The battle was over--although near by there were still some three or four of the enemy who had not yet gone through the formality of lowering their ensigns. They were feebly firing, though they could neither fight nor fly. All could see that the inevitable end could hardly be long deferred. The knife was already at the throats of the last of the destined victims of the day. The _Temeraire's_ last gun, as a fact, went at the same instant that Nelson, in the cockpit of the _Victory_, breathed his last. Three-quarters of an hour later all resistance on the part of the enemy had ceased, and there was a silence on the sea. Trafalgar had been fought and won. Seventeen of the enemy had surrendered--eight French ships and nine Spaniards. One French ship, in addition, was on fire and her crew were being rescued by the boats of the nearest British ships. The remainder of the enemy had run out of the battle and were in full flight, some in one direction, some in another. The scene all round at that moment, as it appeared from the _Temeraire_, was one that the last survivor of Trafalgar could hardly have forgotten to his dying day-- Nobly, nobly, Cape Saint Vincent to the north-west died away, Sunset ran, one glorious blood-red, reeking into Cadiz Bay, Bluish 'mid the burning water, full in face, Trafalgar lay. Cape Trafalgar was sighted from off the deck, we are told, just as the battle was ending, and was made at about eight miles off. On either hand lay ships with shattered bulwarks and hulls gashed all over and riddled from the water-line upwards with gaping and splintered shot-holes, the yellow strakes between the ports seared and scorched by the back-blast from the guns and crusted over with half-burned powder. Some also had several of their ports knocked into one, or their port-lids unhung or wrenched away; others had their figure-heads clean gone, and their bowsprits smashed off short; others, in addition, had their stern and quarter galleries beaten in; and there were ugly smears and stains down the sides of all where the scuppers opened overboard. No fewer than nine ships were lying entirely dismantled--'ras comme des pontons,' as a Frenchman put it. In these everything on deck above the bulwarks was gone, shorn roughly off--rigging, spars, masts--everything. A short stump, only a few feet high, remained in one or two of the ships to show where a tall mast had that morning stood--that was all. All else had disappeared--smashed down, shot by the board and lying over the sides amid the tangled confusion of broken spars, torn rigging, and ragged sails. Eight of the dismasted ships were trophies of the battle, French or Spanish prizes--the _Bucentaure_ and the _Santisima Trinidad_ among them. The ninth was a British ship, the cruelly battered _Belleisle_, which had undergone a terrific mauling. The burning ship was the French _Achille_, which lay not far off--a mass of flames from end to end. She had been set on fire by