government sent only a corporal’s guard, he felt it his duty to go along with them.”  The vessels sailed on the 20th of September, 1798; it was not till the 11th October that they arrived off Lough Swilly—­simultaneously with an English squadron that had been on the look out for them.  The English ships were about equal in number to the French, but were of a larger class, and carried a much heavier armament.  The French Admiral directed some of his smaller craft to endeavour to escape by means of their light draught of water, and he counselled Tone to transfer himself to that one of them which had the best chance of getting away.  The Frenchmen, he observed, would be made prisoners of war, but for the Irish rebel a worse fate was reserved if he should fall into the hand of his enemies.  But to this suggestion the noble-hearted Tone declined to accede.  “Shall it be said,” he replied, “that I fled while the French were fighting the battles of my country.”  In a little time the Hoche was surrounded by four sail of the line and one frigate, who poured their shot into her upon all sides.  During six hours she maintained the unequal combat, fighting “till her masts and rigging were cut away, her scuppers flowed with blood, her wounded filled the cockpit, her shattered ribs yawned at each new stroke, and let in five feet of water in the hold, her rudder was carried off, and she floated a dismantled wreck on the water; her sails and cordage hung in shreds, nor could she reply with a single gun from her dismounted batteries to the unabating cannonade of the enemy.”  During the action Tone commanded one of the batteries “and fought with the utmost desperation, as if he was courting death.”  But, as often has happened in similiar cases, death seemed to shun him, and he was reserved for a more tragic fate.

The French officers who survived the action, and had been made prisoners of war, were, some days subsequently, invited to breakfast with the Earl of Cavan, who commanded in the district in which they had been landed.  Tone, who up to that time, had escaped recognition, was one of the party, and sat undistinguished among them, until Sir George Hill, who had been a fellow-student of his in Trinity College, entered the room and accosted him by his name.  This was done, not inadvertently, but with the intention of betraying him.  In a moment he was in the hands of a party of military and police who were in waiting for him in the next room.  Seeing that they were about to put him in fetters, he complained indignantly of the offering of such an insult to the uniform which he wore, and the rank—­that of Chef de Brigade—­which he bore in the French army.  He cast off his regimentals, protesting that they should not be so sullied, and then, offering his limbs to the irons, exclaimed—­“For the cause which I have embraced, I feel prouder to wear these chains, than if I were decorated with the Star and Garter of England.”  He was hurried off to Dublin, and though the ordinary tribunals were