In these glorious days it was more a question of men than ships; yet had England possessed one-half of her present fleet, she might have been the sole arbiter of the world's destinies. Nelson was the type of a true British sailor; and no finer tableau can be imagined, or one more gratifying to the pride of an ancient maritime race, than that scene on board of the Spanish ship _San Josef_, when the great Englishman, having captured the vessel after exclaiming, 'Westminster Abbey or victory,' received on the quarter-deck of the Spanish admiral's ship the swords of its officers. Behind him stood an old sailor of the _Agamemnon_, whom Nelson knew, and this man received the Spaniards' swords from the admiral and coolly bundled them up under his arm like so many sticks of wood, and within gunshot of twenty-two sail of the enemy's line. Nelson's generosity and indomitable courage were contagious, and made a hero of every man and boy in his fleet. At Aboukir he received what was thought to be a mortal wound over the only eye which he had left; and when he was removed to the cockpit, the surgeon immediately left the poor sailor he was attending, to wait on his distinguished commander; but Nelson, though _himself_ still in the hour of supreme pain, waved the doctor away: 'No,' said he calmly; 'I will take my turn with my brave fellows.' Nor would he suffer the wound to be touched until all who had been previously wounded were attended to. On the blowing up of the French ship _Orient_ at the same battle, the British sailors dragged all the drowning Frenchmen within reach into the port-holes of the English ships. In this act of humanity in the midst of the carnage caused by war, they had been preceded, however, by their great captain, who, notwithstanding his wound, on hearing that the French admiral's vessel was on fire, rushed from the cockpit to the deck, astonishing everybody by his sudden appearance, and ordered the boats to the 'assistance of the enemy.' A sailor standing near Nelson suddenly recognised in the sea, just beneath the bulwarks of the ship, the face of a Frenchman who had treated him kindly while a prisoner of war in France, and without the slightest hesitation, he leaped into the water and seized hold of the drowning man. The lives of both would have been sacrificed, had not Nelson, who had witnessed the brave act (without knowing the motive which prompted it), directed one of the boats to the spot. Acts of bravery and devotion to duty were of course not wanting on the side of the enemy. Captain Casabianca had been wounded by a splinter, and when the fire broke out, his son, a boy of ten years, refused to enter the boats into which the men were crowding, but stayed beside his wounded father, and with the help of one of the officers, when the fire advanced, the father and the boy got on to a floating mast. They were seen there just before the _Orient_ blew up, but must have sunk immediately afterwards.