What Parker said was, probably, simply one of those by-remarks, with which an apprehensive man consoles himself that he reserves a chance to change his mind.  Such provision rarely entered Nelson’s head when embarking upon an enterprise in which “do or die” was the only order for success.  The man who went into the Copenhagen fight with an eye upon withdrawing from action would have been beaten before he began.  It is upon the clear perception of this truth, and his tenacious grip of it, that the vast merit of Nelson in this incident depends, and not upon the disobedience; though never was disobedience more justified, more imperative, more glorious.  To retire, with crippled ships and mangled crews, through difficult channels, under the guns of the half-beaten foe, who would renew his strength when he saw the movement, would be to court destruction,—­to convert probable victory into certain, and perhaps overwhelming, disaster.  It was not, however, only in superiority of judgment or of fighting quality that Nelson in this one act towered like a giant above his superior; it was in that supreme moral characteristic which enabled him to shut his eyes to the perils and doubts surrounding the only path by which he could achieve success, and save his command from a defeat verging on annihilation.  The pantomime of putting the glass to his blind eye was, however unintentionally, a profound allegory.  There is a time to be blind as well as a time to see.  And if in it there was a little bit of conscious drama, it was one of those touches that not only provoke the plaudits of the spectators, but stir and raise their hearts, giving them both an example of heroic steadfastness, and also the assurance that there is one standing by upon whom their confidence can repose to the bitter end,—­no small thing in the hour of hard and doubtful battle.  It had its counterpart in the rebuke addressed by him on this very occasion to a lieutenant, who uttered some desponding words on the same quarter-deck:  “At such a moment, the delivery of a desponding opinion, unasked, was highly reprehensible, and deserved much more censure than Captain Foley gave you.”

At two o’clock, an hour after the signal was made, the resistance of the Danes had perceptibly slackened; the greater part of their line, Stewart says, had ceased to reply.  The flagship “Dannebroge” had been on fire as early as half-past eleven, and the commander-in-chief, Commodore Fischer, had felt necessary to shift his broad pendant to the “Holstein,” the second ship from the north flank.  The “Dannebroge” continued to fight bravely, losing two hundred and seventy killed and wounded out of a total of three hundred and thirty-six, but at length she was driven out of the line in flames, and grounded near the Trekroner, where she blew up after the action.  The “Sjaelland,” seventy-four, next north of her, was likewise carried out of the line by her cables being cut; while the “Holstein,” and the northernmost ship