"Nelson!" cried Captain Acton, in a voice subdued by reverence for the name it pronounced, addressing his daughter. "We must run down and have a look at him. The deviation need not be above two or three miles, which will not cause us to lose sight of the _Minorca_ by diverting us from her track. Make all sail again, Captain Weaver, and head for that flag-ship. You can see her: she is to windward of the ship with the stun-sails." All sail was immediately made on the schooner. And with a fine dancing motion thrown into her by the swell, her coppered sides slipped nimbly through the water, graced by the frolic of foam sheared out of the feathering ripples by the sharp stem. It was not very long before the eleven sail of the line with their attendant frigates were swelling large, bristling, and close to the _Aurora_, at whose signal halliards stood two sailors who dipped to such battle-ships as the schooner passed receiving the acknowledgment of small ensigns gaff-ended, and then hauled down to be hoisted no more. The picture was full of a grandeur that borrowed majesty from the sense of the power and the empire the ships symbolised. They were lordly in slow motion; they bowed to the swell as though in lofty homage to their mistress the sea; they were terrible in triple rows of cannon and by virtue of the traditional magnificent spirit, silent and concealed behind their lofty and invincible defences. It was the breakfast hour, but the people aboard the _Aurora_ were very willing to wait to break their fast. Not a man but was fascinated by the sight and presence of that tall, majestic ship out there, with the little flag at the fore. For Nelson--the Nelson of the North, of Aboukir Bay, of Teneriffe, of St Vincent, the Nelson of a hundred wounds, the first of all sea chieftains in the history of the world, Nelson, the truest sailor, the kindest shipmate, the man of the purest and loftiest spirit of chivalry and patriotism that ever stepped the planks of a ship's decks--this great, this sublime hero, to be even greater and sublimer in his victorious and immortal death a few months later--_Nelson was in her_! As the schooner, swifter by two to one than the battle-ships, passed onwards on her road to the _Victory_, the Admiral and Captain Acton recognised some of the three-deckers in which they had served as midshipmen. "There's the old _Canopus_!" cried the Admiral. "Lord, what a shivering recollection I have of her main topmast cross-trees!" "And there's the _Bellisle_," said Captain Acton. "I was in her"--and he named the period to his daughter, whom he addressed, but who seemed to have no eyes for any ship but the _Victory_. Other ships, the two retired naval officers knew, were the _Superb_, _Spencer_, _Swiftsure_, and _Leviathan_.