Let us, too, take a look at the ship as she passes out of Falmouth, her sails tinged with the light of sunset. Many have written and sung the wondrous grace, the stately beauty of those dead and gone vessels that won for us the dominion of the sea-many who knew and loved them, more who knew them not. We have kept the tradition of their beauty, but perhaps if we could see them now we should find them strange and old-fashioned, just as the loveliest woman of that time might fail to hit the taste of Bond Street to-day.

The Nymphe, then, was a 12-pounder 36-gun frigate of 938 tons; and if her crew had little or no experience of war the ship herself knew all about it, for she had been a French frigate until she was captured by the Flora, Captain W. P. Williams, in 1780, after she had been disabled by a lucky shot that carried away the wheel. Like most French-built ships, she was a handsome model, and copper sheathing had improved her already excellent sailing qualities; but she bore little resemblance to the chequer-sided, poop-and-forecastle nondescript which generally does duty for a frigate of any and every date in the illustrated editions of sea novels. Above the copper she was painted with a broad black belt, which followed the sheer of the ship, irrespective of the tier of port-holes, which were almost as level as the water-line. A broad stripe of yellow covered the ports and topsides; and when the ports were hauled up, showing their deep red inner side, the scheme of colour was lively. The upper works were navy-blue outside, and inside they were the same deep red as the ports. The tops and yards were painted black.

To all appearance she was flush-decked fore and aft, for quarter-deck, gangways, and forecastle ran level from stem to stern, while the once open waist between the gangways was covered in with gratings, on which stood the larger boats, with spare spars and booms on either side of them; but the high, solid bulwarks of the quarter-deck and forecastle stopped short at the gangways, which were open and unprotected, save for a low breastwork of hammocks stowed in nettings. The forecastle was cut off short by a bulwark running square across the bows, the bowsprit projected from under it, and the elaborate head-rails swept forward on each side to the full-length figure which decorated the beak head.'

Like other ships of her class, the Nymphe carried twentysix long 12-pounders on the main deck; but the ten long

6-pounders which she should have carried on the quarter-deck and forecastle had nearly all been replaced by 24-pounder carronades, for Captain Pellew, like many other officers of that day, had great faith in the smasher,' whose heavy shot was more effective at close quarters than the longer ranged and heavier 'sixes.' Eight of these carronades were mounted on the quarterdeck and four on the forecastle, where two of the 6-pounders still remained as chasers.

6

The officers, warrant officers, and Marines wore uniform; but the dress of the crew was almost as varied as their occupations had been until men and garments alike had suffered a sea change.' Such was the ship and crew that stood well out into the Channel during the night of June 17; and at daybreak on the 18th, while they were yet some miles to the westward of the Start, a sail was observed to the south-east. Captain Pellew was summoned at once, and they ran down to close the stranger, whose spars were unmistakably French. When they neared her and the private signal remained unanswered suspicion became certainty. Israel Pellew, being a visitor, kept no watch, but had 'all night in'; and now Captain Pellew sent to tell him that a French frigate was in sight; then, moved by some spasm of chill anxiety, he went himself to seek his brother. Meeting him as he ran half dressed up the hatchway ladder, he said roughly, 'Israel, you have no business here, and I'm sorry I brought you from home. There are too many of us here.' Israel, catching sight of the enemy's ship, answered him never a word, but stood at gaze, then cried suddenly, 'That's the very frigate I have been dreaming about all night! I dreamt we shot away her wheel. We'll have her in a quarter of an hour.' It is likely that a good many men on board the Nymphe had dreamed of French frigates that night, and no doubt Israel had been told the story of the Nymphe's capture and the loss of her wheel; but it was a curious circumstance that Richard Pearse, a master's mate of the Nymphe, should have had a similar dream. Every man on board the ship was as keen as Pellew himself to encounter one of these French frigates that they had been hunting for three weeks; and Pearse dreamed that they fell in with one the day after leaving port, that they killed her captain and took her. Ridicule failed to shake his confidence in the portent, and after his death in the action it was found that he had written a full account of the dream in his pocket-book. Israel was no more sceptical than Pearse, and he was so deeply impressed that he

asked and obtained the charge of the after division of main-deck guns, that so the vision might be fulfilled.

Everything was soon clear for action-the ship had been expecting it all night—and bulkheads were down, magazines opened, and men at quarters. The Frenchman had gallantly hauled up his foresail and lowered his topgallant-sails to allow the Nymphe to close; and they had drawn near enough to make out that she was apparently a fair match for them in tonnage and force. Following the usual custom of the time, Pellew addressed his crew before he led them into action.

In good old sea-speech he called upon them to do their duty as Englishmen ; then, turning to his ex-miners, he bade them fight for the honour of all Cornishmen.

