Powerless either to save their ship or launch their boats, the remnant of the _Orient’s_ crew could only fling themselves into the water and trust to the mingled boats of friends and foes to pick them up. The ships nearest slipped their cables, and tried to edge away out of danger as the flames enveloped the towering masts, burning with amazing fierceness in the tarred rigging and lighting up the desert for miles inland, while the hull became a furnace. Suddenly, at a quarter before ten, a volcano-like explosion tore the glowing old battle-ship asunder, a torrent of burning fragments was hurled aloft,—with how many dead heroes, no one knows,—and double darkness closed over the appalling scene. Then the black waves were lighted anew by the flash of cannon and musketry, and the battle went on until daylight before the last of the French vessels had been conquered, while two of them had managed to steal away. Of the other eleven one had been burned and sunk, three had gone ashore, where one burned, and the remainder had been crushed into surrendering. The English did not lose a single vessel, for even the dismantled _Bellerophon_ could float, and their loss in men was far less than that of the French. [Illustration: DRAWN BY WARREN SHEPPARD. THE “THESEUS” ATTACKING THE “GUERRIÈRE.”] Historians tell us that this victory was the grandest naval success on record. Nelson himself said that victory was too weak a term—it was a catastrophe. It put an end at once to Napoleon’s campaign in Egypt, and to all his designs against India. It gave the command of the Mediterranean to England, emboldened Turkey and Russia to recover the Ionian Islands, gave Naples a chance to assert herself, and aroused Austria and Russia to resist by armies Napoleon’s aggressions, so that from this battle dates his downfall. Its influence soon reached the United States, and caused it to break through its neutrality and begin upon the sea that naval war with France of which we hear very little nowadays, but which gave to our own naval record such glorious incidents as Truxton’s battles in the _Constellation_ with _L’Insurgente_ and _La Vengeance_, and Captain Little’s capture, in the corvette _Boston_, of the French sloop-of-war _Le Berceau_. Nelson remained in the Mediterranean for some years, by no means idle, and then did service of extraordinary value elsewhere, as at the battle of Copenhagen, which in a single remarkable conflict put an end to a northern conspiracy against England, and saved her a vast deal of trouble; but his final service was the most momentous of all, at any rate for the fortunes of Great Britain alone, and this was the winning of the battle of Trafalgar.