When, I know not how long after, the idea of life dawned once more on my darkened spirit, I was conscious only of being miserably cold; indeed, this was the only fact that made me aware of my own existence, for I remembered nothing whatever of all that had happened and had not the slightest idea of where I was. When my mind began to get clearer and my senses recovered their functions I found that I was lying on the beach; some men were standing round me and watching me with interest. The first thing I heard was: “Poor little fellow!—he is coming round.”

By degrees I recovered my wits and, with them, my recollection of past events. My first thought was for Marcial, and I believe that the first words I spoke were an enquiry for him. But no one could tell me anything about him; I recognized some of the crew of the Rayo among the men on the beach and asked them where he was; they were all agreed that he must have perished. Then I wanted to know how I had been saved, but they would tell me nothing about that either. They gave me some liquor to drink, I know not what, and carried me to a neighboring hut, where, warmed by a good fire and cared for by an old woman, I soon felt quite well, though still rather weak. Meanwhile I learnt that another cutter had put out to reconnoitre the wreck of the Rayo and that of a French ship which had met with the same fate, and that they had picked me up still clinging to Marcial; they found that I could be saved but my companion was dead. I learnt too that a number of poor wretches had been drowned in trying to reach the coast. Then I wanted to know what had become of Malespina, but no one knew anything either of him or of his father. I enquired about the Santa Ana which, it appeared, had reached Cadiz in safety, so I determined to set out forthwith to join my master. We were at some distance from Cadiz, on the coast to the north of the Guadalquivir, I wanted therefore to start at once to make so long a journey. I took two days’ rest to recover my strength, and then set out for SanlÚcar, in the company of a sailor who was going the same way. We crossed the river on the morning of the 27th and then continued our walk, keeping along the coast. As my companion was a jolly, friendly fellow the journey was as pleasant as I could expect in the frame of mind I was in, grieved at Marcial’s death and depressed by the scenes I had so lately witnessed. As we walked on we discussed the battle and the shipwrecks that had ensued.

“A very good sailor was that old cripple,” said my companion. “But what possessed him to go to sea again with more than sixty years on his shoulders? It served him right to come to a bad end.”

“He was a brave seaman,” said I, “and had such a passion for fighting that even his infirmities could not keep him quiet when he had made up his mind to join the fleet.”

“Well, I have had enough of it for my part,” said the sailor. “I do not want to see any more fighting at sea. The King pays us badly, and then, if you are maimed or crippled—good-bye to you—I know nothing about you—I never set eyes on you in my life.—Perhaps you don’t believe me when I tell you the King pays his men so badly? But I can tell you this: most of the officers in command of the ships that went into action on the 21st had seen no pay for months. Only last year there was a navy captain at Cadiz who went as waiter in an inn because he had no other way of keeping himself or his children. His friends found him out though he tried to conceal his misery, and they succeeded at last in getting him out of his degrading position. Such things do not happen in any other country in the world; and then we are horrified at finding ourselves beaten by the English! As to the arsenals, I will say nothing about them; they are empty and it is of no use to hope for money from Madrid—not a cuarto comes this way. All the King’s revenues are spent in paying the court officials, and chief among them the Prince of Peace; who gets 40,000 dollars as Counsellor of the Realm, Secretary of State, Captain-General, and Sergeant-Major of the Guards.—No, say I, I have had enough of serving the King. I am going home to my wife and children, for I have served my time and in a few days they must give me my papers.”

“But you have nothing to complain of friend,” said I, “since you were on board the Rayo which hardly did any fighting.”

“I was not in the Rayo but in the Bahama, one of the ships that fought hardest and longest.”

“She was taken and her captain killed, if I remember rightly.”

“Aye, so it was,” he said. “I could cry over it when I think of him—Don Dionisio AlcalÁ Galiano, the bravest seaman in the fleet. Well, he was a stern commander; he never overlooked the smallest fault, and yet his very severity made us love him all the more, for a captain who is feared for his severity—if his severity is unfailingly just—inspires respect and wins the affection of his men. I can honestly say that a more noble and generous gentleman than Don Dionisio AlcalÁ Galiano was never born. And when he wanted to do a civility to his friends he did not do it by halves; once, out in Havana he spent ten thousand dollars on a supper he gave on board ship.”

“He was a first-rate seaman too, I have heard.”