At six the ships were within hailing distance. Not a shot had yet been fired, but each was anxiously watching the other. Presently a voice on board the Nymphe broke the ominous silence with a wild shout, God save King George!' and the pent-up excitement found vent in a hearty cheer. They were close enough now to read the Frenchman's name, La Cléopâtre, and to see the captain addressing his men, holding before them a singular banner, which now made its appearance for the first time. This was a Cap of Liberty, about seven inches long, carved in wood and painted red, mounted on a brazen spear three and a half feet long. Waving this not very impressive symbol over his head, he shouted 'Vive la République!' and the cry was echoed fiercely by his crew. Then a seaman took the revolutionary emblem, ran up the main-rigging, and screwed it to the masthead, while the French captain gallantly raised his hat and hailed the Nymphe. Pellew, standing bareheaded at the gangway entrance, just forward of the main - rigging, heard the hail imperfectly-perhaps he was somewhat deaf in his French earso he hailed back the usual 'Ahoy!' The Frenchman advanced to his own gangway, waved his hat, and cried, Vive la nation!' and both crew's cheered again. Then Pellew put his hat on his head-the preconcerted signal to his men—and with a roar and crash the Nymphe's broadside let go. Every sea courtesy had been ceremoniously observed, and now the work began in earnest. For three-quarters of an hour they pounded each other furiously at the closest possible range. The wind was squally, from northwest to north-north-west, and both ships were running before it under topsails and topgallant-sails, the Nymphe close on the starboard side of the Cléopâtre. Israel Pellew was busy on the

main-deck with his division of 12-pounders. The wheel of the Cléopâtre was his mark, and he made good practice. Three helmsmen were killed at it, one after another.

It is almost a commonplace of naval writers to observe that a modern ship's crew going into action against heavy shell, quickfiring guns, high explosives, torpedoes, and other recently invented devilries, will be exposed to a tenser moral strain, a series of more tremendous shocks to the nervous system, than any body of fighting-men have yet experienced; and certainly no one who has seen the damage that was inflicted upon the Belleisle by ten minutes' shell-fire will be likely to dispute the accuracy of the forecast. But we may easily undervalue the trials which the older seaman had to endure. It must have been bad enough to face even 12-pounders at ten or twenty yards range, knowing that each shot would penetrate, and arrive amongst the crowded guns' crews attended by a shower of tearing splinters; but a raking broadside was far worse. Think of the concentrated fire of fourteen 32-pounders, fourteen 24-pounders, fifteen 18-pounders, and a few heavy carronades-the broadside of a 100-gun ship— nearly all double-shotted, smashing through the flimsy sternframe, which was just sufficiently solid to supply the desired splinters. They were not fired all together, at haphazard, but each gun was discharged with scientific accuracy as soon as it bore straight into the vitals of the enemy's ship, dismounting guns, tearing up deck-planking and beams, ricochetting hither and thither along three decks each crowded throughout its hundred and ninety feet of length with close-packed seamen. When such a salute was fired into the Montagne by the Queen Charlotte at the battle of the First of June, it was reported that 300 men were put out of action by that single discharge. At Trafalgar the awful broadside by which the Victory crumbled the stern of the Bucentaur into a cloud of dust was said by the French officers to have caused nearly four hundred casualties. Can the stress and strain of a modern sea-fight supply anything much worse than the experiences of those two ships?

The raw crew of the Nymphe took whatever was served out to them cheerfully enough. It is said that the Briton never fights better than in his first battle, and that strangely assorted company were no exception to the rule. One man who had been barber's boy on board Pellew's last ship, the Winchelsea, was acting-captain of a main-deck gun. The gun-captain was killed, and the ex-barber, whose gun-drill was recent and very present

with him, was heard throughout the action giving each word of command-Cock your locks! Take good aim at the object! Fire! Stop your vents! Sponge and load!' with the scrupulous precision of ordinary exercise. Another came up from the maindeck and asked Captain Pellew what he was to do. All the men at his gun were killed or wounded, and he had been trying to fight the gun by himself, but he could not manage it.

Suddenly the Cléopâtre shot up into the wind; most likely some sheet or brace had been cut, but the smoke was so dense that it was impossible to see what had happened. Presently a 24-pound shot knocked a shower of splinters out of her mizzenmast, twelve feet above the deck. Like a falling tree, the great spar went slowly over the side, carrying with it the tricolour ensign, and the luckless mizzen-top men. Then Israel scored a bullseye, and sent the wheel and a fourth helmsman flying in bloody wreckage across the Frenchman's deck.

With all her after sail gone and no wheel to steady her, the Cléopâtre fell off from the wind again; the tiller, worked by the relieving tackles in the gun-room, had also been shot away, so she paid round off.' The way she had on her carried her stem on against the Nymphe's broadside, where her jibboom jammed between the main rigging and the mast, which was already wounded, beside being weakened by the loss of the main and spring stays, shot away early in the action. Pellew, knowing nothing of the damage sustained by the Cléopâtre, and seeing her run right into him, supposed that the Frenchmen were going to board. He at once called his men from their guns to repel the threatened assault, while his fifty marines lined the bulwarks and poured a hot fire of musketry into the bows of the Cléopâtre. But no crowd of ready boarders filled her forecastle; the French crew were demoralised and in disorder.

At once the Nymphe's boarders, led by Lieutenants Amherst Morris and George Lake, scrambled on to the forecastle of the Cléopâtre, while George Bell, master's mate, led another party through the foremost main-deck port. Fighting their way along the gangways, they reached the quarter-deck, where the officers and some of the crew had rallied. They were driven down the hatchways, and at ten minutes past seven the tricolour was struck, for the first time, to St. George's ensign. As the ensign of the Cléopâtre had gone over the side with the mizzenmast, the pendant was hauled down and rehoisted with the English jack above it. Meanwhile the tottering mainmast of