The Divine Lady: A Romance of Nelson and Emma Hamilton

by L. Adams Beck

But one thing grew in his soul to a most fiery purpose. She had not failed him. He would return her full measure pressed down and running over. To his simple and pious soul she became the Will of God—His justice upon the evil deeds of France—and possibility of failure passed as utterly from his mind as though the deed were done already, and the Frenchmen scattered with their ruined dream of power, mere wreckage of the English seas. But for all that it was a bitter and wearing chase, and though he dreamed of her the suspense left cruel marks.

For want of English frigates, the scouts of the Fleet, the French ships had slipped past and down the Mediterranean as fast as wind could carry them. Nelson’s necessities had given them the heels of him and where to find them he could not tell. Later he wrote to Hamilton: “Having gone a round of six hundred leagues at this season of the year, here am I, as ignorant of the situation of the enemy as I was twenty-seven days ago.” And again, “If I were now to die, the word frigates would be found written on my heart.” Maddening, if he had not been up-borne by the inner certitude that England and Emma gave him for an inward peace in the midst of turmoil.

He made for Syracuse for the food and water he owed to her—her only. And thence he wrote to her and to her husband, exulting. Guarded, for neither the Queen nor Emma must appear; but yet exultant.

“My dear friends, thanks to your exertions we have victualled and watered, and surely, watering at the fountain of Arethusa, we must have victory. We shall sail with the first breeze, and be assured I will return either crowned with laurel or covered with cypress.”

And now begins the great epic of the Nile.

Casting his mind over all the sea, Nelson was inclined to believe the French destination was Alexandria, yet could not be certain, and mistake was ruin. He summoned aboard his flagship the four captains in whom he placed his utmost confidence: Saumarez, Troubridge, Ball and Darby. One may picture the conference in the Admiral’s cabin of the Vanguard—the awful issues hanging upon decision, and Nelson’s worn face flame-white at the end of the table. He believed in his own heart that he might have broken down physically but for that inner certitude. “On the 18th I had near died with the swelling of the vessels of the heart.” And he held grimly on.

The little council of war had decided for Alexandria, and so with a favouring wind away goes the Fleet down the Mediterranean, not only Nelson’s own reputation at stake, but England—all—if he has erred. A terrible cast of the dice for a young admiral, not even a commander in chief. But he never feared responsibility.

And in the afternoon of the 1st August, 1798, the masthead lookout of the Zealous changed the course of the world’s history by announcing the enemy, lying in Aboukir Bay, fifteen miles east of Alexandria. The chase is ended.

Since that great battle of the Nile has been told in poetry and in the cool precision of naval historians, shall a mere romancer attempt the middle, the impossible course? Better leave it immense, vague, majestic, half hidden in the smoke of guns and drowned in their uproar. It is a battle of the Titans, the foes of centuries at death-grips for the mastery of the world: the old and new worlds tremble in the balance; the American continent, the ancient glories of the Moguls in India, are all at stake in Aboukir Bay; and while the ships lock together in a horrible bridal flash and roar in groups, in duel, and solitary terrible combat, no man yet can say which way the inevitable scale will turn. No man but one. He knows. He has read the purpose of Heaven in Naples, in Syracuse, and he cannot doubt. Wounded in the head, believing death at hand, still he clings to his certitude, giving his orders now from the cabin where the surgeons have in vain implored him to lie down and take what rest is possible in the seaquake and thunder shaking the ship.

And then Captain Berry rushes below with great, yet terrible news. The mighty Orient, the French flagship, boastfully named for her errand, is on fire, and the British Captains are directing their guns on the flames, friendly to them, that none may dare to extinguish them. Wound or no wound Nelson is on deck next moment, to see the ships, friend and foe, alike veering or slipping their cables lest the frightful catastrophe should involve them also in ruin; one English ship, the Alexander, clinging bulldog-like to her prey until all but aflame, then sullenly withdrawing. The gallant French gunners below are still firing—they do not know the hell on deck—and Nelson, white, bloody, clinging to a stay for support with his one arm, gives orders that his only boat still serviceable be launched to help the survivors in the immense catastrophe that all now see at hand and draw back to watch in a mute horror. The great flames soar up to zenith. It is hell, hell, before their eyes; and slowly, sullenly, one by one her guns cease firing. They are done, their gunners dead and dying beside them; and at last there is silence but for the crackling and singing of flame, and then with a roar that storms heaven itself, the mighty ship blows up, and a deadly quiet settles on the sea beneath the calm incurious eyes of the Egyptian stars looking down on floating and human wreckage.