The fight between the two ships was marked by many heroic incidents. During the action the very invalids in the sick-bay of the _Phoenix_ crept from their cots and tried to take some feeble part in the fight. The purser is not usually part of the fighting staff of a ship, but the acting purser of the _Phoenix_, while her captain was in the smoke-filled cabin below, trying to rig up a gun to bear on the _Didon_, took charge of the quarter-deck, kept his post right opposite the brazen mouth of the great carronade we have described, and, with a few marines, kept down the fire. A little middy had the distinction of saving his captain's life. The _Didon's_ bowsprit was thrust, like the shaft of a gigantic lance, over the quarter of the _Phoenix_, and a Frenchman, lying along it, levelled his musket at Captain Baker, not six paces distant, and took deliberate aim. A middy named Phillips, armed with a musket as big as himself, saw the levelled piece of the Frenchman; he gave his captain an unceremonious jostle aside just as the Frenchman's musket flashed, and with almost the same movement discharged his own piece at the enemy. The French bullet tore off the rim of Captain Baker's hat, but the body of the man who fired it fell with a splash betwixt the two ships into the water. Here was a story, indeed, for a middy to tell, to the admiration of all the gun-rooms in the fleet. The middy of the period, however, was half imp, half hero. Another youthful Nelson, aetat. sixteen, at the hottest stage of the fight--probably at the moment the acting-purser was in command on the quarter-deck--found an opportunity of getting at the purser's stores. With jaws widely distended, he was in the act of sucking--in the fashion so delightful to boys--a huge orange, when a musket ball, after passing through the head of a seaman, went clean through both the youth's distended cheeks, and this without touching a single tooth. Whether this affected the flavour of the orange is not told, but the historian gravely records that "when the wound in each cheek healed, a pair of not unseemly dimples remained." Happy middy! He would scarcely envy Nelson his peerage. [Transcriber's note: The word "aetat." in the above paragraph is an abbreviation of the Latin "aetatis", meaning "aged".] THE BLOOD-STAINED HILL OF BUSACO "Who would not fight for England? Who would not fling a life I' the ring, to meet a tyrant's gage, And glory in the strife? * * * * * Now, fair befall our England, On her proud and perilous road; And woe and wail to those who make Her footprints red with blood! Up with our red-cross banner--roll A thunder-peal of drums! Fight on there, every valiant soul, And, courage! England comes! Now, fair befall our England, On her proud and perilous road; And woe and wail to those who make Her footprints red with blood!