The French line was irregular at this point, the ships lying, in some instances, two or three deep, and this made the business of "cutting" the line difficult. As Nelson could not pick out the French flagship, he said to Hardy, "Take your choice, go on board which you please;" and Hardy pointed the stern of the Victory towards a gap between the _Redoutable_, a 74-gun ship, and the _Bucentaure_. But the ship moved slowly. The fire upon it was tremendous. One shot drove a shower of splinters upon both Nelson and Hardy; nearly fifty men and officers had been killed or wounded; the Victory's sails were riddled, her studding-sail booms shot off close to the yard-arm, her mizzen-topmast, shot away. At one o'clock, however, the _Victory_ slowly moved past the stern of the _Bucentaure_, and a 68-pounder carronade on its forecastle, charged with a round shot and a keg of 500 musket balls, was fired into the cabin windows of the French ship. Then, as the great ship moved on, every gun of the remaining fifty that formed its broadside--some of them double and treble loaded--was fired through the Frenchman's cabin windows. The dust from the crumpled woodwork of the _Bucentaure's_ stern covered the persons of Nelson and the group of officers standing on the _Victory's_ quarter-deck, while the British sailors welcomed with a fierce shout the crash their flying shot made within the Frenchman's hull. The _Bucentaure_, as it happened--though Nelson was ignorant of the fact--was the French flagship; and after the battle its officers declared that by this single broadside, out of its crew of nearly 1000 men, nearly 400 were struck down, and no less than twenty guns dismounted! But the _Neptune_, a fine French 80-gun ship, lay right across the water-lane up which the _Victory_ was moving, and it poured upon the British ship two raking broadsides of the most deadly quality. The _Victory_, however, moved on unflinchingly, and the _Neptune_, fearing to be run aboard by the British ship, set her jib and moved ahead; then the _Victory_ swung to starboard on to the _Redoutable_. The French ship fired one hurried broadside, and promptly shut her lower-deck ports, fearing the British sailors would board through them. No fewer, indeed, than five French line-of-battle ships during the fight, finding themselves grinding sides with British ships, adopted the same course--an expressive testimony to the enterprising quality of British sailors. The _Victory_, however, with her lower-deck guns actually touching the side of the _Redoutable_, still kept them in full and quick action; but at each of the lower-deck ports stood a sailor with a bucket of water, and when the gun was fired--its muzzle touching the wooden sides of the _Redoutable_--the water was dashed upon the ragged hole made by the shot, to prevent the Frenchman taking fire and both ships being consumed.