Rodney was on the quarter-deck, seated for most of the time in an arm-chair. He was badly crippled after his last attack of gout, from which he had hardly recovered. Every now and again the admiral would rise and pass aft through his cabin under the poop to the stern gallery to look out astern and see what might be made out of the battle from there, or go forward to the gangway at the side, clear of the piled-up hammocks on the quarter-deck bulwarks, to look out ahead. His gout, it would seem, would not let him mount the ladder to the poop. It was during one of the admiral's intervals of rest probably, while he was sitting down for a few minutes in the middle of the men as they worked the quarter-deck guns, that Rodney, as we are told, made the discovery that one of the gunners there was a woman. Brought up on the spot before the admiral and taxed with disobedience of orders in not staying to help in the cockpit, the delinquent threw herself on Rodney's mercy. She was, she said, a sailor's wife. Her husband had been wounded and carried below, whereupon she had come up to take his place at his gun. It was of course a breach of discipline, and Rodney reprimanded the woman sharply. Then he softened, gave her ten guineas, and sent her down to nurse her husband. Here is another incidental personal detail about Rodney on that morning. In one of his passings to and fro, between the quarter-deck and the stern walk, as Rodney went through his cabin he saw some lemons lying on a side table. The old gentleman was hot and his throat parched with the sulphurous fumes of the all-pervading powder smoke. He called to a midshipman near by to make him a glass of lemonade. The boy did so, and having nothing to stir the glass with, picked up a knife on the table that had been used by some one for cutting up a lemon. Quite happy, he stirred the admiral's drink with the black and sticky blade. Rodney turned and caught sight of the performance. 'Child, child!' he exclaimed, with a grimace, as the boy was about to present the glass to him, 'that may do for the midshipmen's mess. Drink the stuff yourself and go and send my steward here!' The midshipman obeyed both orders.