e
have but sent the firebrand to the bottom of the salt ocean, what
conflagrations Europe would have been spared, what shedding of blood,
what hopeless sorrow and bitter tears!

But there! I am keeping the fleets waiting. For his part, Brueys, the
French admiral, would have preferred to wait. "He means to attack," he
said to one of his captains, referring to Nelson, "but he cannot be mad
enough to attack to-night."

But Nelson _was_ mad enough. He was burning to give it to the French,
and give it to them hot, for all the trouble and anxiety they had cost
him. He was as eager as a wild cat to spring at the throat of his foe.
Another night of waiting might have killed him. No, no, he cannot, will
not wait. "Make the signal for general action, and trust to Heaven and
the justice of our cause!"

Along the bay lay the great French fleet, with shoal water behind them,
supported by gunboats and bomb-vessels, the ships moored one hundred and
sixty yards from each other, and with stream cables so that they could
spring their broadsides on their enemy.

And their line extended for a mile and a half.

Had Brueys thought that Nelson would attack that night, he would have
got under way, and thus been free either to manoeuvre or show his
heels. He did not know our Nelson. Nor could he have believed that the
great British admiral would have done so doughty and daring a deed as to
get round behind him, so to speak, betwixt the shore and his fleet,
despite the sands and shoals. But Nelson did with a portion of his
fleet, and each war-ship took up position with all the precision of
couples in a contra-dance. Oh, it was beautiful! but when the battle
fairly began, and tongues of fire and clouds of rolling smoke leaped and
curled from the great guns, lighting up the dusk and gloom of gathering
night, while echoes reverberated from shore to shore, oh, then this
thunderstorm of war was very grand and terrible!

To describe the battle in detail, and all the heroic actions that took
place that night, would take a volume in itself. But it is all history,
and probably the reader knows every bit of it as well as, if not better
than, I myself do. We must honour the French, though, for this fight.
They fought well and bravely, and you know the gallant Brueys died on
his own quarter-deck, refusing to be carried below. He was a hero. So we
might say was the captain of the _Serieuse_ frigate, who had the cheek
to fire into the great _Orion_ (Si