assistance. He ordered them back, declaring he would take his place and
await his turn in line, and this he did.

When it came his turn, the surgeons saw that it was a comminuted
fracture of the elbow, with the whole right hand reduced to a pulp, and
that amputation was the only thing. There were no anesthetics, and at
daylight, on the deck where there was air and light, Nelson watched the
surgeons sever the worthless arm.

As they bandaged the stump, he dictated a report of the battle to his
secretary; but after writing for ten minutes, the poor secretary fell
limp in a faint, and Nelson ordered one of the surgeons to complete
taking the dictation. This official report contained no mention of the
calamity that had befallen the commander, he regarding the loss of an
arm as merely an incident.

In six months' time he had met and defeated all the ships of Napoleon
that could be located. When he returned to England, an ovation met him
such as never before had been given to a sailorman. He was "Sir
Horatio," although he complained that, "They began to call me Lord
Nelson, even before I had gotten used to having my ears tickled by the
sound of Sir."

He was made Knight of the Bath, given a pension of a thousand pounds a
year, and so many medals pinned upon his breast that "he walked with a
limp," a local writer said. The limp, however, was from undiscovered
lead, and this, with one eye, one arm and a naturally slender and gaunt
figure, gave him a peculiarly pathetic appearance.

The actions of his wife at this time in pressing herself on society and
in her endeavors to make of him a public show were the unhappy ending
of a series of marital misunderstandings which led him to part with her,
placing his entire pension at her disposal.

Trouble in the East soon demanded a firm hand, and Nelson sailed away to
meet the emergency. This time he was in pursuit of a concentrated fleet,
with Napoleon on board. It was Nelson's hope and expectation to capture
Napoleon; if he had, none would have been so fortunate as the Little
Corporal himself. It would have saved him the disgrace of failure, a
soldier of fortune seized by accident after a series of successes that
dazzled the world, and then captured by a sea-fighter on the water as
great as he himself was on land. But alas! Napoleon was to escape, which
he did by a flight where wind and tide seemed to answer his prayer.

But Nelson crushed his navy. The story of the battle has