That took place just as Captain Lucas was about to make an attempt to board the _Victory_. His musketry from the tops seemed to have almost cleared the _Victory's_ upper decks of men, and, mad as was the idea of so settling with a British first-rate, and Lord Nelson's flagship to boot, the captain of the _Redoutable_ actually entertained it. A sweeping _mitraille_ of grape from the 68-pounder carronade on the _Victory's_ forecastle, fired into the thick of the French boarders as they crowded on the gangways from below, did not daunt him, and he still persevered after the first rush had been checked by the impossibility of getting across the space between the bulwarks of the two ships. That difficulty Captain Lucas saw his way to meet. 'I gave the order,' he says, 'to cut the supports of the main yard and to cause it to serve as a bridge. Midshipman Yon and four seamen sprang on board by means of the anchor of the _Victory_, and we observed that there was no one left in the batteries. At that moment, when our men were hastening to follow, the ship _Temeraire_, which had noticed that the _Victory_ fought no longer, and that she would be captured without fail, came full sail on our starboard side, and we were subjected to the full fire of her artillery.' It proved for the _Redoutable_, in the language of the prize-ring, a 'knock-out' blow. As the _Temeraire_ came into collision with the _Redoutable_ she fired her entire broadside, double-shotted, full into the French boarding-parties as they stood massed thickly and packed along the _Redoutable's_ upper decks from end to end. It meant instant annihilation. It was a massacre. The awful tornado of the _Temeraire's_ fire swept the _Redoutable's_ crowded decks clear of men, as a garden broom sweeps a path clear of autumn leaves. It struck down everything. At one blow it hurled into eternity nearly a third of the _Redoutable's_ whole crew. Midshipman Yon, we are told, disappeared, and was never seen again. Lieutenant Dupotet, at the head of the boarders, was struck down, mangled and dying. Captain Lucas himself received an ugly flesh wound--his first after seeing service in nine battles. Speaking of the _Temeraire's_ onslaught Captain Lucas in his official report says: 'It is impossible to describe the carnage produced by the murderous broadside of this ship; more than 200 of our brave men were killed or wounded; I was wounded also at the same time, but not sufficiently to prevent me staying at my post.' [Illustration: CAPTAIN LUCAS (From the Portrait in Hennequin's _Biographie Maritime_)]