nd at twenty minutes to nine P.M., vainly
searching the black horizon for the lights of the enemy, he hailed the
_Superb_, and ordered its captain, Keats, to clap on all sail and
attack the enemy directly he overtook them. Saumarez, in a word,
launched a single seventy-four against a fleet! Keats was a daring
sailor; his ship was, perhaps, the fastest British seventy-four afloat,
and his men were instantly aloft spreading every inch of canvas. Then,
like a huge ghost, the _Superb_ glided ahead and vanished in the
darkness. The wind freshened; the blackness deepened; the lights of
the British squadron died out astern. But a wide sprinkle of lights
ahead became visible; it was the Spanish fleet! Eagerly the daring
_Superb_ pressed on, with slanting decks and men at quarters, but with
lights hidden. At midnight the rear ships of the Spanish squadron were
under the larboard bow of the _Superb_--two stupendous three-deckers,
with lights gleaming through a hundred port-holes--while a French
two-decker to larboard of both the Spanish giants completed the line.

Keats, unseen and unsuspected, edged down with his solitary
seventy-four, her heaviest guns only 18-pounders, on the quarter of the
nearest three-decker. He was about to fling himself, in the gloom of
the night, on three great ships, with an average of 100 guns each! Was
ever a more daring feat attempted? Silently through the darkness the
_Superb_ crept, her canvas glimmering ghostly white, till she was
within some 300 yards of the nearest Spaniard. Then out of the
darkness to windward there broke on the astonished and drowsy Spaniards
a tempest of flame, a whirlwind of shot. Thrice the _Superb_ poured
her broadside into the huge and staggering bulk of her antagonist.
With the second broadside the Spaniard's topmast came tumbling down;
with the third, so close was the flame of the _Superb's_ guns, the
Spanish sails--dry as touch-wood with lying for so many months in the
sunshine of Cadiz--took fire.

Meanwhile a dramatic incident occurred. The two great Spaniards
commenced to thunder their heavy broadsides into each other! Many of
the Superb's shots had struck the second and more distant three-decker.
Cochrane, indeed, says that the _Superb_ passed actually betwixt the
two gigantic Spaniards, fired a broadside, larboard and starboard, into
both, and then glided on and vanished in the darkness. It is certain
that the _San Hermenegildo_, finding her decks