. The song tells the story of the
fight in an amusing fashion:--

"Come all ye jolly sailors bold,
Whose hearts are cast in honour's mould,
While England's glory I unfold.
Huzza to the _Arethusa_!
She is a frigate tight and brave
As ever stemmed the dashing wave;
Her men are staunch
To their fav'rite launch,
And when the foe shall meet our fire,
Sooner than strike we'll all expire
On board the _Arethusa_.

On deck five hundred men did dance,
The stoutest they could find in France;
We, with two hundred, did advance
On board the _Arethusa_.
Our captain hailed the Frenchman, 'Ho!'
The Frenchman then cried out, 'Hallo!'
'Bear down, d'ye see,
To our Admiral's lee.'
'No, no,' says the Frenchman, 'that can't be.
'Then I must lug you along with me,'
Says the saucy _Arethusa_!"

As a matter of fact Marshall hung doggedly on the Frenchman's quarter
for two long hours, fighting a ship twice as big as his own. The
_Belle Poule_ was eager to escape; Marshall was resolute that it should
not escape; and, try as he might, the Frenchman, during that fierce two
hours' wrestle, failed to shake off his tiny but dogged antagonist.
The _Arethusa's_ masts were shot away, its jib-boom hung a tangled
wreck over its bows, its bulwarks were shattered, its decks were
splashed red with blood, half its guns were dismounted, and nearly
every third man in its crew struck down. But still it hung, with
quenchless and obstinate courage, on the _Belle Poule's_ quarter, and
by its perfect seamanship and the quickness and the deadly precision
with which its lighter guns worked, reduced its towering foe to a
condition of wreck almost as complete as its own. The terrier, in
fact, was proving too much for the mastiff.

Suddenly the wind fell. With topmasts hanging over the side, and
canvas torn to ribbons, the _Arethusa_ lay shattered and moveless on
the sea. The shot-torn but loftier sails of the _Belle Poule_,
however, yet held wind enough to drift her out of the reach of the
_Arethusa's_ fire. Both ships were close under the French cliffs; but
the _Belle Poule_, like a broken-winged bird, struggled into a tiny
cove in the rocks, and nothing remained for the _Arethusa_ but to cut
away her wreckage, hoist what sail she could, and drag herself sullenly
back under jury-masts to the British fleet. But the story of that two
hours' heroic fight maintained against such