"Before, by all means, if you please, sir. Run down and get it, and I'll heave the log for you in the meantime, when we shall have a good hour without interruption, for the sea-breeze will be steady, and we are under easy sail." I brought up a stiff glass of grog, which Swinburne tossed off, and as he finished it, sighed deeply as if in sorrow that there was no more. Having stowed away the tumbler in one of the cap stern holes for the present, we sat down upon a coil of ropes under the weather bulwarks, and Swinburne, replacing his quid of tobacco, commenced as follows:-- "Well, Mr Simple, as I told you before, old Jervis started with all his fleet for Cape St. Vincent. We lost one of our fleet--and a three-decker, too--the _St. George_; she took the ground, and was obliged to go back to Lisbon; but we soon afterwards were joined by five sail of the line, sent out from England, so that we mustered fifteen sail in all. We had like to lose another of our mess, for d'ye see, the old _Culloden_ and _Colossus_ fell foul of each other, and the _Culloden_ had the worst on it, but Troubridge, who commanded her, was not a man to shy his work, and ax to go in to refit, when there was a chance of meeting the enemy--so he patched her up somehow or another, and reported himself ready for action the very next day. Ready for action he always was, that's sure enough, but whether his ship was in a fit state to go into action, is quite another thing. But as the sailors used to say in joking, he was a _true bridge_, and you might trust to him; which meant as much as to say, that he knew how to take his ship into action, and how to fight her when he was fairly in it. I think it was the next day that Cockburn joined us in the _Minerve_, and he brought Nelson along with him, with the intelligence that the Dons had chased him, and that the whole Spanish fleet was out in pursuit of us. Well, Mr Simple, you may guess we were not a little happy in the _Captain_, when Nelson joined us, as we knew that if we fell in with the Spaniards, our ship would cut a figure--and so she did, sure enough. That was on the morning of the 13th, and old Jervis made the signal to prepare for action, and keep close order, which means, to have your flying jib-boom in at the starn windows of the ship ahead of you; and we did keep close order, for a man might have walked right round from one ship to the other, either lee or weather line of the fleet. I shan't forget that night, Mr Simple, as long as I live and breathe. Every now and then we heard the signal guns of the Spanish fleet booming at a distance to windward of us, and you may guess how our hearts leaped at the sound, and how we watched with all our ears for the next gun that was fired, trying to make out their bearings and distance, as we assembled in little knots upon the booms and weather gangway. It was my middle watch, and I was signalman at the time, so of course I had no time to take a caulk if I was inclined.