The other four ships of the British squadron, having been detached previous to the discovery of the French, were at a considerable distance when the action began. It commenced at halfpast six; about seven, night closed, and there was no other light than that from the fire of the contending fleets.

Trowbridge, in the Culloden, the foremost of the remaining ships, was two leagues astern. He came on sounding, as the others had done. As he advanced, the increasing darkness increased the difficulty of the navigation; and suddenly, after having found eleven fathoms' water, before the lead could be hove again, he was fast aground; nor could all his own exertions, joined to those of the Leander and the Mutine brig, which came to his assistance, get him off in time to bear a part in the action. His ship, however, served as a beacon to the Alexander and Swiftsure, which would else, from the course which they were holding, have gone considerably farther on the reef, and must inevitably have been lost. These ships entered the bay, and took their stations, in the darkness, in a manner still spoken of with admiration by all who remember it. Captain Hallowell, in the Swiftsure, as he was bearing down, fell in with what seemed to be a strange sail; Nelson had directed his ships to hoist four lights horizontally at the mizzen peak as soon as it became dark, and this vessel had no such distinction. Hallowell, however, with great judgment, ordered his men not to fire. If she was an enemy, he said, she was in too disabled a state to escape; but, from her sails being loose, and the way in which her head was, it was probable she might be an English ship. It was the Bellerophon, overpowered by the huge Orient. Her lights had gone overboard, nearly two hundred of her crew were killed or wounded, all her masts and cables had been shot away, and she was drifting out of the line towards the lee side of the bay. Her station, at this important time, was occupied by the Swiftsure, which opened a steady fire on the quarter of the Franklin and the bows of the French admiral. At the same instant Captain Ball, with the Alexander, passed under his stern, and anchored withinside on his larboard

quarter, raking1 him, and keeping up a severe fire of musketry upon his decks. The last ship which arrived to complete the destruction of the enemy was the Leander. Captain Thompson, finding that nothing could be done that night to get off the Culloden, advanced with the intention of anchoring athwart hawse of the Orient. The Franklin was so near her ahead that there was not room for him to pass clear of the two; he therefore took his station athwart hawse of the latter, in such a position as to rake both.

The two first ships of the French line had been dismasted within a quarter of an hour after the commencement of the action; and the others had in that time suffered so severely that victory was already certain. The third, fourth, and fifth were taken possession of at half-past eight. Meantime Nelson received a severe wound on the head from a piece of langridge 2 shot. Captain Berry caught him in his arms as he was falling. The great effusion of blood occasioned an apprehension that the wound was mortal; Nelson himself thought so. A large flap of the skin of the forehead, cut from the bone, had fallen over one eye, and the other being blind, he was in total darkness. When he was carried down, the surgeon, in the midst of a scene scarcely to be conceived by those who have never seen a cockpit 3 in time of action, and the heroism which is displayed amid its horrors, — with a natural and pardonable eagerness, quitted the poor fellow then under his hands, that he might instantly attend the admiral. "No!" said Nelson; "I will take my turn with my brave fellows;" nor would he suffer his own wound to be examined till every man who had been previously wounded was properly attended to. Fully believing that the wound was mortal, and that he was about to die, as he had ever desired, in battle and in

1 Firing the shot lengthwise along the deck.

2 Shot of bolts, nails, and other pieces of iron fastened together. It was used at sea for tearing sails and rigging.

3 The room under the lower gun deck of a war ship, given over during a battle to the surgeons and the wounded.

victory, he called the chaplain, and desired him to deliver what he supposed to be his dying remembrance to Lady Nelson. He then sent for Captain Louis on board from the Minotaur, that he might thank him personally for the great assistance which he had rendered to the Vanguard; and, ever mindful of those who deserved to be his friends, appointed Captain Hardy from the brig1 to the command of his own ship, Captain Berry having to go home with the news of the victory. When the surgeon came in due time to examine his wound (for it was in vain to entreat him to let it be examined sooner), the most anxious silence prevailed; and the joy of the wounded men, and of the whole crew, when they heard that the hurt was merely superficial, gave Nelson deeper pleasure than the unexpected assurance that his life was in no danger. The surgeon requested, and, as far as he could, ordered, him to remain quiet; but Nelson could not rest. He called for his secretary, Mr. Campbell, to write the dispatches. Campbell had himself been wounded, and was so affected at the blind and suffering state of the admiral that he was unable to write. The chaplain was then sent for; but before he came, Nelson, with his characteristic eagerness, took the pen, and contrived to trace a few words marking his devout sense of the success which had already been obtained. He was now left alone; when suddenly a cry was heard on the deck that the Orient was on fire. In the confusion he found his way up, unassisted and unnoticed; and to the astonishment of every one, appeared on the quarter-deck, where he immediately gave order that boats should be sent to the relief of the enemy.

It was soon after nine that the fire on board the Orient broke out. Brueys was dead. He had received three wounds, yet would not leave his post; a fourth cut him almost in two. He desired not to be carried below, but to be left to die upon deck. The

1 The Mutine.

2 "On the Orient's taking fire, Captain Berry went below to acquaint the admiral with the circumstance; and he led him upon deck to witness the conflagration." (SIR N. H. NICOLAS.)

flames soon mastered his ship. Her sides had just been painted, and the oil jars and paint buckets were lying on the poop. By the prodigious light of this conflagration the situation of the two fleets could now be perceived, the colors of both being clearly distinguishable. About ten o'clock the ship blew up. This tremendous explosion was followed by a silence not less awful. The firing immediately ceased on both sides, and the first sound which broke the silence was the dash of her shattered masts and yards falling into the water from the vast height to which they had been exploded. It is upon record that a battle between two armies was once broken off by an earthquake.1 Such an event would be felt like a miracle; but no incident in war, produced by human means, has ever equaled the sublimity of this coinstantaneous 2 pause, and all its circumstances.

About seventy of the Orient's crew were saved by the English boats. Among the many hundreds who perished were the commodore, Casabianca, and his son, a brave boy only ten years old.3 They were seen floating on the wreck of a mast when the ship blew up. She had money on board (the plunder of Malta) to the amount of £600,000 sterling. The masses of burning wreck, which were scattered by the explosion, excited for some moments apprehensions in the English which they had never felt from any other danger. Two large pieces fell into the maintop and foretop of the Swiftsure, without injuring any person. portfire also fell into the main royal 5 of the Alexander; the fire

A

1 Herodotus says that a battle between Medes and Lydians was once broken off by an eclipse of the sun; and Plutarch relates how Flaminius "marched forward up to Hannibal, who was posted near the Lake Thrasymene, in Tuscany. At the moment of this engagement there happened so great an earthquake that it destroyed several towns, altered the course of rivers, and carried off parts of high cliffs; yet such was the eagerness of the combatants that they were entirely insensible of it."

2 Happening at the same instant.

3 See the poem Casabianca, at the end of this book, p. 300.

4 A slow match used to discharge artillery.

5 A small sail immediately above the topgallant sail.