About the end of June the Toulon fleet got safely out--Nelson being, for once, badly served by his frigates--picked up additional ships off Cadiz, and disappeared on its route to the West Indies. Nelson, misled by false intelligence, first went eastward, then had to claw back through the Straits of Gibraltar in the teeth of strong westerly gales, and plunged over the horizon in fierce pursuit of Villeneuve. But the watch kept by Cornwallis over Ganteaume in Brest was so close and stern that escape was impossible, and one-half of Napoleon's combination broke down. Napoleon despatched swift ships on Villeneuve's track, summoning him back to Ferrol, where he would find a squadron of fifteen French and Spanish ships ready to join him. Villeneuve, Napoleon believed, had thoroughly deceived Nelson. "Those boasted English," he wrote, "who claim to know of everything, know nothing of it," _i.e._ of Villeneuve's escape and course. But the "boasted English," as a matter of fact, did know all about it, and in place of weakening their forces in the Bay of Biscay, strengthened them. Meanwhile Nelson, with ten ships of the line, was hard on the track of Villeneuve with eighteen.

At Barbadoes, Nelson was sent a hundred miles out of his course by false intelligence, and that hundred miles just enabled Villeneuve to double back towards Europe.

Nelson divined this plan, and followed him with the fiercest energy, sending off, meanwhile, his fastest brig to warn the Admiralty.

Villeneuve, if he picked up the Ferrol and Rochefort squadrons, would arrive off Brest with forty line-of-battle ships; if he raised the blockade, and added Ganteaume's squadron to his own, he might appear off Boulogne with sixty great ships! Napoleon calculated on British blunders to aid him. "We have not to do with a far-sighted, but with a very proud Government," he wrote. The blunder Napoleon hoped the British Admiralty would make was that of weakening the blockading squadrons in order to pursue Villeneuve's fleet, and thus release the imprisoned French squadrons, making a great concentration possible.

But this was exactly the blunder into which the Admiralty refused to be tempted. When the news that Villeneuve was on his way back to Europe reached the Admiralty, the First Lord, Barham, an old sailor, eighty years of age, without waiting to dress himself, dictated orders which, without weakening the blockades at any vital point, planted a fleet, under Sir Robert Calder, west of Finisterre, and right in Villeneuve's track; and if Calder had been Nelson, Trafalgar might have been fought on July 22, instead of October 21. Calder fought, and captured two of Villeneuve's ships, but failed to prevent the junction of Villeneuve's fleet with the squadron in Ferrol, and was court-martialled for his failure--victory though he called it. But this partial failure does not make less splendid the prompt.i.tude shown by the British Admiralty.

"The English Admiralty," Napoleon reasoned, "could not decide the movements of its squadron in twenty-four hours." As a matter of fact, Barham decided the British strategy in almost as many minutes!

Meanwhile Nelson had reached the scene; and, like his ship, worn out with labours, sailed for Portsmouth, for what proved his last visit to England. On August 13, Villeneuve sailed from Ferrol with twenty-nine ships. He had his choice between Brest, where Cornwallis was keeping guard, with Boulogne beyond, and where Napoleon was watching eagerly for the white topsails of his fleet; or Cadiz, where Collingwood with a tiny squadron held the Spanish fleet strictly bottled up.

Villeneuve's true course was Boulogne, but Cornwallis lay in his path with over thirty sail of the line, and Villeneuve's nerve failed him.

On August 21 he swung round and bore up for Cadiz; and with the turn of the helm which swung Villeneuve's ship away from Boulogne, Napoleon's last chance of invading England vanished. Villeneuve pushed Collingwood's tiny squadron aside and entered Cadiz, where the combined fleet now numbered nearly forty ships of the line, and Collingwood, with delightful coolness, solemnly resumed his blockade--four ships, that is, blockading forty! Napoleon gave way to a tempest of rage when his fleet failed to appear off Boulogne, and he realised that the British sailors he despised had finally thwarted his strategy. A French writer has told how Daru, his secretary, found him walking up and down his cabinet with agitated steps. With a voice that shook, and in half-strangled exclamations, he cried, "What a navy! What sacrifices for nothing! What an admiral! All hope is gone! That Villeneuve, instead of entering the Channel, has taken refuge in Ferrol. It is all over. He will be blockaded there." Then with that swift and terrible power of decision in which he has never been surpa.s.sed, he flung the long-cherished plan of invading England out of his brain, and dictated the orders which launched his troops on the road which led to Austerlitz and Jena, and, beyond, to the flames of Moscow and the snows of the great retreat, and which finally led Napoleon himself to St. Helena. Villeneuve's great fleet meanwhile lay idle in Cadiz, till, on October 20, the ill-fated French admiral led his ships out to meet Nelson in his last great sea-fight.

