ep off stragglers.

For the benefit of the non-nautical reader, it will be as well to
explain here the two principal formations in which modern fleets go into
action. As a matter of fact, they are identical with the tactics
employed by the French and Spanish on the one side and Nelson on the
other during the Napoleonic wars. Before Nelson's time, it was the
custom for two hostile fleets to engage each other in column of line
abreast, which means that both fleets formed a double line which
approached each other within gunshot, and then opened fire.

At Trafalgar, Nelson altered these tactics completely, with results that
everybody knows. The allied French and Spanish fleets came up in a
crescent, just in the same formation as Admiral Durenne was advancing on
Portsmouth. Nelson took his ships into action in column of line ahead,
in other words, in single file, the head of the column aiming for the
centre of the enemy's battle line.

The main advantage of this was, first, that it upset the enemy's
combination, and, secondly, that each ship could engage two, since she
could work both broadsides at once, whereas the enemy could only work
one broadside against one ship. These were the tactics which, with
certain modifications made necessary by the increased mobility on both
sides, Lord Beresford adopted.

With one exception, no foreigner had ever seen the new class of British
flagship, and that exception, as we know, was safely locked up on board
the _Ithuriel_, and his reports were even now being carefully considered
by the Naval Council.

There are no braver men on land and sea than the officers and crews of
the French Navy, but when the giant bulk of the _Britain_ loomed up out
of the westward in the growing light, gradually gathering way with her
stately train of nineteen-knot battleships behind her, and swept down in
front of the French line, many a heart stood still for the moment, and
many a man asked himself what the possibilities of such a Colossus of
the ocean might be.

They had not long to wait. As the British battleships came on from the
left with ever-increasing speed, the whole French line burst into a
tornado of thunder and flame, but not a shot was fired from the English
lines. Shells hurtled and screamed through the air, topworks were
smashed into scrap-iron, funnels riddled, and military masts
demolished; but until the _Britain_ reached the centre of the French
line not a British gun spoke.

Then t