VILLENEUVE'S SWORD
As Atcherley gained the Bucentaure's upper-deck and the British officer's red coat showed itself on the quarter-deck of the French flagship, four French officers of rank stepped forward all bowing and presenting their swords. One was a tall, thin, sad-faced man of about forty-two, in a long-tailed uniform coat with flat high collar and dark green corduroy breeches, gold-laced at the sides. It was Admiral Villeneuve himself. The second was a short, rotund, jolly-faced man, a typical boulevardier in appearance:—Flag-Captain Majendie.[108] The third was Second-Captain Prigny of the Bucentaure; and the fourth a soldier resplendent in the full-dress uniform—somewhat besmirched by powder-smoke—of a Brigadier of the Grand Army, General de Contamine, the officer in charge of the four thousand troops that were serving on board the French Fleet that day.
'To whom,' asked Admiral Villeneuve in good English, 'have I the honour of surrendering?'
'To Captain Pellew of the Conqueror.'
'I am glad to have struck to the fortunate Sir Edward Pellew.'
'It is his brother, Sir,' said Captain Atcherley.
'His brother! What; are there two of them? Hélas!'
'Fortune de guerre!' said Captain Majendie with a shrug of his wide shoulders as he became a prisoner of war to the British Navy for the third time in his life. Prigny and De Contamine said nothing, as far as we know.
Captain Atcherley politely suggested that the swords of such high officers had better be handed to an officer of superior rank to himself—to Captain Pellew. He then went below to secure the magazines, passing between decks amid an awful scene of carnage and destruction. 'The dead thrown back as they fell lay along the middle of the decks in heaps, and the shot passing through these had frightfully mangled the bodies.... More than four hundred had been killed and wounded, of whom an extraordinary proportion had lost their heads. A raking shot which entered in the lower deck had glanced along the beams and through the thickest of the people, and a French officer declared that this shot alone had killed or disabled nearly forty men.'[109]
Atcherley locked up the magazines and put the keys in his pocket, posted his two marines as sentries at the doors of the Admiral's and flag-captain's cabins, and then returning on deck, he conducted Villeneuve, Majendie, and Second-Captain Prigny down the side into his little boat which rowed off in search of the Conqueror. The ship, however, had ranged ahead to engage another enemy, and as her whereabouts could not be discovered in the smoke, the prisoners were temporarily placed on board the nearest British ship, which happened to be the Mars.