II. HOW THE FLEETS MET

"Wherever the gleams of an English fire On an English roof-tree shine, Wherever the fire of a youth's desire Is laid upon Honour's shrine, Wherever brave deeds are treasured and told, In the tale of the deeds of yore, Like jewels of price in a chain of gold Are the name and the fame he bore.

Wherever the track of our English ships Lies white on the ocean foam, His name is sweet to our English lips As the names of the flowers at home; Wherever the heart of an English boy Grows big with a deed of worth, Such names as his name have begot the same, Such hearts will bring it to birth."

--E. NESBIT.

It was the night of October 20, 1805, a night moonless and black. In the narrow waters at the western throat of the Straits of Gibraltar, at regular intervals of three minutes through the whole night, the deep voice of a gun broke out and swept, a pulse of dying sound, almost to either coast, while at every half-hour a rocket soared aloft and broke in a curve of stars in the black sky. It was one of Nelson's repeating frigates signalling to the British fleet, far off to the south-west, Villeneuve's movements. Nelson for more than a week had been trying to daintily coax Villeneuve out of Cadiz, as an angler might try to coax a much-experienced trout from the cool depths of some deep pool. He kept the main body of his fleet sixty leagues distant--west of Cape St.

Mary--but kept a chain of frigates within signalling distance of each other betwixt Cadiz and himself. He allowed the news that he had detached five of his line-of-battle ships on convoy duty to the eastward to leak through to the French admiral, but succeeded in keeping him in ignorance of the fact that he had called in under his flag five ships of equal force from the westward.

On October 19, Villeneuve, partly driven by hunger, and by the news that a successor was on the road from Paris to displace him, and partly tempted by the belief that he had before him a British fleet of only twenty-one ships of the line, crept out of Cadiz with thirty-three ships of the line--of which three were three-deckers--and seven frigates.

Nelson had twenty-seven sail of the line with four frigates. The wind was light, and all through the 20th, Villeneuve's fleet, formed in seven columns--the _Santissima Trinidad_ towering like a giant amongst them--moved slowly eastward. Nelson would not alarm his foe by making too early an appearance over the sky-line. His frigates signalled to him every few minutes, through sixty miles of sea-air, the enemy's movements; but Nelson himself held aloof till Villeneuve was too far from Cadiz to make a dash back to it and safety. All through the night of the 20th, Villeneuve's great fleet--a procession of mighty phantoms--was dimly visible against the Spanish coast, and the British frigates sent the news in alternate pulses of sound and flame to Nelson, by this time eagerly bearing up from Cape St. Mary.

The morning of the 21st broke misty, yet bright. The sea was almost like a floor of gla.s.s. The faintest of sea-airs blew. A lazy Atlantic swell rolled at long intervals towards the Straits, and the two fleets at last were visible to each other. Villeneuve's ships stretched a waving and slightly curved line, running north and south, with no regularity of order. The British fleet, in two compact and parallel columns, half a mile apart, came majestically on from the west. The ships in each column followed each other so closely that sometimes the bow of one was thrust past the quarter of the ship in advance of it. Nelson, in the _Victory_, headed one column, Collingwood, in the _Royal Sovereign_, led the other, and each flagship, it was to be noted, led with a clear interval between itself and its supports.

Villeneuve had a tactician's brain, and his battle-plan was admirable.

In a general order, issued just before leading out his fleet, he told his captains, "There is nothing to alarm us in the sight of an English fleet.

Their 64-gun ships have not 500 men on board; they are not more brave than we are; they are hara.s.sed by a two-years' cruise; they have fewer motives to fight well!" Villeneuve explained that the enemy would attack in column, the French would meet the attack in close line of battle; and, with a touch of Nelson's spirit, he urged his captains to take every opportunity of boarding, and warned them that every ship not under fire would be counted a defaulter.

