she seen to be a big Indiaman mounting 36 heavy guns, but it was also discovered that, by some incredible blunder, both boats had put off without weapons of any description. Such obstacles, however, were not permitted to interfere for a moment with their designs, and, armed solely with boatstretchers, these eleven men boarded and carried with the greatest ease a merchantman as big as a frigate, armed with 36 18-pdrs, and manned by a prize-crew of between 30 and 40 men.

On the morning of the 22nd the Sirius arrived off Grand Port. Willoughby, from within the harbour, immediately signalled that the enemy was of inferior force, a characteristic statement altogether opposed to the facts. Pym, at any rate, whether misled or not, determined to run in at once and attack, but while negotiat

ing the difficult entrance he ran his frigate on the ground. Everything possible was done to lighten her; but the tide was falling, night was coming on, and it was soon apparent that she must wait for the flood in the morning.

She floated again at 8 A.M. next day, the 23rd. Shortly after two sail were sighted approaching the harbour. These proved to be the British 36gun frigates Iphigenia (Captain Lambert) and Magicienne (Captain Curtis), both come from the blockade of Port Louis to assist Captain Pym. A little after two o'clock they were safely inside and anchored with their consorts, and although so much of the day was gone, it was determined at a council of war to attack the same evening. At a quarter to five the four frigates weighed and sailed up the harbour towards the enemy.

The English frigates were all nominally 36-gun ships. The guns of the Sirius and Iphigenia were 18-pdrs.; those of the Magicienne and Néréide, 12-pdrs.; and the latter two were consequently smaller and weaker ships. The combined crews of the squadron amounted to little more than 1000 men.

Of the enemy, the Minerve was a fine 52-gun frigate, carrying 18-pdrs. She had been captured the previous year from the Portuguese. The Bellone, flying the Com

an

modore's pennant, was 18-pdr. 44. The ex- British Victor carried 22 guns; the Windham, 26,-in both cases probably 18's. Remembering, therefore, that frigates invariably carried several guns above their tabulated establishment, it will appear that these ships mounted about 150 guns, against a possible 160 on the four British; half of the latter, however, being of a light calibre. Moreover, the French lay under some batteries of uncertain strength; and having learnt from General Decaen

at Port Louis that Lambert had sailed to reinforce Pym, they had once more shifted their position, and now lay close inshore in a crescent formation, with springs upon their cables, and either extremity of their line protected by shoals. Weighing one thing with another, we may consider the opposing forces almost equal, for the French shore batteries do not seem to have played a very important part in the engagement; but the puzzling currents and numerous shoals in the harbour presented obstacles to the assailants which only a combination of the highest judgment and good fortune could have surmounted. These obstacles were certainly underrated; and good fortune, throughout that fatal evening, never came our way.

We left the British squadron under way and proceeding up the harbour; the Néréide leading, followed by the Magicienne, Iphigenia, and Sirius. Willoughby alone of the four captains had any acquaintance with the intricacies of the channel, and had on board a black pilot. The enemy seem The enemy seem to have reserved their fire until the Néréide was quite near to them, when, at ten minutes past five, the explosion of 70 guns split the silence of the harbour as ships and batteries opened simultaneously upon the little frigate. Under this concentrated fire she must have suffered severely. Like the Victory at Trafalgar, she bore it for some time unsupported; but she ran in still

closer before she returned it. She was intended to anchor opposite the gap between the Victor, the last ship in the French line, and the latter's next ahead, the Bellone; and in such a position as to keep her guns bearing upon the bow of the one and the stern of the other.

The Magicienne was to have anchored immediately astern of the Néréide. It was her duty to divide with the latter the French Commodore's heavy broadside; and probably these two light frigates would have had their work out out to silence the Bellone and the corvette. But in the event the Magicienne never got to her station at all. She ran hard aground: and Willoughby, having picked his way with much dexterity among the pitfalls of the anchorage, and arrived almost at his allotted station, found himself alone. The Magicienne was piled immovably upon a sandbank within musket - shot of the Minerve in such a fashion that only three forecastle guns could be trained upon the enemy.

With the opposing forces so evenly balanced this disaster alone might have decided the event of the battle, and at the moment it seriously disorganised the British plan of attack. Willoughby, therefore, with great gallantry, determined to take upon himself the whole weight of the French rear. then almost in the position the Magicienne should have taken, within pistol-shot of the Bellone, barely a quarter

Being

of a mile from the shore, and surrounded by shoal-water, he let out his small bower with a spring upon it, swung round, and commenced a most rapid and damaging fire. It was then just half-past five.

But already the whole

scheme of attack was crumbling away. The Iphigenia had come into action at 5.30, on the larboard quarter of the luckless Magicienne; but, by reason, apparently, of shoal water, was nowhere near where she should have been. One account puts her position at nearly a mile from the enemy's line; and, although this seems to be an exaggeration, there can be no doubt that the fire she opened upon the Minerve and Bellone was comparatively ineffective. Upon the Ceylon and the batteries her guns played with better result. There still remained the Sirius to redress the balance; and it must have been obvious to Pym that success depended now upon how near the enemy he could bring his ship. It may have been careful sounding that retarded her progress, for there appears to have been a wide interval between her and the Iphigenia; but without a pilot careful sounding was to avail her nothing. She was virtually still out of gun-shot when, at twenty minutes to six, she too ran herself ashore.

