on's
last chance of invading England vanished. Villeneuve pushed
Collingwood's tiny squadron aside and entered Cadiz, where the combined
fleet now numbered nearly forty ships of the line, and Collingwood,
with delightful coolness, solemnly resumed his blockade--four ships,
that is, blockading forty! Napoleon gave way to a tempest of rage when
his fleet failed to appear off Boulogne, and he realised that the
British sailors he despised had finally thwarted his strategy. A
French writer has told how Daru, his secretary, found him walking up
and down his cabinet with agitated steps. With a voice that shook, and
in half-strangled exclamations, he cried, "What a navy! What
sacrifices for nothing! What an admiral! All hope is gone! That
Villeneuve, instead of entering the Channel, has taken refuge in
Ferrol. It is all over. He will be blockaded there." Then with that
swift and terrible power of decision in which he has never been
surpassed, he flung the long-cherished plan of invading England out of
his brain, and dictated the orders which launched his troops on the
road which led to Austerlitz and Jena, and, beyond, to the flames of
Moscow and the snows of the great retreat, and which finally led
Napoleon himself to St. Helena. Villeneuve's great fleet meanwhile lay
idle in Cadiz, till, on October 20, the ill-fated French admiral led
his ships out to meet Nelson in his last great sea-fight.

II. HOW THE FLEETS MET

"Wherever the gleams of an English fire
On an English roof-tree shine,
Wherever the fire of a youth's desire
Is laid upon Honour's shrine,
Wherever brave deeds are treasured and told,
In the tale of the deeds of yore,
Like jewels of price in a chain of gold
Are the name and the fame he bore.

Wherever the track of our English ships
Lies white on the ocean foam,
His name is sweet to our English lips
As the names of the flowers at home;
Wherever the heart of an English boy
Grows big with a deed of worth,
Such names as his name have begot the same,
Such hearts will bring it to birth."
--E. NESBIT.

It was the night of October 20, 1805, a night moonless and black. In the
narrow waters at the western throat of the Straits of Gibraltar, at
regular intervals of three minutes through the whole night, the deep
voice of a gun broke out and swept, a pulse of dying sound, almost to
either coast, while at every half-hour a rocket soared a