accident in the last hour of the battle, and was now blazing fiercely from stem to stern, sending off heavy volumes of dense black smoke into the clear evening air, as the hapless vessel lay burning to the water's edge, or until the flames should reach the magazine. Over yonder a group of British ships, several with topmasts and yards gone, were closing on a big three-decker that had only her foremast left standing, Collingwood's _Royal Sovereign_. Nearer, the battered ships of Nelson's column formed another group, collecting round the _Victory_. Far to the north-west, towards Cadiz, could be seen the sails of eleven ships that were escaping with Gravina. Among these fugitives was the _Temeraire's_ first antagonist, the French _Neptune_, which, by carefully avoiding every attempt to bring her to close action, had got through the battle with a loss of only 13 men killed and 37 wounded. Black dots against the western sky, now ablaze in all the wild glory of a stormy October sunset, Dumanoir's flying ships could be seen--four in number--standing away into the Atlantic. The fifth ship of the group, the Spanish _Neptuno_, had been cut off and taken as the battle closed by the British _Minotaur_ and _Spartiate_. All the while during the final scene Nelson's flag remained flying at the _Victory's_ mast-head--although the Admiral had for nearly an hour now been lying dead. Those on board were, perhaps, loth to lower it before they must. In accordance with one of the old fighting instructions of the navy, the commander-in-chief's ship in action kept her Admiral's flag flying in all circumstances until the battle was over, whatever might have happened to the Admiral meantime. Whether he was disabled or whether he was killed, the flag must still fly to the end of the action in its accustomed place. As a fact, at Trafalgar, Flag-Captain Hardy of the _Victory_ had had the entire handling of the British fleet from the moment that Nelson was struck down until the last shot had been fired. His descendants treasure to this day the silver pencil-case that Hardy 'used to write down signals during the battle of Trafalgar, _with the marks of his teeth on it made in moments of excitement_!' It was shown at the Naval Exhibition at Chelsea in 1891, one newspaper speaking of it as 'something like a relic!' Nelson's flag flew till sunset, and, in consequence, except the _Victory_ and the _Royal Sovereign_, to which Captain Hardy, of course, had sent the news specially, and Captain Blackwood's _Euryalus_, barely half a dozen ships of the fleet were aware of Nelson's death that night; or even that he had been wounded. In the _Temeraire_ herself the news was not known, owing to the dispersal of the fleet caused by the stormy weather of the three following days, until the 24th, when Captain Harvey first learnt what had happened by a casual signal from the _Defiance_.