Nelson's orders had been to attack the French van and centre, and now he came up in his flagship Vanguard with the remaining six British ships on the seaward side of the French line. Caught between two fires as the sun sank below the horizon, the five enemy ships first to be attacked suffered terrible damage.
The French line was nearly two miles long, and L'Orient was stationed exactly in the centre of its thirteen ships; so little could be seen from her during the first part of the action except dense clouds of smoke. But by seven o'clock it was fully dark and every minute the smoke pall was stabbed by the bright flashes from hundreds of guns. Slowly but inexorably, like a vast burning taper, the smoke and fire spread along the line as ship after ship came into action.
Vanguard was the first ship to anchor outside the enemy line, and Nelson had her brought to within pistol shot of Spartiate, which was being attacked by Theseus on her other side. Even so, the flagship was hard pressed until Minotaur came up and drew the fire of Aquilon, which had also been engaging Vanguard. Meanwhile, losing station owing to the smoke and darkness, Majestic and Bellerophon had got too far ahead. The latter, finding herself opposite L'Orient, took on alone this mighty ship-of-war which had nearly double her own gun-power.
Now, after some five hours of dread anticipation, Roger experienced all the horrors of a great naval battle. While the French Fleet had been convoying Bonaparte's Fleet of transports to Egypt, Brueys and a number of his senior officers had feared that, discipline being so bad, many of the pressed sailors might, if attacked, refuse to fight at all and seek a false security by hiding themselves below decks. But now those fears were proved ill-founded, largely perhaps because the men realized that their Admiral had a superiority in ships and an even larger superiority in guns and also because the victories of the Army on land had made them feel that they must not digrace the flag to which their comrades had brought so much glory.
The seamen in all the French ships so far attacked had shown admirable courage, and those in L'Orient proved no exception. With shouts and cheers they laboured at the guns, greatly encouraged by the fact that their part in the battle appeared to be only a single-ship duel with a much inferior enemy. This eager handling of their guns, and L'Orient's weight of metal, soon began to tell. At the price of comparatively few casualties all three of Bellerophon s masts were shot away and, to the cheers of the French, she drifted, helpless, out of the battle.
Meanwhile Majestic had attacked Heureux, still further down the line, and had run her jib-boom into the French ship's rigging. She was also exposed to the fire of Tonnant. Her Captain was killed and she suffered terrible casualties. But her First Lieutenant succeeded in getting her free and continued to fight her with great gallantry, attacking, unsupported, Mercure, the fourth ship from the French rear.
Unable to see what was happening, except in his immediate vicinity by the orange flashes of the guns, Roger now had depression added to his personal fears; for he could judge the progress of the battle only by the crushing defeat of Bellerophon. He would have been even more depressed had he known that at about eight o'clock. Nelson had been struck on the head just above his old wound by a piece of the chain shot used by the French to cut through enemy ships' sails and rigging. The metal cut the Admiral's forehead to the bone, causing a long flap of flesh and a stream of blood to come down over his good eye and blind him completely. Believing that he had received a mortal wound, he sent last messages to his wife and several of his Captains.
Plunged into total darkness, he could not be persuaded, even by his Principal Surgeon, that the wound was only superficial. Yet if he had died then it would have been as he had always wished, for he had hardly been taken to the cockpit when news that victory was assured was brought to him. The ships in the French van, dismasted and with huge, gaping holes in them, had been reduced to corpse-littered hulks. Conquerant had been the first to strike her flag, Guerrier followed at eight-thirty, Aquilon soon after. Spartiate had ceased to fire and Peuple Souverain, having broken from her moorings, had drifted ashore in flames. The French centre—Franklin, L'Orient, Tonnant and Heureux—were now surrounded by a superior concentration of British ships that was pouring broadside after broadside into them and, as the night wore on, must be pounded into surrender.
UOrient had Alexander on one side of her and Swiftsure on the other. White to the gills, Roger remained on the poop of the flagship, expecting every moment that a cannon ball would cut him in half or take off his head. In the heat of battle Brueys had found no use for him; so he could only stand there with his eyes smarting and half choked by the acrid fumes from the gunpowder. Through gaps in the smoke he caught glimpses of the deck. In places the bulwarks had been shot away; here and there cannon had been overturned. Broken spars and cut ropes fallen from aloft were inextricably mixed with scores of dead and dying. The screams of the wounded rent the air every moment, making the night hideous. There was blood everywhere.
At a little before nine o'clock a longboat not far from Roger caught fire. He had b$en helping to bandage a wounded sailor. The man suddenly jerked his head forward, spewed blood and died; so Roger let the body fall back. Running to the burning boat, he helped several other men cut her away. When he returned to the poop someone told him that the gallant Brueys had been killed by a cannon ball. Audacious had now joined in the attack on VOrient', so broadsides from three ships were raking her, while musket balls fired by marines in their fighting tops came whistling down at a sharp angle to take their toll of the exposed French sailors. Her upper decks were now a shambles, nearly all the guns on them having been put out of action, but the greater part of those on her lower decks continued to fire and her surviving officers had no thought of surrender.
Two more of her boats were set alight and extinguished, the fire then started on the poop. While lying inactive in the bay she had been painting ship, and much of the paint on her stern was still wet. The flames caught it and ran quickly up the tarred rigging. An attempt was made to put out the fire, but British cannon balls had destroyed the nearest fire-fighting appliances and rows of water-buckets and were crashing through the stern rails every moment. By half past nine the after part of the poop was well ablaze, lighting up a scene of most appalling carnage and confusion. In the lurid glare of the flames Roger caught sight of Commodore Casabianca. He was lying wounded and near him the deck was burning but his ten-year-old son, who had come on the voyage as a cabin-boy, was clinging to his hand, refusing to leave him.
Suddenly Roger took a decision. Two-thirds of the ship's company were now either dead or wounded. By a miracle, as it seemed to him, he was one of the remaining third. But his immunity could not last much longer. With Brueys dead and no one knowing any more what his neighbour was doing, why should he remain to be slaughtered? Better to go over the side and take his chance in the water. Stumbling through the blinding smoke, he found one of the poop ladders and slithered down it into the well of the ship.