The combined fleet advanced in close order, with a determination and speed which rapidly diminished the intervening distance, and placed beyond a doubt the certainty of immediate battle. Nelson felt equally confident of victory to his It was merely suggested to him that his posicountry and death for himself. He spoke freely tion as commander-in-chief was too important to of the expected result in conversation with his of the success of the day to justify him in running ficers. How many of the enemy's ships do you the gauntlet through the whole of the enemy's think we ought to take or destroy?" demanded ships by leading the van, and that by shortening he of his friend Blackwood. "Twelve or fifteen," sail he might suffer the Leviathan, which followreplied the gallant captain. "That will not do," ed the Victory, to pass to the front and receive retorted Nelson; "less than twenty will not sat-the first fire. "Let it be so," exclaimed he; "let isfy me."

the Leviathan go ahead of us if she can." At A few minutes before the two fleets were within the same time, he ordered his flag captain, Hardy, range, Nelson, who had reserved for the last mo- to crowd more sail, and burst like a tempest upon ment the signal of encouragement he was accus- the French line. His captains then quitted the tomed to issue to his sailors, and eagerly expected quarter-deck of the Victory, and each repaired to by them, exhibited from the mast-head of the Vic- his own vessel. On taking leave of them, he tory his memorable word of battle, embracing in pressed Captain Blackwood warmly by the hand, one short sentence the grand emotions which lead who assured him by anticipation of a glorious victhe brave to rush fearlessly on to death-patriot-tory. "Adieu, Blackwood," said he;" may ism, a sense of duty, and confidence of triumph. The signal ran thus: ENGLAND EXPECTS THAT

tion! He has cleared the way; let us hasten | ready intelligence, or unity of conception, were

after him."

unable to attempt any of those bold counter-strokes
which often change the features of a battle.
In the mean while, a few stout vessels, ani-

While Nelson uttered these words on the poop of the Victory, Collingwood, reveling in the storm of thunder and the clouds of smoke that envelop-mated by determined leaders, sustained the full ed him, observed to his own captain, Rotherham, "What would Nelson give to be here!"

shock of the two columns led by Collingwood and Nelson. Lucas, the captain of the Redoutable, He was not long behind his second in command. worthy of being opposed to a hero, had covered Already the fire from some of the enemy's vessels the deck of the Victory with killed and wounded passed over his head, tore his sails, and fell like before he was attacked himself. He was soon a storm of hail on the decks of the Victory. The compelled by superior weight of metal to close first who fell dead at his feet was his secretary, his lower ports, and the two ships became so Scott, at that moment in conversation with Cap-closely jammed together that the combatants entain Hardy. While they were removing the body gaged almost man to man. Lucas made preparafrom the Admiral's sight, a chain-shot killed eight men on the quarter-deck.

tions to board, and armed his most intrepid mar"This is too warm,' ,"iners that he might be ready to take advantage of opening or opportunity, as either should occur. The proximity of the ships inundated the decks of both with blood and carnage, while the combatants were enveloped in a dense cloud of smoke, which the wind had not sufficient force to disperse. There was the darkness of night at midday, interrupted only by the flashing of repeated discharges, and the thunder of the cannonade.

said he to Hardy, "to last long." The wind of a cannon ball intercepted his speech, and carried a group of sailors between him and the captain. The Victory was still silent, reserving her fire, and advancing gradually. All at once she was poured into by the French Redoutable, commanded by Captain Lucas, the Bucentaur, bearing the flag of Villeneuve himself, and the Spanish Santissima Trinidada, of 150 guns, the largest floating fortress that the sea had ever borne. Hardy inquired of the Admiral which vessel he should first engage, to break this line of fire, and open the way for his own column. Take the nearest," replied Nelson; "it is of little consequence: choose for yourself." Hardy ordered the steersman to lay him alongside the Redoutable. The two ships, having vomited forth their mutual broadsides, closed with a shock, augmented by the swell of the waves, and each prepared to board the other. The force of the attack and the power of the wind filling the sails at the same moment, compelled the Redoutable to fall a little out of the line, and the Victory followed her. The ships immediately following Nelson passed through the opening, and ranging up on the right and left, separated the compact order of the combined fleet into detached squadrons. The rapidity of their motion, the accuracy of their manœuvres, the cool self-possession of the sailors, the skill with which they handled their sails, multiplied their number at pleasure, and carried them in a moment wherever there was an enemy's vessel to attack, or an English ship to rescue. The sea and the wind, adverse to all others, seemed to act in concert with these lords of the ocean. Nelson trusted to them to secure the victory, and now thought of nothing but of fighting his own three-decker.

