When all this excitement was over my master sank into deep melancholy; he would scarcely speak and seemed as though his soul, having no illusions left, had closed accounts with the world and was only waiting to take its departure. The absence of Marcial was to him the loss of the only companion of his childish old age; he had no one now to fight mimic battles with, and he gave himself up to dull sorrow. Nor did Doña Francisca spare him any drop of mortification, seeing him in this crestfallen state. I heard her the same day saying spitefully:
“A pretty mess you have made of it! What do you think of yourself now? Now are you satisfied? Go, oh go by all means and join the fleet! Was I right or was I wrong? If you would only have listened to me. But you have had a lesson I hope; you see now how God has punished you.”
“Woman, leave me in peace,” said my master sadly.
“And now we are left without any fleet at all, and without sailors, and we shall soon find ourselves ruined out of hand if we keep up our alliance with the French.—Please God those gentry may not pay us out for their misfortunes. Señor Villeneuve!—he has covered himself with glory indeed! And Gravina again! If he had opposed the scheme of taking the fleet out, as Churruca and Alcalá Galiano did, he might have prevented this heartbreaking catastrophe.”
“Woman, woman—what do you know about it? Do not annoy me,” said Don Alonso quite vexed.
“What do I know about it? More than you do. Yes—I repeat it: Gravina may be a worthy gentleman and as brave as you please; but in this case, much good he has done!”
“He did his duty. You would have liked us all to be set down as cowards, I suppose?”
“Cowards, no—but prudent. It is as I say and repeat: the fleet ought never to have gone out of Cádiz just to humor the whims and conceit of Villeneuve.
“Everyone here knew that Gravina, like the others, was of opinion that it ought to stop in the bay. But Villeneuve had made up his mind to it, intending to hit a blow that might restore him to his master’s favor, and he worked on our Spanish pride. It seems that one of the reasons Gravina gave was the badness of the weather, and that he said, looking at the barometer in the cabin: ‘Do you not see that the barometer foretells foul weather? Do you not see how it has gone down?’ And then Villeneuve said drily: ‘What is gone down here is courage!’ At such an insult Gravina stood up, blind with rage, and threw the French Admiral’s own conduct at Finisterre in his teeth. Some angry words were spoken on both sides and at last our Admiral exclaimed: ‘To sea then tomorrow morning.’
“But I say that Gravina ought to have taken no notice of Villeneuve’s insolence—none whatever; that prudence is an officer’s first duty, and particularly when he knew—as we all knew—that the fleet was not in a condition to fight the English.”
This view, which at the time seemed to me an insult to our national honor, I understood later was well-founded. Doña Francisca was right. Gravina ought not to have given way to Villeneuve’s obstinacy, and I say it almost dims the halo of prestige with which the popular voice crowned the leader of the Spanish forces on that disastrous occasion. Without denying Gravina’s many merits, in my opinion there was much exaggeration in the high-flown praises that were lavished upon him, both after the battle, and again when he died of his wounds a few months later.3 Everything he did proved him to be an accomplished gentleman and a brave sailor, but he was perhaps too much of a courtier to show the determination which commonly comes of long experience in war; he was deficient too in that complete superiority which, in so learned a profession as the Navy, can only be acquired by assiduous study of the sciences on which it relies. Gravina was a good commander of a division under superior orders, but nothing more. The foresight, coolness, and immovable determination, which are indispensable elements in the man whose fortune it is to wield such mighty forces, he had not; Don Cosme Damián Churruca had—and Don Dionisio Alcalá Galiano.
My master made no reply to Doña Francisca’s last speech and when she left the room I observed that he was praying as fervently as when I had left him in the cabin of the Santa Ana. Indeed, from that day Don Alonso did nothing else but pray; he prayed incessantly till the day came when he had to sail in the ship that never comes home.
He did
