Nelson received a severe wound in the head, which, though he supposed it would prove fatal, Southey says the admiral would not allow touched until the other wounded had been cared for. "I will take my turn with my brave fellows," he said.
About nine the L'Orient, the flagship of the French Admiral de Brueys, of one hundred and twenty guns, was seen to be on fire. Brueys was dead. He had received three wounds, but would not leave his post. A fourth cut him nearly in two. He requested to be left to die on the deck, and expired a quarter of an hour afterwards.
When Nelson saw the ship on fire, he gave orders that boats should be sent to the enemy. About seventy of her crew were saved by the English boats. So heroic were her men that they continued to fire from the upper decks after the lower were in flames. Between ten and eleven the huge ship exploded. Officers and men jumped overboard, and most were lost in that frightful commingling of fire and falling timbers which had been shot high into the air.
Both fleets seemed paralyzed, and for a quarter of an hour no gun was fired. All was darkness and silence save the groans of the dying, and the swell of the ingulfing sea. Among those who perished were Commodore Casabianca and his brave little son of ten or twelve, whom Mrs. Hemans has immortalized in her poem:—
"The boy stood on the burning deck
Whence all but he had fled;
The flame that lit the battle's wreck
Shone round him o'er the dead.
Yet beautiful and bright he stood,
As born to rule the storm;