those who obeyed them, watched the signal flags flutter to the mastheads, waited for the answering pennants to fly from Collingwood's flagship and the others.

Yes, he was outfoxing his own tactics with a vengeance, employing the bulldozing, line-smashing, headlong technique that the drunken Rodney had used to defeat de Grasse in the Battle of the Saints.

"Have no fear," he said to a trembling lieutenant at his elbow as they moved closer to the enemy. "We'll have broken him before he tries raking fire below our foremasts. He has no stomach for this style of war."

He stood, almost carelessly, on the quarterdeck as his fleet moved relentlessly in, ignoring the enemy's rigging fire and holding their own until they were in his midst. There would be time enough for gunnery in the ship-to-ship combats sure to follow.

Once or twice, although he knew it was folly, his eyes turned upward toward the sky—as if seeking a sign of some explosion beyond man's comprehension, or some strange, noisy object that carried men like birds. But no such sign was vouchsafed him.

When, as the huge French ship Redoubtable loomed up through the cotton-white smoke of her own broadsides, a mizzentop sniper's bullet struck him in the chest, he stood almost as one braced for the blow—as, in his heart of hearts, he was.

They carried him below and the battle roared on around him, a comforting lullaby for a man of war and the sea. He felt little pain, relapsed into a semi-coma that was not sleep but was wonderfully restful for all that.

Then, later, he emerged from the cloud to hear the surgeon muttering to a tearful junior officer who stood by him.

"... can't understand it," the surgeon said. "The wound itself is not serious. The bullet was deflected from the sternum and pierced no vital organ. But I can't stop the bleeding. It's as if the blood vessels themselves had broken down.

"Faith, I'd say the bullet was poisoned if I could name a poison that produced such curious results. The very cells inside the body seem to have collapsed."

Nelson heard him and turned away. The surgeon had never heard of radioactivity. He knew he was going, but he had an idea he'd have company wherever he went—company a man like himself could talk with, and drink with, and pass the time of day with.

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