Towards six o'clock, then, when the British squadron should have been anchored together in line hammering at the enemy, the actual situation was vastly different. We were already within measurable dis

tance of a humiliating disaster. The Néréide, a weak 12-pdr. frigate, was involved in a most unequal conflict with a frigate of twice her power on her beam, a corvette across her bows, a second frigate astern firing into her with every gun that would bear, and shore batteries presumably taking their hand in the game. Already, after half an hour's action, her rigging was shot to pieces, several guns had been dismounted, and her loss in men was becoming serious. The Iphigenia, for one reason or another, was effecting little and suffering less. The Magicienne was engaged in a longrange musketry combat with the Minerve, and in frenzied endeavours to get herself off the mud. Away up in the narrows the maddened crew of the Sirius laboured at the same heartbreaking business, ever looking over their shoulders to watch with painful anxiety the battle that was developing in flame and sound down the bay.

This must have been a bad hour for Captain Pym, though far worse hours were to follow. The unfortunate Commodore saw his whole enterprise, within the period of a few minutes, dissolved in calamity; and it must already have seemed manifest that unless he speedily got his frigate off the ground, it would be beyond his power to avert, or even mitigate, an appalling disaster. Seconds had acquired the importance of hours. The crew of the Sirius performed herculean feats under the influence of rage and despair. Guns were run aft, cables

got out, boats and anchors carried astern; and less than thirty minutes after the ship had grounded she moved again. She floated: and while warps were brought in-board and the decks cleared for action, the boats took towing-lines ahead to get her under way. But the fighting days of the Sirius were over. Almost at once, amid the curses of her people, she took the ground again and remained immovable.

The sufferings of Tantalus were as nothing compared with those of Captain Pym; for this happened at a moment when the presence of his ship in the battle would, in all probability, have decided its issue. A capricious fortune offered us one helping hand and immediately repelled us with the other. The second grounding of the Sirius synchronised with a series of startling mishaps that suddenly and completely shattered the French line, and flung their whole squadron, for the moment, into utter confusion.

Accounts of this incident are conflicting and meagre, but it appears to have commenced by the Ceylon, at the head of their line, striking her flag. The Iphigenia thereupon hailed the Magicienne, as being nearer the Indiaman, to send a boat on board of her; but before anything could be done the Ceylon let out her topsails, cut her cable, and ran for the shore. Simultaneously the cable of her next astern, the Minerve, was shot in two; and that ship drifted after the Ceylon. One or both of these ships then fouled the Bellone, who, in her

turn, was forced to cut or slip. To complete this all but incredible catalogue of disaster, the Victor also had her cable shot away, failed to run out another one in time, and went drifting down with the tide to join her consorts, all of whom were now aground. To Captain Pym, watching with amazement from the distant Sirius this sudden collapse of the French line, it seemed that "the whole of the enemy was on shore in a heap"; and, indeed, there was now presented the remarkable spectacle of a naval battle in which the half of one squadron and the whole of the other were reclining ingloriously upon the mud.

It is impossible to repress the conviction that, notwithstanding the absence of the Sirius, this was a case of that tide which, "taken at the flood, leads on to fortune"; that this complete, if temporary, paralysis of the French squadron as a fighting unit was not turned to our advantage as it might have been. The whole of the enemy's squadron was either ashore or drifting there; and it requires no profound insight into the Gallio temperament to divine that there must have been considerable confusion, if not actual pandemonium, on board those four ships. It will be equally obvious to any one possessing an elementary knowledge of sailing-vessels of that size that these events would occupy more than a few minutes, and they must have entailed a virtual cessation of the French fire. The boats and crews of

the Magicienne and Iphigenia were practically intact; and granting that an attack in them seemed impossible or injudicious, it is not easy to understand why they were not employed to support or succour the exposed Néréide. Captain Lambert wished to run down with the Iphigenia and board the Minerve, but was prevented by an intervening shoal; but his boats might have towed him down nearer to the Néréide, or in default of that, might have towed Willoughby, whose own boats were now mostly in splinters, out into a safer berth. But the critical situation of the Néréide does not seem to have been recognised by the other captains. The golden moment, if such it was, passed, never to return; the French recovered from their confusion with praiseworthy celerity; and the noise of battle swelled again into its former tumult.

Whether apathy or inability were responsible for this failure to seize the psychological moment, the fruits of the omission were instant and disastrous. In the new and involuntary disposition of the French ships, the Minerve, lying on the mud immediately behind the Bellone, was practically out of action, since her broadside was masked; but the flagship, also aground, still lay broadside on to the beam of the Néréide, though at a rather greater distance; and the Ceylon and Victor, ashore on either hand of the Minerve, remained on even keels notwithstanding a falling tide, and could train most of their guns on Willoughby's

ship.

All could afford to ignore, and did ignore, the Iphigenia, now at a considerable distance from them. our side, from now until the inevitable end, interest centres about the Néréide. The Iphigenia continued to engage the shore batteries, but although she seems to have done them much harm at small loss to herself, her efforts bore no relevance to the main issue. As for the Magicienne and Sirius, they were as completely fixtures in the harbour as the banks on which they lay. The whole weight of the battle had now devolved upon Willoughby, and upon Willoughby alone; and he maintained it, hour after hour, at the cost of a dreadful slaughter of his people, with unflagging constanoy and spirit.

It was now nearing sunset. The tide was running rapidly out; the wind had dropped; and the smoke - clouds settled heavily down upon the water. The ebb threatened to leave the Magicienne high and dry, and she was hulled several times below the water-line by shot from the batteries. She had also sprung a leak when she grounded; and now all efforts to get her off were perforce abandoned. On the Sirius relays of desperate men were straining and sweating at the windlass, dragging kedge-anchors bodily through the mud without moving the ship an inch. Pym, a helpless spectator of the ruin of his squadron, saw from his quarterdeck the dark hills behind the harbour dissolve into the