Nelson's plan was simple and daring. The order of sailing was to be the order of battle. Collingwood leading one column, and he the other, would pierce the enemy's lines at points which would leave some twelve of the enemy's ships to be crushed betwixt the two British lines. Nelson, whose brooding genius forecast every changing eddy of battle, gave minute instructions on a score of details. To prevent mistakes amid the smoke and the fight, for example, he had the hoops on the masts of every British ship painted yellow; every ship was directed to fly a St.

George's ensign, with the Union Jack at the fore-topmast, and another flying from the top-gallant stays. That he would beat the enemy's fleet he calmly took for granted, but he directed that every effort should be made to capture its commander-in-chief. Nelson crowned his instructions with the characteristic remark, that "in case signals were obscure, no captain can do wrong if he places his ship alongside of an enemy."

[Ill.u.s.tration: The Attack at Trafalgar, October 21st, 1805. Five minutes past noon. From Mahan's "Life of Nelson."]

By twelve o'clock the two huge fleets were slowly approaching each other: the British columns compact, grim, orderly; the Franco-Spanish line loose, but magnificently picturesque, a far-stretching line of lofty hulls, a swaying forest of sky-piercing masts. They still preserve the remark of one prosaic British sailor, who, surveying the enemy through an open port, offered the comment, "What a fine sight, Bill, yon ships would make at Spithead!"

It is curious to reflect how exactly both British and French invert on sea their land tactics. French infantry attack in column, and are met by British infantry in line; and the line, with its steadfast courage and wide front of fire, crushes the column. On sea, on the other hand, the British attack in column, and the French meet the attack in line; but the column wins. But it must be admitted that the peril of this method of attack is enormous. The leading ship approaches, stern on, to a line of fire which, if steady enough, may well crush her by its concentration of flame. Attack in column, in fact, means that the leading ships are sacrificed to secure victory for the ships in the rear. The risks of this method of attack at Trafalgar were enormously increased by the light and uncertain quality of the wind. Collingwood, in the _Royal Sovereign_, and Nelson, in the _Victory_, as a matter of fact, drifted slowly rather than sailed, stern on to the broadsides of their enemy.

The leading British ships, with their stately heights of swelling canvas, moved into the raking fire of the far-stretching Franco-Spanish line at a speed of about two knots an hour. His officers knew that Nelson's ship, carrying the flag of the commander-in-chief, as it came slowly on, would be the mark for every French gunner, and must pa.s.s through a tempest of flame before it could fire a shot in reply; and Blackwood begged Nelson to let the _Temeraire_--"the fighting _Temeraire_"--take the _Victory's_ place at the head of the column. "Oh yes, let her go ahead," answered Nelson, with a queer smile; and the _Temeraire_ was hailed, and ordered to take the lead. But Nelson meant that the _Temeraire_ should take the _Victory's_ place only if she could, and he watched grimly to see that not a sheet was let fly or a sail shortened to give the _Temeraire_ a chance of pa.s.sing; and so the _Victory_ kept its proud and perilous lead.

Collingwood led the lee division, and had the honour of beginning the mighty drama of Trafalgar. The _Royal Sovereign_ was newly coppered, and, with every inch of canvas outspread, got so far ahead of her followers, that after Collingwood had broken into the French line, he sustained its fire, unhelped, for nearly twenty minutes before the _Belleisle_, the ship next following, could fire a gun for his help.

Of Collingwood, Thackeray says, "I think, since Heaven made gentlemen, it never made a better one than Cuthbert Collingwood," and there was, no doubt, a knightly and chivalrous side to Collingwood worthy of King Arthur's round table. But there was also a side of heavy-footed common-sense, of Dutch-like frugality, in Collingwood, a sort of wooden-headed unimaginativeness which looks humorous when set against the background of such a planet-shaking fight as Trafalgar. Thus on the morning of the fight he advised one of his lieutenants, who wore a pair of boots, to follow his example and put on stockings and shoes, as, in the event of being shot in the leg, it would, he explained, "be so much more manageable for the surgeon." And as he walked the break of his p.o.o.p in tights, silk stockings, and buckled shoes, leading, in his single ship, an attack on a fleet, he calmly munched an apple. To be able to munch an apple when beginning Trafalgar is an ill.u.s.tration of what may be called the quality of wooden-headed unimaginativeness in Collingwood.

