n hour. When the explosion came, there was an awful silence. For
ten minutes not a gun was fired on either side. The instinct of
self-preservation, as well as the sudden awe on this sublime event,
produced this pause in the battle.

Some of the French, endeavoring to get out of the vicinity of the
burning wreck, had slipped their cables. The nearest of the English took
every precaution to prevent the combustible materials doing them injury.
The shock of the explosion shook the Alexander, Swiftsure, and Orion to
their kelsons and materially injured them. None of the British ships,
however, took fire. About seventy only of the crew of L'Orient were
saved by the English boats. The battle was resumed by the French ship,
the Franklin; and it went on, at intervals, till daybreak. The contest
was sustained by four French line-of-battle ships, and four of the
English. Finally, two of the French line-of-battle ships and two
frigates escaped. Of thirteen sail of the line, nine were taken, two
were burned. Of the British, about nine hundred men were killed and
wounded. No accurate account was obtained of the French loss. The
estimate which represented that loss at five thousand was evidently
exaggerated. About three thousand French prisoners were sent on shore.
Kleber, the French general, wrote to Napoleon, "The English have had the
disinterestedness to restore everything to their prisoners."

After the victory of the Nile, Nelson returned to Naples. He required
rest; and in the ease and luxury, the flattery and the honors which
there awaited him, he forgot his quiet home, and after a time was
involved in public acts which reflect discredit upon his previously
spotless name. At Palermo, Lord Cochrane had opportunities of
conversation with him. He says, "To one of his frequent injunctions,
'Never mind manoeuvres, always go at them,' I subsequently had reason
to consider myself indebted for successful attacks under apparently
difficult circumstances." Cochrane considered Nelson "an embodiment of
dashing courage, which would not take much trouble to circumvent an
enemy, but being confronted with one would regard victory so much a
matter of course as hardly to deem the chance of defeat worth
consideration." This opinion is borne out by a letter which Nelson wrote
to his old friend, Admiral Locker, from Palermo: "It is you who always
said, 'Lay a Frenchman close and you will beat him'; and my only merit
in my profession is being a goo