ips killed a large number of the _Victory's_ officers and men
who were on deck. The French made an attempt to board, but were thrown
back in confusion and with tremendous loss. The instinct of domination
and the unconquerable combativeness of our race is always more
fiercely courageous when pressed to a point which causes others to
take to their heels or surrender.

It was not an exaggeration on the part of the French and Spanish to
declare that the British sailors and soldiers were not ordinary men
but devils, when the real tussle for mastery began, and when they were
even believed to be beaten. The French and Spanish conclusions were
right then, and the ruthless Germans, stained with unspeakable crimes,
should know they are right now, for they have had many chances in
recent days of realizing the power of the recuperating spirit they are
up against, just at a time when they have become imbued with the idea
that they have beaten our forces on land and destroyed our ships and
murdered their crews at sea. The Kaiser and his advisers, military and
naval, have made the German people pay dearly for the experiment of
stopping our supplies by sea, for the loss of life by the sinking of
their own submarines must have been enormous. But only those to whom
they belong will ever know that they have not returned, and that they
must have been sent to the bottom of the sea.

We can only judge by written records and authoritative paintings or
prints of the period what the naval battles of the beginning of the
last century were like. But it is only those who have studied minutely
the naval battles of St. Vincent, the Nile, Copenhagen, and Trafalgar
who can depict the awful character and thrilling nature of these ocean
conflicts.

While the author was serving as an apprentice aboard a sailing vessel
during the Prussian-Danish war in 1864 a dense fog came on, and
continued the whole of one night. When it cleared up the next forenoon
we found that the vessel had been sailed right into the centre of the
Danish fleet, which had defeated the Prussians and Austrians off
Heligoland. There were other merchantmen there, and the cheering as we
passed each of the Danish warships was hearty and long, while they
gracefully acknowledged by saluting with their flags. I am quite sure
there were few British seamen who would not have gladly volunteered to
serve in the Danish navy against the Prussians, so universal was their
bitter dislike to the Hun