“While Captain Collingwood so nobly stepped in to his assistance, as already mentioned.  Captain Ralph Willet Miller, the commodore’s captain, was enabled to replenish his lockers with shot, and prepare for a renewal of the fight.  No sooner, therefore, had the Excellent passed on, than the gallant commodore renewed the battle.

“The three-decker with which he was before engaged having fallen aboard her second, that ship, of eighty-four guns, became now the commodore’s opponent.  To her, therefore, he directed a vigorous fire; nor was it feebly returned, as the loss on board the Captain evinced, nearly twenty men being killed and wounded in a very few minutes.  It was now that the various damages already sustained by that ship, through the long and arduous conflict which she had maintained, appearing to render a continuance of the contest in the usual way precarious, or perhaps impossible, that Commodore Nelson, unable to bear the idea of parting with an enemy of whom he had so thoroughly assured himself, instantly resolved on a bold and decisive measure; and determined, whatever might be the event, to attempt his opponent sword in hand.  The boarders were accordingly summoned, and orders given to lay his ship, the Captain, on board the enemy.

“Fortune favours the brave! nor, on this occasion, was she unmindful of her favourite.  Captain Miller so judiciously directed the course of the Captain, that she was laid aboard the starboard quarter of the Spanish eighty-four; her spritsail-yard passing over the enemy’s poop, and hooking in her mizen shrouds:  and, the word to board being given, the officers and seamen, destined for this duty, headed by Lieutenant Berry, together with the detachment of the sixty-ninth regiment, commanded by Lieutenant Pearson, then doing duty as marines on board the Captain, passed with rapidity on board the enemy’s ship; and, in a short time, the San Nicolas was in the possession of her intrepid assailants.  The commodore’s impatience would not permit him to remain an inactive spectator of this event.  He knew, that the attempt was hazardous; and his presence, he thought, might contribute to it’s success.  He, therefore, accompanied the party in this attack:  passing, from the fore-chains of his own ship, into the enemy’s quarter gallery; and, thence, through the cabin, to the quarter-deck, where he arrived in time to receive the sword of the dying commander, who was mortally wounded by the boarders.  For a few minutes after the officers had submitted, the crew below were firing their lower-deck guns:  this irregularity, however, was soon corrected, and measures taken for the security of the conquest.  But this labour was no sooner atchieved, than he found himself engaged in another, still more arduous.