heir salt slush,
And welcome. 'Tis not long they'll have the lead.
Ships can be wrecked by land!

ANOTHER VOICE

And how by land,
Your Majesty, if one may query such?

VOICE OF NAPOLEON [sardonically]

I'll bid all states of Europe shut their ports
To England's arrogant bottoms, slowly starve
Her bloated revenues and monstrous trade,
Till all her hulls lie sodden in their docks,
And her grey island eyes in vain shall seek
One jack of hers upon the ocean plains!

VOICE OF SOULT

A few more master-strokes, your Majesty,
Must be dealt hereabout to compass such!

VOICE OF NAPOLEON

God, yes!--Even here Pitt's guineas are the foes:
'Tis all a duel 'twixt this Pitt and me;
And, more than Russia's host, and Austria's flower,
I everywhere to-night around me feel
As from an unseen monster haunting nigh
His country's hostile breath!--But come: to choke it
By our to-morrow's feats, which now, in brief,
I recapitulate.--First Soult will move
To forward the grand project of the day:
Namely: ascend in echelon, right to front,
With Vandamme's men, and those of Saint Hilaire:
Legrand's division somewhere further back--
Nearly whereat I place my finger here--
To be there reinforced by tirailleurs:
Lannes to the left here, on the Olmutz road,
Supported by Murat's whole cavalry.
While in reserve, here, are the grenadiers
Of Oudinot, the corps of Bernadotte,
Rivaud, Drouet, and the Imperial Guard.

MARSHAL'S VOICES

Even as we understood, Sire, and have ordered.
Nought lags but day, to light our victory!

VOICE OF NAPOLEON

Now let us up and ride the bivouacs round,
And note positions ere the soldiers sleep.
--Omit not from to-morrow's home dispatch
Direction that this blow of Trafalgar
Be hushed in all the news-sheets sold in France,
Or, if reported, let it be portrayed
As a rash fight whereout we came not worst,
But were so broken by the boisterous eve
That England claims to be the conqueror.

[There emerge from the tent NAPOLEON and the marshals, who all
mount the horses that are led up, and proceed through the frost
and time towards the bivouacs. At the Emperor's approach to the
nearest soldiery they spring up.]

SOLDIERS

The Emperor! He's here! The Emperor's here!

AN OLD GRENADIER [approaching Napoleon familiarly]

We'll bring thee Russian guns and f