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Updated: May 24, 2025
This seemed to be the moment for which Senor Madera had waited, for he now suddenly threw open his ports, and without attempting the mockery of hoisting an ensign of any kind, poured into us the whole contents of his double-shotted starboard broadside, aiming high, however, with the evident hope of knocking away some of our more important spars.
The sea was smooth, the wind very light; the sun shone brightly on the fresh-painted sides of the long line of French and Spanish ships, when the Fougueux, astern of the Santa Anna, opened her fire on the Royal Sovereign, which, at about ten minutes past noon, delivered her larboard broadside, with guns double-shotted, at the Santa Anna, and with such precision as to disable 14 of her guns, and to kill or wound 400 of her crew; while with her starboard broadside she raked the Fougueux.
At length, however, when the fight had thus been raging for a full hour, with heavy loss on both sides, tacking suddenly under cover of the smoke of our starboard broadside, we shot across the brig's stern, raking her with a double-shotted broadside from our larboard guns, which had the effect of bringing both her masts down by the run, rendering her a wreck and unmanageable; and we now felt that she was ours.
The sailors are restless at their double-shotted guns. Now the two frigates are fairly abreast, and within pistol shot of each other. "Now, boys, do your duty. Fire!" shouts the gallant commander, at the top of his voice. Hull is a short and stout man. As he leans over to give the order to fire, his breeches burst from hip to knee. The men roar with laughter.
For instance, it has been found that years when the sun has been free from spots have been warmer than the average; and it has also been found that such years have been cooler than the average: a double-shotted argument wholly irresistible, especially when it is also found that when the sun has many spots the weather has sometimes been exceptionally warm and sometimes exceptionally cold.
One after another, as they bore, the double-shotted guns tore through the woodwork of the French ship, the smoke, driven back, filling the lower decks of the "Victory," while persons on the upper deck, including Nelson himself, were covered with the dust which rose in clouds from the wreck.
My feelings revolted against so arrogant a demand, unless it had been far otherwise expressed; if death on the spot had awaited me, I could not have controlled myself; and on the next occasion for sending up verses to the head master, so far from attending to the orders issued, I double-shotted my guns; double applause descended on myself; but I remarked with some awe, though not repenting of what I had done, that double confusion seemed to agitate the ranks of my enemies.
No matter how friendly the natives might appear, from that day I have never anchored among the islands without having half my guns double-shotted, and the other half loaded with grape; and there is always an officer and half a watch on deck, so that, whatever happens to us, it will not be because I have been caught napping.
Then a terrific broadside was let fly from her double-shotted guns, which raked the Bucentaure fore and aft, and the booming of cannon continued until her masts and hull were a complete wreck. Many guns were dismounted and four hundred men killed. The Victory then swung off and left the doomed Bucentaure to be captured by the Conqueror, and Villeneuve was taken prisoner.
Every step of his way had been through a land whose whole civil order had been condemned, shattered, and cast into the mill of revolution for a total remoulding. Every day came like the discharge of a great double-shotted gun. It could not but be that, humble as his walk was, and his years so few, his fevered mind should leap into the questions of the hour like a naked boy into the surf.
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