of
the Middle Ground, and in stately procession, the _Edgar_ leading, came
up the channel. Campbell in his fine ballad has pictured the scene:--

"Like leviathans afloat
Lay their bulwarks on the brine,
While the sign of battle flew
On the lofty British line.
It was ten of April morn by the chime;
As they drifted on their path
There was silence deep as death,
And the boldest held his breath
For a time.
But the might of England flushed
To anticipate the scene,
And her van the fleeter rushed
O'er the deadly space between."

The leading Danish ships broke into a tempest of fire as the British
ships came within range. The _Agamemnon_ failed to weather the
shoulder of the Middle Ground, and went ignobly ashore, and the scour
of the tide kept her fast there, in spite of the most desperate
exertions of her crew. The _Bellona_, a pile of white canvas above, a
double line of curving batteries below, hugged the Middle Ground too
closely, and grounded too; and the _Russell_, following close after
her, went ashore in the same manner, with its jib-boom almost touching
the _Bellona's_ taffrail. One-fourth of Nelson's force was thus
practically out of the fight before a British gun was fired. These
were the ships, too, intended to sail past the whole Danish line and
engage the Three-Crown Batteries. As they were _hors de combat_, the
frigates of the squadron, under Riou--"the gallant, good Riou" of
Campbell's noble lines--had to take the place of the seventy-fours.

Meanwhile, Nelson, in the _Elephant_, came following hard on the
ill-fated _Russell_. Nelson's orders were that each ship should pass
her leader on the starboard side, and had he acted on his own orders,
Nelson too would have grounded, with every ship that followed him. The
interval betwixt each ship was so narrow that decision had to be
instant; and Nelson, judging the water to the larboard of the _Russell_
to be deeper, put his helm a-starboard, and so shot past the _Russell_
on its larboard beam into the true channel, the whole line following
his example. That sudden whirl to starboard of the flagship's helm--a
flash of brilliant seamanship--saved the battle.

Ship after ship shot past, and anchored, by a cable astern, in its
assigned position. The sullen thunder of the guns rolled from end to
end of the long line, the flash of the artillery ran in a dance of
flame along the mile and a half of batteries,