And yet Collingwood had a sense of the scale of the drama in which he was taking part. "Now, gentlemen," he said to his officers, "let us do something to-day which the world may talk of hereafter." Collingwood, in reality, was a great man and a great seaman, and in the battle which followed he "fought like an angel," to quote the amusingly inappropriate metaphor of Blackwood.

The two majestic British columns moved slowly on, the great ships, with ports hauled up and guns run out, following each other like a procession of giants. "I suppose," says Codrington, who commanded the _Orion_, "no man ever before saw such a sight." And the element of humour was added to the scene by the spectacle of the tiny _Pickle_, a duodecimo schooner, gravely hanging on to the quarter of an 80-gun ship--as an actor in the fight describes it--"with the boarding-nettings up, and her tompions out of her four guns--about as large and as formidable as two pairs of Wellington boots."

Collingwood bore down to the fight a clear quarter of a mile ahead of the next ship. The fire of the enemy, like so many spokes of flame converging to a centre, broke upon him. But in silence the great ship moved ahead to a gap in the line between the _Santa Anna_, a huge black hulk of 112 guns, and the _Neptune_, of 74. As the bowsprit of the _Royal Sovereign_ slowly glided past the stern of the _Santa Anna_, Collingwood, as Nelson had ordered all his captains, cut his studding-sails loose, and they fell, a cloud of white canvas, into the water. Then as the broadside of the _Royal Sovereign_ fairly covered the stern of the _Santa Anna_, Collingwood spoke. He poured with deadly aim and suddenness, and at pistol-shot distance, his whole broadside into the Spaniard's stern. The tempest of shot swept the unhappy _Santa Anna_ from end to end, and practically destroyed that vessel. Some 400 of its crew are said to have been killed or wounded by that single discharge!

At the same moment Collingwood discharged his other broadside at the _Neptune_, though with less effect; then swinging round broadside to broadside on the Spanish ship, he swept its decks again and again with his guns. The first broadside had practically done the Spaniard's business; but its captain, a gallant man, still returned what fire he could. All the enemy's ships within reach of Collingwood had meanwhile opened on him a dreadful fire; no fewer than five line-of-battle ships were emptying their guns upon the _Royal Sovereign_ at one time, and it seemed marvellous that the British ship was not shattered to mere splinters by the fire poured from so many quarters upon her. It was like being in the heart of a volcano. Frequently, it is said, the British saw the flying cannon-b.a.l.l.s meet in mid-air. The seamen fell fast, the sails were torn, the bulwarks shattered, the decks ran red with blood. It was at that precise moment, however, that Collingwood said to his captain, "What would not Nelson give to be here!" While at the same instant Nelson was saying to Hardy, "See how that n.o.ble fellow Collingwood takes his ship into action!"

The other ships of Collingwood's column were by this time slowly drifting into the fight. At a quarter past twelve the _Belleisle_, the next ship, ranged under the stern of the unfortunate _Santa Anna_, and fired her larboard guns, double shotted, into that ship, with the result that her three masts fell over the side. She then steered for the _Indomptable_, an 80-gun ship, and sustained at the same moment the fire of two Spanish seventy-fours. Ship after ship of Collingwood's column came steadily up, and the roar of the battle deepened as in quick-following crashes each new line-of-battle ship broke into the thunder of broadsides.

Nelson, leading the weather column, steered a trifle to the northward, as the slowly moving line of the enemy pointed towards Cadiz. Nelson had given his last orders. At his mainmast head was flying, fast belayed, the signal, "Engage the enemy more closely." Nelson himself walked quietly to and fro on the little patch of clear plank, scarcely seven yards long, on the quarter-deck of the _Victory_, whence he could command the whole ship, and he wore the familiar threadbare frock uniform coat, bearing on the left breast four tarnished and lack-l.u.s.tre stars. Then came the incident of the immortal signal. "We must give the fleet," said Nelson to Blackwood, "something by way of a fillip." After musing a while, he said, "Suppose we signal, 'Nelson confides that every man will do his duty'?" Some one suggested "England" instead of "Nelson," and Nelson at once caught at the improvement. The signal-officer explained that the word "confide" would have to be spelt, and suggested instead the word "expects," as that was in the vocabulary. So the flags on the masthead of the _Victory_ spelt out the historic sentence to the slowly moving fleet. That the signal was "received with cheers" is scarcely accurate. The message was duly acknowledged, and recorded in the log of every ship, but perhaps not one man in every hundred of the actors at Trafalgar knew at the moment that it had been sent. But the message rings in British ears yet, across ninety years, and will ring in the ears of generations yet unborn.

