-soldiers had probably the best
military band ever known; it consisted of the entire orchestra of the
Theatre Royal, all volunteers. A Danish officer, sent on some message
under a flag of truce to the British fleet, was required to put his
message in writing, and was offered a somewhat damaged pen for that
purpose. He threw it down with a laugh, saying that "if the British
guns were not better pointed than their pens they wouldn't make much
impression on Copenhagen." That flash of gallant wit marked the temper
of the Danes. They were on flame with confident daring.

Nelson, always keen for a daring policy, had undertaken to attack the
Danish defences with a squadron of twelve seventy-fours, and the
frigates and bomb-vessels of the fleet. He determined to shun the open
way of King's Channel, grope through the uncertain passage called the
Dutch Deep, at the back of the Middle Ground, and forcing his way up
the narrow channel in front of the shallows, repeat on the anchored
batteries and battleships of the Danes the exploit of the Nile. He
spent the nights of March 30 and 31 sounding the channel, being
himself, in spite of fog and ice, in the boat nearly the whole of these
two bitter nights. On April 1 the fleet came slowly up the Dutch Deep,
and dropped anchor at night about two miles from the southern extremity
of the Danish line. At eleven o'clock that night, Hardy--in whose arms
Nelson afterwards died on board the _Victory_--pushed off from the
flagship in a small boat and sounded the channel in front of the Danish
floating batteries. So daring was he that he actually sounded round
the leading ship of the Danish line, using a pole to avoid being
detected.

In the morning the wind blew fair for the channel. Nelson's plans had
been elaborated to their minutest details, and the pilots of the fleet
were summoned at nine o'clock to the flagship to receive their last
instructions. But their nerve failed them. They were simply the mates
or masters of Baltic traders turned for the moment into naval pilots.
They had no charts. They were accustomed to handle ships of 200 or 300
tons burden, and the task of steering the great British seventy-fours
through the labyrinths of shallows, with the tide running like a
mill-race, appalled them. At last Murray, in the _Edgar_, undertook to
lead. The signal was made to weigh in succession, and one great ship
after another, with its topsails on the caps, rounded the shoulder