shot away. The French, strangely enough,
showed no colours till late in the action, when
they required them as signals of striking. As
usual, the English admiral had forbidden
musketry in the tops, as he considered it a
paltry mode of homicide, which might kill a
commander, but could not decide a battle.

He than ran straight on the bows of the
Santissima Trinidad a, a monstrous four-decker, the
ninth ship in the van of the French double crescent
line; the Victory opened on her with
her larboard guns at four minutes past twelve.

Meanwhile, Collingwood, having poured a
deadly dose of a broadside and a half (full
measure) into the stern of the Santa Anna, had
jammed into the French ship, so that the yards
of the two vessels were locked together. His
hands were soon full, for the Fougueux came
malignantly on his lee quarter, and three more
of the enemy's French ships soon bore on the bow
of the Royal Sovereign. The Victory, silent
and stern as if its crew were invulnerable, never
fired a shot, but moved on, calm as Fate and
irresistible as Death, till fifty of her men were
struck down, thirty wounded, and her
maintopmast, with all her studding-sails and booms,
shot away. Nelson said that, in all his battles,
he had never seen men so cool and resolute as
his. At length the simple word was given, and
the Victory spoke at last, vomiting out spouts
of fire, and belching her winged thunder to the
right and to the left.

It was not possible to break the enemy's line
without running on board one of their ships:
Hardy informed the admiral, of this, and asked
him which lie would prefer. Nelson replied:
"Take your choice, Hardy; it does not signify
much." The master was ordered to put the
helm to port, and the Victory ran on board the
Redoutable, just as her tiller-ropes were shot
away. The French ship received her with a
broadside; then instantly let down her lower-
deck ports, for fear of being boarded through
them, and never afterwards fired a great gun
during the action. Her tops, like those of all
the enemy's ships, were filled with riflemen.

A few minutes after this proof of distrust,
Captain Harvey, in the Téméraire, also fell on
board the Redoutable, and the Téméraire had also
an enemy on her side, so that the four vessels
now lay in a compact tier, their heads in one
way as if in dock; but Nelson soon pounded
her antagonist deaf and dumb, passed astern of
the Bucentaur, hauled in on her starboard side,
pouring in a slaughtering broadside in passing,
then stood for that floating mountain, the
Santissirna, playing her larboard guns with
incredible rapidity on both the Bucentaur and
the Santissima, while the starboard guns of her
middle and lower decks were steadily devoted to
that rather tough antagonist the Redoutable.
It became necessary for the Victory to fire at
the Redoutable with depressed guns, three shots
each, and with reduced charges of powder, for
fear of the shot passing through the Frenchman
and injuring the Téméraire. The guns of her
lower deck touched the Redoutable's side; so, for
fear of the Frenchman catching fire and destroying
both vessels, the fireman of each gun stood
ready with a bucket full of water, which he
immediately dashed into the hole made by the
English shot.

The remaining ships of Nelson's column,
after the Téméraire, which pressed forward to
his support, were the Neptune, T. F.
Fremantle; Conqueror, Israel Pellew; Leviathan,
H. W. Boyntoun; Ajax, Lieutenant J. Pilfold;
Orion, Edward Codrington; Agamemnon, Sir
Edward Berry; Minotaur, C. I. M. Mansfield;
Spartrite, Sir F. Laforey; Britannia, Rear-
Admiral Earl of Northesk, Captain Charles Bullen;
Africa, Henry Digby. Owing to the judicious
mode of attack which Nelson had adopted, his
fast-sailing ships, like sharpshooters in an
army, had half joined the battle before the
slow-sailing ones came up fresh and vigorous to
their support, and, as a corps of reserve, helped
the better to determine the day.

The Victory was fighting hard amid a
ceaseless blaze of flame. Luckily, the French
were not such good seamen as Nelson, and, in
consequence of keeping the wind nearly on
their beam, lay in a deep trough of the sea, and
rolled so heavily that their broadsides sometimes
flew over and sometimes fell short of our ships.
Still a raking fire swept the Victory's decks.

Mr. Scott, the admiral's secretary, was killed
by one of the first cannon-balls, whilst in
conversation with Captain Hardy, and near to
Lord Nelson. Captain Adair, of the Marines,
who soon afterwards fell, immediately
endeavoured to remove the mangled body, but it
had already attracted the notice of the admiral.

"Is that poor Scott," said he, "who is
gone?"

Presently, whilst Nelson was conversing with
Captain Hardy on the quarter-deck, during the
shower of musket-balls and raking fire that
was kept up by the enemy, a double-headed
shot came across the poop and killed eight of
the marines. Captain Adair was then directed
by Nelson to disperse his men more round the
ship. A few minutes afterwards a shot struck
the fore-brace bits on the quarter-deck, and,
passing between Lord Nelson and Captain
Hardy, drove some splinters from the bits around
them, bruised Captain Hardy's foot, and tore
off his shoe-buckle. They mutually looked at
each other, and Nelson, whom no danger
could affect, smiled and said:

"This is too warm work, Hardy, to last!"

This was the climax of the battle. Our
brawny sailors, stripped to the waist, their
huge cable pigtails dangling at their backs,
their skins black with powder or smeared with
blood, were running out the guns, loading
savagely, and firing fast as the wadded shot
could be driven in. The captains were bellowing
through their speaking-trumpets, the gunners'
boys running to and from the magazines
through showers of shot and splinters; the
midshipmen firing at the enemy's tops with all
the glee of schoolboys out at their first partridge
shooting. The musketeers in the Redoutable's