up along the
decks. Just fancy us then stripped to the waist, with handkerchiefs
bound round our heads, and straining every nerve as we ran in and out,
and cleaned and loaded our heavy guns, and blazed away as fast as we
could. We were covered, too, with smoke and powder, and before long
most of us were sprinkled pretty thickly with our own or our shipmates'
blood. Such was the sight you would have seen between decks on board
every ship in the action.

"I must tell you what happened in other parts. There was a shoal we had
to pass on our starboard hand. The `Culloden,' the ship of the brave
Captain Troubridge, struck on it when standing in, for by that time the
darkness of night had come on. He instantly made signals which
prevented the other ships, the `Alexander,' `Swiftsure,' and `Leander,'
following, and getting on shore. They did their best to help off the
`Culloden,' but could not get her off, so stood on into the battle.
Before even they opened their fire, five of the enemy's ships had
struck. On standing on, Captain Hollowell fell in with the old
`Billyruffian' (`Bellerophon'), with already two hundred dead and
wounded, and almost a wreck from the tremendous fire of `L'Orient' of
120 guns. The `Swiftsure' took her place, and soon made the Frenchman
pay dear for what she had done. I heard of this afterwards. A seaman
at his gun can know little more of an action than what he sees before
his nose, and that is chiefly smoke and fire, and part of the hull and
rigging of one ship, and men struck down, and timbers and splinters
flying about, and yards and blocks rattling down, while he hears alone
the roar of the guns, the shouts, and shrieks, and groans of those
around him. This sort of terrible work was going on for some time, when
the word got about that the admiral himself was desperately wounded in
the head. It made our hearts sink within us with sorrow, but it did not
cause us to fight less fiercely, or be less determined to gain the
victory. How anxiously we waited to hear what the surgeons would say
about the wound of our noble chief! and when we were told that it was
merely the skin of his head which was hurt, and which had almost blinded
him, how hearty the cheer we gave. It must have astonished the
Frenchmen, who could not tell the cause. Then at it again we went
blazing away like fury, the round-shot and chain-shot and bullets
whizzing and tearing along our decks, making the white splinters