“Ah, that he was. And he was more learned than Merlin and all the Fathers of the Church. He made no end of maps, and discovered Lord knows how many countries out there, where it is as hot as hell itself! And then they send men like these out to fight and to be killed like a parcel of cabin-boys. I will just tell you what happened on board the Bahama. As soon as the fighting began Don Dionisio AlcalÁ Galiano knew we must be beaten on account of that infernal trick of turning the ships round—we were in the reserve and had been in the rear. Nelson, who was certainly no fool, looked along our line, and he said: ‘If we cut them through at two separate points, and keep them between two fires, hardly a ship will escape me.’ And so he did, blast him; and as our line was so long the head could never help the tail. He fought us in detachments, attacking us in two wedge-shaped columns which, as I have heard say, were the tactics adopted by the great Moorish general, Alexander the Great, and now used by Napoleon. It is very certain, at any rate, that they got round us and cut us in three, and fought us ship to ship in such a manner that we could not support or help each other; every Spaniard had to deal with three or four Englishmen.

“Well, so you see the Bahama was one of the first to be under fire. Galiano reviewed the crew at noon, went round the gun-decks, and made us a speech in which he said: ‘Gentlemen, you all know that our flag is nailed to the mast.’ Yes, we all knew the sort of man our Captain was, and we were not at all surprised to hear it. Then he turned to the captain of the marines, Don Alonso Butron, ‘I charge you to defend it,’ he said. ‘No Galiano ever surrenders and no Butron should either.’

“‘What a pity it is,’ said I, ‘that such men should not have had a leader worthy of such courage, since they could not themselves conduct the fleet.’

“Aye, it is a pity, and you shall hear what happened. The battle began, and you know something of what it was like if you were on board the Trinidad. The ships riddled us with broadsides to port and starboard. The wounded fell like flies from the very first, and the captain first had a bad bruise on his foot and then a splinter struck his head and hurt him badly. But do you think he would give in, or submit to be plastered with ointment? Not a bit of it; he staid on the quarter-deck, just as if nothing had happened, though many a man he loved truly fell close to him never to stand up again. AlcalÁ Galiano gave his orders and directed his guns as if we had been firing a salute at a review. A spent ball knocked his telescope out of his hand and that made him laugh. I fancy I can see him now; the blood from his wound stained his uniform and his hands and he cared no more than if it had been drops of salt-water splashed up from the sea. He was a man of great spirit and a hasty temper; he shouted out his orders so positively that if we had not obeyed them because it was our duty, we should have done so out of sheer alarm.—But suddenly it was all over with him.—He was struck in the head by a shot and instantly killed.

“The fight was not at an end, but all our heart in it was gone. When our beloved captain fell the officers covered his body that we men might not see it, but we all knew at once what had happened, and after a short and desperate struggle for the honor of our flag, the Bahama surrendered to the English who carried her off to Gibraltar if she did not go to the bottom on the way, as I rather suspect she did.”

After giving this history and telling me how he had been transferred from the Bahama to the Santa Ana, my companion sighed deeply and was silent for some time. However, as the way was long and dull I tried to reopen the conversation and I began telling him what I myself had seen, and how I had at last been put on board the Rayo with young Malespina.

“Ah!” said he. “Was he a young artillery officer who was transferred to the sloop to be taken to shore on the night of the 23d?”

“The very same,” said I. “But no one has been able to tell me for certain what became of him.”

“He was one of a party in the second boat which could not get to shore; some of those who were whole and strong contrived to escape, and among them that young officer’s father; but all the wounded were drowned, as you may easily suppose, as the poor souls of course could not swim to land.” I was shocked to hear of Don Rafael’s death, and the thought of the grief it would be to my hapless and adored little mistress quite overcame me, choking every mean and jealous feeling.

“What a dreadful thing!” I exclaimed. “And is it my misfortune to have to carry the news to his sorrowing friends? But, tell me, are you certain of the facts?”

“I saw his father with my own eyes, lamenting bitterly and telling all the details of the catastrophe with such distress it was enough to break your heart. From what he said he seemed to have saved everybody on board the boat, and he declared that if he had saved his son it would have been at the cost of the lives of all the others, so he chose, on the whole, to preserve the lives of the greatest number, even in sacrificing that of his son, and he did so. He must be a singularly humane man, and wonderfully brave and dexterous.” But I was so deeply distressed that I could not discuss the subject. Marcial dead, Malespina dead! What terrible news to take home to my master’s house. For a moment my mind was almost made up not to return to Cadiz; I would leave it to chance or to public rumor to carry the report to the sad hearts that were waiting in such painful suspense. However, I was bound to present myself before Don Alonso and give him some account of my proceedings.