Villeneuve, his centre already penetrated and thrown into confusion by Nelson, with his column of fifteen line-of-battle ships, made repeated but fruitless signals through his frigates to the squadron of reserve, consisting of ten sail, which he had imprudently stationed too far off to be available in the combat. These ships, motionless and as if petrified by terror, beheld from a distance the extremity to which their commander was reduced, and his vain efforts to recover the weathergage. Many others, breaking from the line, and floating with the tide beyond the range of shot, fired ineffective broadsides, and from want of

But, at the moment when the French captain endeavored to lock his yard-arms with those of the enemy's ship, so as to form a single bridge of their united decks, and placed his boarding ladders against the side of the Victory, another English vessel, the Téméraire, commanded by Captain Harvey, pressed up to the assistance of his admiral, and, ranging across the flank of the Redoutable, poured into her his entire broadside. Nelson, then veering off to a half-cable's length, commenced a cross fire in conjunction with the Téméraire against the Redoutable, carried away her ensign, and three times extinguished her fire in the blood of her slaughtered crew. The Redoutable, after a short interval of silence, nailed fresh flags to her masts and reopened her fire, as if determined to perish rather than ask or receive pity or favor. Her sharp-shooters, posted in the rigging, on the tops, and on the yards, kept the victorious enemy at a distance.

Villeneuve, during this duel between Nelson and his best ships, was engaged himself in the Bucentaur, at a short distance. By an accident, his bowsprit had become entangled, at the commencement of the action, in the stern gallery of the huge colossus of the fleet, the Santissima Trinidada, from which impediment he had made many fruitless efforts to disengage himself.

Attacked in this terrible state of forced inaction, at first by the Victory, and afterward by four other English ships, these two vessels, presenting a combined force of 160 guns and 3000 men, succeeded by their double broadsides in keeping at bay the assailants who endeavored to overwhelm them from a distance. Villeneuve, recovering, in the despair of his situation and the ardor of battle, the firmness which had failed him in his earlier proceedings, now equaled Nelson himself in intrepidity, and in the desperate resolution with which he braved death on the poop of his flag-ship. Bursting with rage and anguish at his utter inability to get free from the Santis

sima Trinidada, and hasten to the support and | embellish the glory of the day. The Fougueux, encouragement of his fleet, he vainly implored commanded successively by three officers who fell

gained half the deck, and three times hurled them from his bulwarks into the sea. Struck by a biscayan* in the right arm, he fought with his left. A second shot broke his leg; he was then taken between decks to stanch the blood; but the rents in the sides of the Pluton allowed the showers of grape to penetrate even into this refuge of the wounded: a ball entered his breast, and he fell dead in the arms of his supporters. His death was the signal for the surrender of his vessel. Eight others struck at the same time.

the Spanish commander to try, by hoisting a one after the other on the poop, surrendered only crowd of sail, to tear himself from the at- when her decks were strewed with 400 slain. The taching bowsprit, even though his own prow Pluton, commanded by Captain Cosmao, was on should be carried away along with it. But the the point of boarding the Mars, the vanquisher sails of the huge Spaniard were by this time so of the Bucentaur, and of delivering Villeneuve, torn by shot, and her masts so completely dis- who was a prisoner on board that vessel, when abled, that she lay like a helpless log, the mere two of her masts fell under the fire of three other sport of the waves, and a butt for the fire of the English ships advancing to the rescue of their enemy. Villeneuve saw his best officers and 600 companion. The rear-admiral Magon, the Achilof his crew perish around him. His masts fell les of the combined fleet, hastening to anticipate overboard in succession, carrying away shrouds, the attack of the enemy, when his own line gave tops, yards, rigging, and every vestige of his sails. way at their approach, fell upon the English TonAt this moment a sudden gust of wind dissipated nant, of eighty-four guns, plunged his bowsprit the thick mantle of smoke which concealed from into her main-shrouds, and rushed upon her forethe unfortunate admiral the state of the battle in castle, at the head of his boarders; but the broadother quarters. He saw at least one half of his sides from two heavy ships, one on each side, fleet, motionless spectators of the destruction of overwhelmed him with an iron storm, and forced the rest. He made signals to them to hasten in-him to retire upon his own poop behind a rampart stantly into the thickest of the fire. These ships of dead. Three times, with his boarding hatchet were sufficient in number to change defeat to vic-in his hand, he drove back the English who had tory. Either they misunderstood or intentionally disobeyed his orders, and continued to steer, as if by chance, wherever the breeze directed, without fixed object, and as far from the scene of action as they could possibly remove themselves. Villeneuve, seeing the Bucentaur dismasted, stripped like a pontoon, and on the point of sinking, called in vain upon his own crew, and the crew of the Trinidada, to lower a boat, that he might fly in person to the reserve, and force them into the combat. The boats suspended from the poop, shattered by bullets, foundered when they reached the water: his vessel, completely silenced, emitted from her port-holes empty smoke in place of deadly broadsides. A long-boat from the English line-of-the characteristic courage of his race. The crew battle ship Mars approached without opposition to save the relics of the crew and to receive the admiral. Villeneuve, unable to find a ball in this storm of iron and lead to terminate his existence, but reserved by still heavier misfortune for suicide, surrendered at last, when he had neither a cannon under his hand nor a plank beneath his feet. The English received him as an enemy disarmed, with the respect due to his calamity and his courage. The Spanish admiral's ship, the Santissima Trinidada, abandoned by her seven companions of the same nation, struck her colors after fours hours of determined but solitary resistance. At the sight of the English ensign floating above this colossus, the remains of the Spanish squadron made all sail and fled toward the roads of Cadiz.

