landing-place, Nelson directed
the boats to cast off from each other, give a huzza, and push for the
shore. But the Spaniards were exceedingly well prepared; the alarm-bells
answered the huzza, and a fire of thirty or forty pieces of cannon,
with musketry from one end of the town to the other, opened upon the
invaders. Nothing, however, could check the intrepidity with which they
advanced. The night was exceedingly dark: most of the boats missed the
mole and went on shore through a raging surf, which stove all to the
left of it. The Admiral, Freemantle, Thompson, Bowen, and four or five
other boats, found the mole: they stormed it instantly, and carried it,
though it was defended, as they imagined, by 400 or 500 men. Its guns,
which were six-and-twenty pounders, were spiked; but such a heavy fire
of musketry and grape was kept up from the citadel and the houses at the
head of the mole, that the assailants could not advance, and nearly all
of them were killed or wounded.

In the act of stepping out of the boat, Nelson received a shot through
the right elbow, and fell; but as he fell he caught the sword, which he
had just drawn, in his left hand, determined never to part with it while
he lived, for it had belonged to his uncle, Captain Suckling, and he
valued it like a relic. Nisbet, who was close to him, placed him at the
bottom of the boat, and laid his hat over the shattered arm, lest the
sight of the blood, which gushed out in great abundance, should
increase his faintness. He then examined the wound, and taking some silk
handkerchiefs from his neck, bound them round tight above the lacerated
vessels. Had it not been for this presence of mind in his son-in-law,
Nelson must have perished. One of his bargemen, by name Level, tore his
shirt into shreds, and made a sling with them for the broken limb. They
then collected five other seamen, by whose assistance they succeeded at
length in getting the boat afloat; for it had grounded with the falling
tide. Nisbet took one of the oars and ordered the steersman to go
close under the guns of the battery, that they might be safe from its
tremendous fire. Hearing his voice, Nelson roused himself, and desired
to be lifted up in the boat that he might look about him. Nisbet raised
him up; but nothing could be seen except the firing of the guns on
shore, and what could be discerned by their flashes upon a stormy sea.
In a few minutes a general shriek was heard from the crew of the FO