No captain, perhaps, ever fought his ship better against overwhelming odds than Captain Lucas fought the _Redoutable_ at Trafalgar. Napoleon had him specially exchanged as soon as possible, and sent for him to St. Cloud where, in the presence of the assembled _Etat Major_, he decorated him with his own hand with the Grand Cross of the Legion of Honour.[106] 'Had my other captains,' said the Emperor, 'behaved as you did, the event of the battle would have been very different.' There is an ironclad _Redoutable_ in the French navy to-day which bears the name in remembrance of the gallant two-decker lost with honour at Trafalgar. The _Temeraire_, however, had still one of her first foes left. The French _Neptune_ was still dangerously near. She was lying where she had been from the first, pounding away steadily into the _Temeraire_ from a short distance off, 'willing to wound but still afraid to strike.' It says little for the courage of the French captain that he had not ventured to force home an attack at close quarters, and less still for the gunnery of his men that it had not before this reduced the _Temeraire_ to a sinking state. Not far off, also, there was, as the _Temeraire's_ log notes, 'a Spanish two-decked ship ... on the larboard bow or nearly ahead, who had raked us during great part of the action.' On seeing the _Victory_ move off, the French _Neptune_ apparently took heart of grace. She now made as if she really meant at last to close with the _Temeraire_. It was not very brave of the _Neptune_, seeing how the _Temeraire_ was situated, with five-sixths of her guns blocked in by the two prizes alongside. But all the same the _Temeraire_ did her best to give the _Neptune_ a warm reception. By clearing away the wreckage from aloft that overlay most of the _Temeraire's_ upper-deck guns, Captain Harvey was able to get some of these into action and keep the _Neptune_ off. Then a few minutes later assistance arrived. The approach of the _Leviathan_, a British seventy-four, once more daunted the _Neptune_, and she sheered off and withdrew altogether from the scene. After that came a well-earned breathing space for the _Temeraire_ and her gallant crew, a brief half-hour's pause that Captain Harvey and his men made use of in putting prize-crews in charge of the _Redoutable_ and _Fougueux_, and doing what they could towards repairing their own damages and clearing away their wrecked top-hamper. The _Sirius_ frigate during this spell, in response to a signal from Captain Harvey, took the _Temeraire_ and her prizes in tow. A note in the _Temeraire's_ log shows how intermixed some of the British ships had now got. 'The _Royal Sovereign_,' it says, 'was a short distance to leeward, and the _Colossus_, dismasted, with one of the enemy's two-deckers on board of her, who had struck, and appeared to be Spanish.'