able_,
lay becalmed in the offing; the flagship, with the rest of the
squadron, were mere pyramids of idle canvas on the rim of the horizon.

The _Pompee_ drifted down the whole French line, scorched with the fire
of batteries and of gunboats, as well as by the broadsides of the great
French ships, and at 8.45 dropped her anchor so close to the
_Formidable_--a ship much bigger than itself--that the Frenchman's buoy
lay outside her. Then, deliberately clewing up her sails and tautening
her springs, the _Pompee_ opened a fire on her big antagonist so
fierce, sustained, and deadly, that the latter found it intolerable,
and began to warp closer to the shore. The _Audacious_ and _Venerable_
came slowly up into their assigned positions, and here was a spectacle
of three British ships fighting four French ships and fourteen Spanish
gunboats, with heavy shore batteries manned by 3000 troops thrown into
the scale! At this stage, too, the _Pompee's_ springs gave way, or
were shot away, the current swung her round till she lay head on to the
broadside of her huge antagonist, while the batteries smote her with a
deadly cross-fire. A little after ten o'clock the _Caesar_ dropped
anchor three cables' lengths from the _Indomptable_, and opened a fire
which the French themselves described as "tremendous" upon her
antagonist.

Linois found the British fire too destructive, and signalled his ships
to cut or slip their cables, calculating that a faint air from the sea,
which was beginning to blow, would drift them closer under the shelter
of the batteries. Saumarez, too, noticed that his topsails were
beginning to swell, and he instantly slipped his cable and endeavoured
to close with the _Indomptable_, signalling his ships to do the same.
The British cables rattled hoarsely through their hawse-holes along the
whole line, and the ships were adrift; but the breeze almost instantly
died away, and on the strong coast current the British ships floated
helplessly, while the fire from the great shore batteries, and from the
steady French decks, now anchored afresh, smote them heavily in turn.
The _Pompee_ lay for an hour under a concentrated fire without being
able to bring a gun to bear in return, and then summoned by signal the
boats of the squadron to tow her off.

Saumarez, meanwhile, had ordered the _Hannibal_, under Captain Ferris,
to round the head of the French line and "rake the admiral's ship."
Ferris, by fine seamanship, part