"How would it do, sir, if we reduced our sail to working order and passed under her stern, and laid ourselves on the inside of the next? We shall be a bit awkwardly placed if we lay ourselves alongside of the third of their line, because we shall be raked by the fourth." "No, Berry; it would never do for the Admiral to be afraid of a broadside." This was very fine and completely in the spirit of our Admiral; but I can tell you that we had to pay for it, for while we had been coming up the _Aquilon_ was double shotting her guns for us. "Shorten sail," was the order, and "Back the main topsail." As we laid ourselves alongside of the third ship--that was the _Spartiate_, the fourth--that was the _Aquilon_, raked us with double-shotted guns. The concussion was awful; the crashing of masts and yards, and the yells and death groans which arose from our bows, attested the precision of their aim. The men in the forecastle would have been fairly staggered if it had not been for Will. I could see St. Vincent's men looking as if they had received their death-warrant; and I am sure I felt quite sick, as I was covered with human blood spouting from the quivering limbs and mangled bodies all round. But Will, who was scarce nineteen, with colour unchanged and eyes flashing brighter, exposed himself in the most reckless and daring manner, and this in spite not only of the cannonade but of a tremendous fire of musketry. Time after time our forward guns were cleared for a minute and re-manned. There was the usual serio-comedy which creeps into the most awful moments of our lives; for there in the midst of it all was a marine lying, apparently dead, on the deck. Not being able to see how he came by his death, Will turned him over to examine, and found that he was not only alive but uninjured. Drawing his sword Will obliged the man to rise under pain of immediate death; and, you would not believe it, the poor wretch had scarcely stood upright, when a bar that connects grape shot passed through both thigh-bones and could not be extricated. After two days of torture death relieved his sufferings. While Will himself stood upright and uninjured, and while he was attending to this one, the marine who stood on his other side, waiting to take his order, had his head carried off by a thirty-two pounder, while a large splinter from the foremast stripped the right thigh-bone of the midshipman who was with him from the knee-pan to the hip. He lived to the next day, and then sank under his sufferings. By this we were nearly unmanageable, and cracking masts and yards in close contact with the _Spartiate_. Presently the Admiral came along, cool as an orange; and though I was getting a little accustomed now to the awful scene that was going on round me, I was not particularly sorry when he called to me: "Youngster, get the number of wounded from the surgeon."