As soon as the two admirals had surrendered, the English fell with their disengaged and victorious ships on the remains of the enemy's centre, still equal to cope with them in numbers and weight of metal. Again they broke the line by an irresistible attack, and, cutting it up into detached squadrons, engaged in a succession of single combats. In these, each individual captain, actuated by weakness or despair, distinguished himself by timidity or hardihood, and tarnished or adorned his personal character without a hope of serving the public cause, but anxious only to

Admiral Gravina, commander-in-chief of the Spanish squadron, fell mortally wounded while defending his ship, the Prince of Asturias, with

of the Achille, the last of Villeneuve's fleet, who still resisted with the fury of despair, had allowed her upper decks to take fire during the combat. Their whole attention engrossed with dealing destruction on the enemy, they had entirely neglected their own impending fate. The flames increased beyond their power to subdue them; instant explosion threatened, and the English ships withdrew to a distance to escape from the consequences. The crew of the Achille still continued firing, and casting into the sea some spars, bulwarks, and floating portions of their vessel, prepared at the last moment to jump overboard and cling to them. In a few moments the Achille blew up, like an exploding volcano, in the vacant space, and became the voluntary tomb of 500 brave men. The English mariners faithfully obeyed the orders of Nelson-allowed their anger to cease with opposition, and instantly lowered their boats to resue their drowning enemies. This sudden thunderbolt terminated the battle in the centre of the contending squadrons.

Rear-admiral Dumanoir-who might still have struck a blow, if not with success, at least with honor-hauled off from the head of the line with his four splendid ships, which had not been engaged; he fired a few useless broadsides as he

carries an iron ball -TR.
* A biscayan is a particular kind of long musket, which

the vanquished. The thought of placing the fleet | second night after the battle, more terrible than in safety by bringing them to anchor was never the combat itself. The enraged elements sported for a moment absent from his mind. "Don't at pleasure during sixty hours with the three fleets, fling me overboard," said he to Hardy; "I wish which, the evening before, had proudly covered the to repose with my family in the church-yard of ocean with their flags. my native village-unless," he added, thinking of Westminster Abbey, "my king and country may be pleased to order otherwise. But, above all, my dear Hardy," continued he, with a burst of tender regard, increased by the near prospect of eternal separation, "take care of Lady Hamilton! Hardy, watch over the unfortunate Lady Hamilton!"

It was now half past four in the afternoon. The last distant cannon resounded across the seas. A salvo of artillery announced the departure of his soul from the scene of combat, and heralded its entrance into a glorious immortality.

Night and tempest assisted to complete the victory, but the waves disputed the possession of the trophies. Six English ships, without sails, masts, or rigging, like those of the French and Spaniards, exhibited, in their crushed ribs and slaughtered crews, an evidence of dearly-bought triumph. With difficulty they were enabled to float upon the heavy swell, which rapidly got up with the wind on the setting of the autumnal sun. Admiral Collingwood, who had succeeded to the command, depressed by the loss of his chief, instead of bringing the fleet to an anchor, as Nelson had emphatically recommended, employed himself in manning the seventeen prizes taken during the battle, and in pursuing the relics of the combined fleet. Darkness and the storm surprised him while endeavoring to secure his spoils. The sea, the winds, the thunder, the lightning, and the rocks, rendered that night, the following day, and the

AS Clive lay awake revolving the strange inci

dents of the day, and speculating upon the tragedy in which he had been suddenly called to

* Continued from the August Number.