We were still in two lines ahead and were making no reply at all to the French fire. We could not understand, when we had got within 3000 yards, why the Admiral did not put us in line abreast and open fire. But in the middle of our wonder we suddenly saw the French ships open out to right and left, and before we knew where we were the whole mass of the battle-ships were coming right down upon us. We saw at once that it was in anticipation of some such manœuvre that we had not quitted our first formation. But the wisdom of our Admirals was at once shown. Orders were given to train the guns abeam and to let the enemy have it at the closest range, abstaining from fire till then. The French, on the other hand, never ceased to fire; but the smoke they made so surrounded them that it was plain they were wasting their ammunition, and did not see so well where they were going. But their rapidity of approach was tremendous, and I could note it as I had no guns to look after and could see nearly all round from the sheltered spot I had chosen. My ship was near the middle of the port line, and I soon saw the great jet of smoke from the _Trafalgar_, followed by the roar which denoted the simultaneous discharge of a whole broadside. In less than half a minute there was the puff and the roar of the second ship, the _Collingwood_, and almost immediately I saw that the _Nile_, at the head of the other line, had fired. But then I directly saw what I had not been prepared for. I saw the _Nile_ turning round sharp to port, and, looking to the head of my own line, I saw the _Trafalgar_ steaming along our line on the opposite course to ours. It flashed through my mind like a shot, that every ship was turning round after she had fired her broadside, and that consequently the heads of the French lines or groups, after running the gauntlet of our lines, would be met by the ships that had first fired on them, and that as the battle had begun by the ships passing in opposite directions, it would be continued by all the ships with their heads in the same direction. I do not pretend to say that I knew what all this meant at the moment; indeed, I did not know anything in another minute, for the roar and shake of the whole of our guns, trained on the port beam, knocked the power of thinking out of me. Recovering myself in a cloud of choking smoke, I was first aware that there must have been very little reply to our fire, but two signalmen were stretched on the deck beside me, both quite still; one with his shoulder torn entirely away, and the other bleeding profusely from a wound in his head. There were also, as if through the ship, new sorts of voices which, in hurried and confused utterance, warned me that there were death and wounds elsewhere.