Nelson was asked: “Could not the Temeraire take the foremost place of the column?”
Nelson replied:
“Oh, yes, let her go—if she can!”
Captain Hardy hailed the Temeraire to give her instructions; but, meanwhile, Nelson was moving about the decks giving orders that made the Victory leap forward and hold her place in the vanguard.
“There!” he said to Hardy, as he came back. “Let the Temeraires open the ball, if they can—which they most assuredly can’t! I think there’s nothing more to be done now, is there, till we open fire? Oh, yes, stay a minute, though. I suppose I must give the fleet something as a final fillip. Let me see. How would this do: ‘Nelson expects that every man will do his duty?’”
Hardy suggested that “England expects” would be an improvement. Nelson agreed. The order was given; and the message was soon fluttering in the breeze.
What shouts of enthusiasm greeted the signal in Trafalgar’s Bay! Every man took it as a message to himself, and forthwith vowed to do what was expected of him.
“Now,” said Nelson. “I can do no more. We must trust to the great Disposer of events and the justice of our cause. I thank God for this opportunity of doing my duty!”
For all his apparent good spirits the Admiral had a foreboding of impending ill, and when Captain Blackwood left him to take up his place on the Euryalus, the Admiral gripped him by the hand and said:
“God bless you, Blackwood! I shall never see you again.”