had thrown himself on to the nettings, shouting to his crew, "The first
man who boards that ship with me shall have the Cross;" and how too, the
boarding party having been driven back, the mizzen-mast of the
Algesiras, cut through by a round shot, fell across the British ship,
throwing a comrade of D'Houdetot's, the midshipman of the maintop,
beyond it, into the sea, and how that middy swam back to the Algesiras.
And then came the story of the tempest after the battle, in which
victors and vanquished alike struggled together to escape shipwreck,
under the command of Lieutenant de la Bretonniere, in later days my own
commanding officer, who succeeded in bringing the ship into Cadiz. There
D'Houdetot was lying upon the mole, under a burning sun, feverish and
exhausted with pain, when the hand of a woman, whom his youth had
touched, spread a fan over "the poor little fellow's" head, to protect
him from the blaze. He drew the ministering hand to him, and kissed it,
and to that simple act he owed his escape from the horrors of an
overcrowded hospital, teeming with typhus. He recovered, re-embarked on
board the frigate Hermione, and was wrecked with her. "Trafalgar and a
shipwreck in the space of two years," he used to say, "gave me enough of
a seafaring life." He got leave to be transferred to the cavalry, and
covered himself with glory in the heroic charges at the battle of the
Moskowa; but his heart always remained with his old sailor comrades, and
he never tired of talking about them.

As for old Villaumetz, his whole life had been spent on board ship. He
had gone with M. d'Entrecasteaux to search for La Peyrouse; he had
commanded the squadron from which Prince Jerome Bonaparte deserted with
his ship the Veteran, and his stories of sea fights and adventures were
endless. Listening to them first inspired me with that longing to enter
the naval career which never left me again.