Nelson led his column on a somewhat slanting course into the fight. He was bent on laying himself alongside the flagship of the enemy, and he knew that this must be one of the three great line-of-battle ships near the huge _Santissima Trinidad_. But there was no sign to show which of the three carried Villeneuve. At half-past twelve the ships upon which the _Victory_ was moving began to fire single shots at her slowly drifting hulk to discover whether she was within range. The seventh of these shots, fired at intervals of a minute or so, tore a rent through the upper canvas of the _Victory_--a rent still to be seen in the carefully preserved sail. A couple of minutes of awful silence followed.

Slowly the _Victory_ drifted on its path, and then no fewer than eight of the great ships upon which the _Victory_ was moving broke into such a tempest of shot as perhaps never before was poured on a single ship. One of the first shots killed Scott, Nelson's secretary; another cut down eight marines standing in line on the _Victory's_ quarter-deck; a third pa.s.sed between Nelson and Hardy as they stood side by side. "Too warm work to last long, Hardy," said Nelson, with a smile. Still the _Victory_ drifted majestically on its fiery path without an answering gun.

The French line was irregular at this point, the ships lying, in some instances, two or three deep, and this made the business of "cutting" the line difficult. As Nelson could not pick out the French flagship, he said to Hardy, "Take your choice, go on board which you please;" and Hardy pointed the stern of the Victory towards a gap between the _Redoutable_, a 74-gun ship, and the _Bucentaure_. But the ship moved slowly. The fire upon it was tremendous. One shot drove a shower of splinters upon both Nelson and Hardy; nearly fifty men and officers had been killed or wounded; the Victory's sails were riddled, her studding-sail booms shot off close to the yard-arm, her mizzen-topmast, shot away. At one o'clock, however, the _Victory_ slowly moved past the stern of the _Bucentaure_, and a 68-pounder carronade on its forecastle, charged with a round shot and a keg of 500 musket b.a.l.l.s, was fired into the cabin windows of the French ship. Then, as the great ship moved on, every gun of the remaining fifty that formed its broadside--some of them double and treble loaded--was fired through the Frenchman's cabin windows.

The dust from the crumpled woodwork of the _Bucentaure's_ stern covered the persons of Nelson and the group of officers standing on the _Victory's_ quarter-deck, while the British sailors welcomed with a fierce shout the crash their flying shot made within the Frenchman's hull. The _Bucentaure_, as it happened--though Nelson was ignorant of the fact--was the French flagship; and after the battle its officers declared that by this single broadside, out of its crew of nearly 1000 men, nearly 400 were struck down, and no less than twenty guns dismounted!

But the _Neptune_, a fine French 80-gun ship, lay right across the water-lane up which the _Victory_ was moving, and it poured upon the British ship two raking broadsides of the most deadly quality. The _Victory_, however, moved on unflinchingly, and the _Neptune_, fearing to be run aboard by the British ship, set her jib and moved ahead; then the _Victory_ swung to starboard on to the _Redoutable_. The French ship fired one hurried broadside, and promptly shut her lower-deck ports, fearing the British sailors would board through them. No fewer, indeed, than five French line-of-battle ships during the fight, finding themselves grinding sides with British ships, adopted the same course--an expressive testimony to the enterprising quality of British sailors. The _Victory_, however, with her lower-deck guns actually touching the side of the _Redoutable_, still kept them in full and quick action; but at each of the lower-deck ports stood a sailor with a bucket of water, and when the gun was fired--its muzzle touching the wooden sides of the _Redoutable_--the water was dashed upon the ragged hole made by the shot, to prevent the Frenchman taking fire and both ships being consumed.

