llery of the _San Nicolas_, and at once
boarded that leviathan. Nelson himself crept through the
quarter-gallery window in the stern of the Spaniard, and found himself
in the officers' cabins. The officers tried to show fight, but there
was no denying the boarders who followed Nelson, and with shout and
oath, with flash of pistol and ring of steel, the party swept through
on to the main deck. But the _San Nicolas_ had been boarded also at
other points. "The first man who jumped into the enemy's
mizzen-chains," says Nelson, "was the first lieutenant of the ship,
afterwards Captain Berry." The English sailors dropped from their
spritsail yard on to the Spaniard's deck, and by the time Nelson
reached the poop of the _San Nicolas_ he found his lieutenant in the
act of hauling down the Spanish flag. Nelson proceeded to collect the
swords of the Spanish officers, when a fire was opened upon them from
the stern gallery of the admiral's ship, the _San Josef_, of 112 guns,
whose sides were grinding against those of the _San Nicolas_. What
could Nelson do? To keep his prize he must assault a still bigger
ship. Of course he never hesitated! He flung his boarders up the side
of the huge _San Josef_, but he himself had to be assisted to climb the
main chains of that vessel, his lieutenant this time dutifully
assisting his commodore up instead of indecorously going ahead of him.
"At this moment," as Nelson records the incident, "a Spanish officer
looked over the quarterdeck rail and said they surrendered. It was not
long before I was on the quarter-deck, where the Spanish captain, with
a bow, presented me his sword, and said the admiral was dying of his
wounds. I asked him, on his honour, if the ship was surrendered. He
declared she was; on which I gave him my hand, and desired him to call
on his officers and ship's company and tell them of it, which he did;
and on the quarterdeck of a Spanish first-rate--extravagant as the
story may seem--did I receive the swords of vanquished Spaniards,
which, as I received, I gave to William Fearney, one of my bargemen,
who put them with the greatest _sang-froid_ under his arm," a circle of
"old Agamemnons," with smoke-blackened faces, looking on in grim
approval.

This is the story of how a British fleet of fifteen vessels defeated a
Spanish fleet of twenty-seven, and captured four of their finest ships.
It is the story, too, of how a single English ship, the smallest 74 in
the flee