him. Warned by the shout of the sentry. Broke turned
round to find three of the enemy with uplifted weapons rushing on him.
He parried the middle fellow's pike and wounded him in the face, but
was instantly struck down with a blow from the butt-end of a musket,
which laid bare his skull. He also received a slash from the cutlass
of the third man, which clove a portion of skull completely away and
left the brain bare. He fell, and was grappled on the deck by the man
he had first wounded, a powerful fellow, who got uppermost and raised a
bayonet to thrust through Broke. At this moment a British marine came
running up, and concluding that the man underneath _must_ be an
American, also raised his bayonet to give the _coup de grace_. "Pooh,
pooh, you fool," said Broke in the most matter-of-fact fashion, "don't
you know your captain?" whereupon the marine changed the direction of
his thrust and slew the American.

The news reached London on July 7, and was carried straight to the
House of Commons, where Lord Cochrane was just concluding a fierce
denunciation of the Admiralty on the ground of the disasters suffered
from the Americans, and Croker, the Secretary to the Admiralty, was
able to tell the story of the fight off Boston to the wildly cheering
House, as a complete defence of his department. Broke was at once
created a Baronet and a Knight of the Bath. In America, on the other
hand, the story of the fight was received with mingled wrath and
incredulity. "I remember," says Rush, afterwards U.S. Minister at the
Court of St. James, "at the first rumour of it, the universal
incredulity. I remember how the post-offices were thronged for
successive days with anxious thousands; how collections of citizens
rode out for miles on the highway to get the earliest news the mail
brought. At last, when the certainty was known, I remember the public
gloom, the universal badges of mourning. 'Don't give up the ship,' the
dying words of Laurence, were on every tongue."

It was a great fight, the most memorable and dramatic sea-duel in naval
history. The combatants were men of the same stock, and fought with
equal bravery. Both nations, in fact, may be proud of a fight so
frank, so fair, so gallant. The world, we may hope, will never witness
another _Shannon_ engaged in the fierce wrestle of battle with another
_Chesapeake_, for the Union Jack and the Stars and Stripes are knitted
together by a bond woven of common blood an