At length we reached Rota and there embarked for Cadiz. It is impossible to describe the commotion produced by the report of the disaster to our fleet. News of the details had come in by degrees, and by this time the fate of most of our ships was known, though what had become of many men and even whole crews had not been ascertained. The streets were full of distressing scenes at every turn, where some one who had come off scot-free stood telling off the deaths he knew of, and the names of those who would be seen no more. The populace crowded down to the quays to see the wounded as they came on shore, hoping to recognize a father, husband, son or brother. There were episodes of frantic joy mingled with shrieks of dismay and bitter cries of disappointment. Too often were hopes deceived and fears confirmed, and the losers in this fearful lottery were far more numerous than the winners. The bodies thrown up on the shore put an end to the suspense of many families, while others still hoped to find those they had lost among the prisoners taken to Gibraltar.

To the honor of Cadiz be it said never did a community devote itself with greater willingness to the care of the wounded, making no distinctions between friends and foes but hoisting the standard, as it were, of universal and comprehensive charity. Collingwood, in his narrative, does justice to this generosity on the part of my fellow-countrymen. The magnitude of the disaster had deadened all resentment, but is it not sad to reflect that it is only in misfortune that men are truly brothers?

In Cadiz I saw collected in the harbor the whole results of the conflict which previously, as an actor in it, I had only partially understood, since the length of the line and the manoeuvring of the vessels would not allow me to see everything that happened. As I now learnt—besides the Trinidad—the Argonauta, 92 guns, Captain Don Antonio Pareja, and the San Augustin, 80 guns, Don Felipe Cagigal, had been sunk. Gravina had got back into Cadiz with the PrÍncipe de AstÚrias, as well as the MontaÑes, 80 guns, commanded by Alcedo, who with his second officer CastaÑos, had been killed; the San Justo, 76 guns, Captain Don Miguel Gaston; the San Leandro, 74, Captain Don JosÉ Quevedo; the San Francisco, 74, Don Luis Flores; and the Rayo, 100, commanded by Macdonell. Four of these had gone out again on the 23d to recapture the vessels making for Gibraltar; and of these, two, the San Francisco and the Rayo were wrecked on the coast. So, too, was the Monarca, 74 guns, under Argumosa, and the Neptuno, 80 guns; and her heroic commander, Don Cayetano ValdÉs, who had previously distinguished himself at Cape St. Vincent, narrowly escaped with his life. The Bahama had surrendered but went to pieces before she could be got into Gibraltar; the San Ildefonso, 74 guns, Captain Vargas, was taken to England, while the San Juan Nepomuceno was left for many years at Gibraltar, where she was regarded as an object of veneration and curiosity. The Santa Ana had come safely into Cadiz the very night we were taken off her.

The English too lost some fine ships, and not a few of their gallant officers shared Nelson’s glorious fate.

With regard to the French it need not be said that they had suffered as severely as we had. With the exception of the four ships that withdrew under Dumanoir without showing fight—a stain which the Imperial navy could not for a long time wipe out—our allies behaved splendidly. Villeneuve, only caring to efface in one day the remembrance of all his mistakes, fought desperately to the last and was carried off a prisoner to Gibraltar. Many of their officers were taken with him, and very many were killed. Their vessels shared all our risks and dangers; some got off with Gravina, some were taken and several were wrecked on the coast. The Achille blew up, as I have said, in the midst of the action.

But in spite of all these disasters, Spain had paid dearer for the war than her haughty ally. France had lost the flower of her navy indeed, but at that very time Napoleon had won a glorious victory on land. His army had marched with wonderful rapidity from the shores of the English Channel across Europe, and was carrying out his colossal schemes in the campaign against Austria. It was on the 20th of October, the day before Trafalgar, that Napoleon, at the camp at Ulm, looked on as the Austrian troops marched past, while their officers delivered up their swords; only two months later, on the 2d of December, he won, on the field of Austerlitz, the greatest of his many victories.

These triumphs consoled France for the defeat of Trafalgar; Napoleon silenced the newspapers, forbidding them to discuss the matter; and when the victory of his implacable enemies, the English, was reported to him he simply shrugged his shoulders and said: “I cannot be everywhere at once.”