proach of
the Spanish troops, which could only have been carried by a sudden _coup
de main_. Rear-Admiral Nelson had only one foot out of the boat, and was
in the act of landing on the mole, under a most tremendous fire from the
batteries, when his arm was shot nearly off; and he fell back in the
boat. At that awful moment, he recollected the injunction of his
deceased uncle, on receiving the sword which he had thus been compelled
to drop; and, groping at the bottom, speedily recovered it, and firmly
grasped it in his remaining hand. He called to his brave companions in
arms, who had already landed to storm the mole, and directed them to
force the gate of the citadel; a task which, with all their exertion,
they found it impossible to accomplish, though they succeeded in spiking
several of the guns. At this juncture, Lieutenant Nesbit very humanely
took the handkerchief from his neck, and tied it round the shattered arm
of his father-in-law, a little above where it had been shot. The boat,
in the mean time, was hastening to return on board the Theseus, amidst a
most dreadful discharge from the batteries. It soon approached where the
Fox cutter had just been sunk by a shot under water; and the unhappy men
with which it had been charged, consisting of one hundred and eighty
persons, were in the act of struggling for their lives. This was a scene
of distress too dreadful to be passed, by their humane commander,
without at least endeavouring to lessen the extent of the calamity. As
many as possible of these poor fellows were instantly taken into the
boat; an office of humanity in which the rear-admiral himself eagerly
assisted, with his sole arm, smarting as he then was under the agony
occasioned by the recent separation of the other. The corporeal anguish
which he now felt, however, was mitigated by the solace he received in
thus rescuing a few of his brave fellows from impending destruction;
but, alas! the mental horror which he suffered, at beholding some of the
noblest of the human race compelled to be forcibly rejected, and
abandoned to their wretched fate, through dread of sinking his own
overcharged boat, admitted of no alleviation, and inflicted pangs on
his heroic heart, to describe which the powers of language are incapable
of yielding any adequate expression. Every possible exertion was used to
reach the Theseus, with a faint hope of the boat's returning in time to
save a few more of these unhappy victims; and, a ch