Nelson's plan allowed his captains a large discretion in the choice of their antagonists. Each British ship had to follow the wake of her leader till she reached the enemy's line, then her captain was free to choose his own foe--which, naturally, was the biggest Frenchman or Spaniard in sight. And the huge _Santissima Trinidad_, of course, attracted the eager attention of the ships that immediately followed the _Victory_. The Spaniard carried 140 guns, and in that swaying continent of fighting ships, towered like a giant amongst dwarfs. The _Neptune_, the _Leviathan_, and the _Conqueror_, in turn, hung on the quarter or broadside of the gigantic Spaniard, scourged it with fire, and then drifted off to engage in a fiery wrestle with some other antagonist. By half-past two the Spanish four-decker was a mastless wreck. The _Neptune_ at that moment was hanging on her bow, the _Conqueror_ on her quarter. "This tremendous fabric," says an account written by an officer on board the Conqueror, "gave a deep roll, with a swell to leeward, then back to windward, and on her return every mast went by the board, leaving her an unmanageable hulk on the water. Her immense topsails had every reef out, her royals were sheeted home but lowered, and the falling of this majestic mass of spars, sails, and rigging plunging into the water at the muzzles of our guns, was one of the most magnificent sights I ever beheld." Directly after this a Spaniard waved an English union over the lee gangway of the _Santissima Trinidad_ in token of surrender; whereupon the _Conqueror_, scorning to waste time in taking possession of even a four-decker that had no longer any fight in it, pushed off in search of a new foe; while the _Neptune's_ crew proceeded to shift the tattered topsails of their ship for new ones, with as much coolness as though in a friendly port. The _Africa_, sixty-four, less than half the size of the Spaniard, presently came slowly up through the smoke, and fired into the Spanish ship; then seeing no flag flying, sent a lieutenant on board the mastless hulk to take possession. The Englishman climbed to the quarterdeck, all black with smoke and bloody with slaughter, and asked the solitary officer he found there whether or not the _Santissima Trinidad_ had surrendered. The ship, as a matter of fact, was drifting into the centre of a cluster of French and Spanish ships; so the Spaniard replied, "Non, non," at the same time pointing to the friendly ships upon which they were drifting. The Englishman had only half-a-dozen men with him, so he coolly returned to his boat, and the _Santissima Trinidad_ drifted like a log upon the water till half-past five P.M., when the _Prince_ put a prize crew on board.