The guns on the upper deck of the _Victory_ speedily swept and silenced the upper deck of the _Redoutable_, and as far as its broadsides were concerned, that ship was helpless. Its tops, however, were crowded with marksmen, and armed with bra.s.s coehorns, firing langrage shot, and these scourged with a pitiless and most deadly fire the decks of the _Victory_, while the _Bucentaure_ and the gigantic _Santissima Trinidad_ also thundered on the British flagship.

III. HOW THE VICTORY WAS WON

"All is over and done.

Render thanks to the Giver; England, for thy son Let the bell be toll'd.

Render thanks to the Giver, And render him to the mould.

Under the cross of gold That shines over city and river, There he shall rest for ever Among the wise and the bold."

--TENNYSON.

Nelson's strategy at Trafalgar is described quaintly, but with real insight, in a sentence which a Spanish novelist, Don Perez Galdos, puts into the mouth of one of his characters: "Nelson, who, as everybody knows, was no fool, saw our long line and said, 'Ah, if I break through that in two places, and put the part of it between the two places between two fires, I shall grab every stick of it.' That was exactly what the confounded fellow did. And as our line was so long that the head couldn't help the tail, he worried us from end to end, while he drove his two wedges into our body." It followed that the flaming vortex of the fight was in that brief mile of sea-s.p.a.ce, between the two points where the parallel British lines broke through Villeneuve's swaying forest of masts. And the tempest of sound and flame was fiercest, of course, round the two ships that carried the flags of Nelson and Collingwood. As each stately British liner, however, drifted--rather than sailed--into the black pall of smoke, the roar of the fight deepened and widened until the whole s.p.a.ce between the _Royal Sovereign_ and the _Victory_ was shaken with mighty pulse-beats of sound that marked the furious and quick-following broadsides.

The scene immediately about the _Victory_ was very remarkable. The _Victory_ had run foul of the _Redoutable_, the anchors of the two ships hooking into each other. The concussion of the broadsides would, no doubt, have driven the two hulls apart, but that the _Victory's_ studding-sail boom iron had fastened, like a claw, into the leech of the Frenchman's fore-topsail. The _Temeraire_, coming majestically up through the smoke, raked the _Bucentaure_, and closed with a crash on the starboard side of the _Redoutable_, and the four great ships lay in a solid tier, while between their huge grinding sides came, with a sound and a glare almost resembling the blast of an exploding mine, the flash, the smoke, the roar of broadside after broadside.

In the whole heroic fight there is no finer bit of heroism than that shown by the _Redoutable_. She was only a 74-gun ship, and she had the _Victory_, of 100 guns, and the _Temeraire_, of 98, on either side. It is true these ships had to fight at the same time with a whole ring of antagonists; nevertheless, the fire poured on the _Redoutable_ was so fierce that only courage of a steel-like edge and temper could have sustained it. The gallant French ship was semi-dismasted, her hull shot through in every direction, one-fourth of her guns were dismounted. Out of a crew of 643, no fewer than 523 were killed or wounded. Only 35, indeed, lived to reach England as prisoners. And yet she fought on. The fire from her great guns, indeed, soon ceased, but the deadly splutter of musketry from such of her tops as were yet standing was maintained; and, as Brenton put it, "there was witnessed for nearly an hour and a half the singular spectacle of a French 74-gun ship engaging a British first and second rate, with small-arms only."

As a matter of fact, the _Victory_ repeatedly ceased firing, believing that the _Redoutable_ had struck, but still the venomous and deadly fire from the tops of that vessel continued; and it was to this circ.u.mstance, indeed, that Nelson owed his death. He would never put small-arms men in his own tops, as he believed their fire interfered with the working of the sails, and, indeed, ran the risk of igniting them. Thus the French marksmen that crowded the tops of the _Redoutable_ had it all their own way; and as the distance was short, and their aim deadly, nearly every man on the p.o.o.p, quarter-deck, and forecastle of the _Victory_ was shot down.

Nelson, with Hardy by his side, was walking backwards and forwards on a little clear s.p.a.ce of the _Victory's_ quarter-deck, when he suddenly swung round and fell face downwards on the deck. Hardy picked him up.