As Napoleon in the gathering darkness galloped off the field, with the wreck and tumult of his shattered army about him, there remained to his life only those six ignoble years at St. Helena. But Wellington was still in his very prime. He was only forty-six years old, and there awaited him thirty-seven years of honoured life, till, "to the noise of the mourning of a mighty nation," he was laid beside Nelson in the crypt of St. Paul's, and Tennyson sang his requiem:-- "O good grey head, which all men knew, O voice from which their omens all men drew, O iron nerve, to true occasion true; O fall'n at length that tower of strength Which stood four-square to all the winds that blew." THE NIGHT ATTACK OFF CADIZ "'Captain,' they cry, 'the fight is done, They bid you send your sword!' And he answered, 'Grapple her stern and bow. They have asked for the steel. They shall have it now; Out cutlasses, and board!'" --KIPLING. On the morning of July 3, 1801, a curious scene, which might almost be described as a sea comedy, was being transacted off the coast of Alicante. Three huge French line-of-battle ships were manoeuvring and firing round a tiny little British brig-of-war. It was like three mastiffs worrying a mouse. The brig was Lord Cochrane's famous little _Speedy_, a craft so tiny that its commander could carry its entire broadside in his own pockets, and when he shaved himself in his cabin, had to put his head through the skylight and his shaving-box on the quarter-deck, in order to stand upright.