ding in line on the _Victory's_ quarter-deck; a third
passed between Nelson and Hardy as they stood side by side. "Too warm
work to last long, Hardy," said Nelson, with a smile. Still the
_Victory_ drifted majestically on its fiery path without an answering gun.

The French line was irregular at this point, the ships lying, in some
instances, two or three deep, and this made the business of "cutting" the
line difficult. As Nelson could not pick out the French flagship, he
said to Hardy, "Take your choice, go on board which you please;" and
Hardy pointed the stern of the Victory towards a gap between the
_Redoutable_, a 74-gun ship, and the _Bucentaure_. But the ship moved
slowly. The fire upon it was tremendous. One shot drove a shower of
splinters upon both Nelson and Hardy; nearly fifty men and officers had
been killed or wounded; the Victory's sails were riddled, her
studding-sail booms shot off close to the yard-arm, her mizzen-topmast,
shot away. At one o'clock, however, the _Victory_ slowly moved past the
stern of the _Bucentaure_, and a 68-pounder carronade on its forecastle,
charged with a round shot and a keg of 500 musket balls, was fired into
the cabin windows of the French ship. Then, as the great ship moved on,
every gun of the remaining fifty that formed its broadside--some of them
double and treble loaded--was fired through the Frenchman's cabin windows.

The dust from the crumpled woodwork of the _Bucentaure's_ stern covered
the persons of Nelson and the group of officers standing on the
_Victory's_ quarter-deck, while the British sailors welcomed with a
fierce shout the crash their flying shot made within the Frenchman's
hull. The _Bucentaure_, as it happened--though Nelson was ignorant of
the fact--was the French flagship; and after the battle its officers
declared that by this single broadside, out of its crew of nearly 1000
men, nearly 400 were struck down, and no less than twenty guns dismounted!

But the _Neptune_, a fine French 80-gun ship, lay right across the
water-lane up which the _Victory_ was moving, and it poured upon the
British ship two raking broadsides of the most deadly quality. The
_Victory_, however, moved on unflinchingly, and the _Neptune_, fearing to
be run aboard by the British ship, set her jib and moved ahead; then the
_Victory_ swung to starboard on to the _Redoutable_. The French ship
fired one hurried broadside, and promptly shut her lower-deck ports,
fearing the