s three, rows
of ports, whence, the tompions drawn, yawned the sullen lines of guns,
behind which, unseen, but easily realized by the instructed eye,
clustered the groups of ready seamen who served each piece. Aloft swung
leisurely to and fro the tall spars, which ordinarily, in so light a
wind, would be clad in canvas from deck to truck, but whose naked
trimness now proclaimed the deadly purpose of that still approach. Upon
the high poops, where floated the standard of either nation, gathered
round each chief the little knot of officers through whom commands were
issued and reports received, the nerves along which thrilled the
impulses of the great organism, from its head, the admiral, through
every member to the dark lowest decks, nearly awash, where, as farthest
from the captain's own oversight, the senior lieutenants controlled the
action of the ships' heaviest batteries.

On board the _Queen Charlotte_, Lord Howe, whose burden of sixty-eight
years had for four days found no rest save what he could snatch in an
arm-chair, now, at the prospect of battle, "displayed an animation,"
writes an eye-witness, "of which, at his age, and after such fatigue of
body and mind, I had not thought him capable. He seemed to contemplate
the result as one of unbounded satisfaction." By his side stood his
fleet-captain, Curtis, of whose service among the floating batteries,
and during the siege of Gibraltar, the governor of the fortress had
said, "He is the man to whom the king is chiefly indebted for its
security;" and Codrington, then a lieutenant, who afterwards commanded
the allied fleets at Navarino. Five ships to the left, Collingwood, in
the _Barfleur_, was making to the admiral whose flag she bore the remark
that stirred Thackeray: "Our wives are now about going to church, but
we will ring about these Frenchmen's ears a peal which will drown their
bells." The French officers, both admirals and captains, were mainly
unknown men, alike then and thereafter. The fierce flames of the
Revolution had swept away the men of the old school, mostly aristocrats,
and time had not yet brought forward the very few who during the
Napoleonic period showed marked capacity. The commander-in-chief,
Villaret-Joyeuse, had three years before been a lieutenant. He had a
high record for gallantry, but was without antecedents as a general
officer. With him, on the poop of the _Montagne_, which took her name
from Robespierre's political supporters, stood