tering colour--the red flag and the
_drapeau blanc_, or the Union Jack and the tricolour--reveals to each
ship its foe. The men stand grimly at quarters; the captain, with
perhaps a solitary lieutenant, and a middy as aide-de-camp, is on his
quarter-deck. There is the manoeuvring for the weather-gage, the
thunder of the sudden broadside, the hurtle and crash of the shot, the
stern, quick word of command as the clumsy guns are run in to be
reloaded and fired again and again with furious haste. The ships drift
into closer wrestle. Masts and yards come tumbling on to the
blood-splashed decks. There is the grinding shock of the great wooden
hulls as they meet, the wild leap of the boarders, the clash of cutlass
on cutlass, the shout of victory, the sight of the fluttering flag as
it sinks reluctantly from the mizzen of the beaten ship. Then the
smoke drifts away, and on the tossing sea-floor lie, little better than
dismantled wrecks, victor and vanquished.

No great issue, perhaps, ever hung upon these lonely sea-combats; but
as object-lessons in the qualities by which the empire has been won,
and by which it must be maintained, these ancient sea-fights have real
and permanent value. What better examples of cool hardihood, of
chivalrous loyalty to the flag, of self-reliant energy, need be
imagined or desired? The generation that carries the heavy burden of
the empire to-day cannot afford to forget the tale of such exploits.

One of the most famous frigate fights in British history is that
between the _Arethusa_ and _La Belle Poule_, fought off Brest on June
17, 1778. Who is not familiar with the name and fame of "the saucy
_Arethusa_"? Yet there is a curious absence of detail as to the fight.
The combat, indeed, owes its enduring fame to two somewhat irrelevant
circumstances--first, that it was fought when France and England were
not actually at war, but were trembling on the verge of it. The sound
of the _Arethusa's_ guns, indeed, was the signal of war between the two
nations. The other fact is that an ingenious rhymester--scarcely a
poet--crystallised the fight into a set of verses in which there is
something of the true smack of the sea, and an echo, if not of the
cannon's roar, yet of the rough-voiced mirth of the forecastle; and the
sea-fight lies embalmed, so to speak, and made immortal in the sea-song.

The _Arethusa_ was a stumpy little frigate, scanty in crew, light in
guns, attached to the fleet of A