effort and further embarrassed the British, through the difficulty of keeping their broadsides in position.  Here happened the great disaster of the day.  One of the outer ships, the Hannibal, tried to pass inside the headmost of the French, not realizing that the latter had moved.  In so doing she ran aground close under a battery, to whose fire she could make no reply.  After a brave and prolonged resistance, in which she lost seventy-five killed and seventy wounded out of a crew of six hundred, and had many of her guns dismounted, she hauled down her flag.  By this time another ship, the Pompee, was dismasted, and success was plainly hopeless.  The British admiral, therefore, ordered the action discontinued, and withdrew to the Gibraltar side; the Pompee having to be towed away by the boats of the squadron.

Saumarez had failed, and failure, however explained, can hardly be carried to a man’s credit; but his after course, by wresting success out of seemingly irretrievable disaster, has merited the highest eulogium.  Maintaining both courage and energy unimpaired, every effort was instantly made to get the ships once more into fighting condition, that the attack might be renewed.  “Tell the Admiralty,” said he to the bearer of his despatches, “that I feel confident I shall soon have an opportunity of attacking the enemy again, and that they may depend upon my availing myself of it.”

The opportunity did come.  On the morning of July 9th, the Superb, the seventh ship, which had not been in the action, was seen rounding the west point of the bay under all sail, with a signal flying that the enemy was in pursuit.  A few moments later appeared five Spanish vessels, two of which, the Real Carlos and the Hermenegildo, carrying each one hundred and twelve guns, were among the largest then afloat.  On board them had embarked a number of the jeunesse doree of Cadiz, eager to join the triumphal procession which it was thought would soon enter the port, flushed with a victory considered by them to be rather Spanish than French, and escorting the rare trophy of a British ship-of-the-line that had struck to Spanish batteries.  Besides the two giants, there were a ninety-gun ship and two seventy-fours; and the next day a French vessel of the latter class joined, making a total reinforcement of six heavy ships.

To these Saumarez could oppose but five.  The Hannibal he had lost.  The Pompee could not be repaired in time; her people were therefore distributed among the other vessels of the squadron.  Even his own flag-ship, the Caesar, was so injured that he thought it impossible to refit her; but when her crew heard his decision, one cry arose,—­to work all day and night till she was ready for battle.  This was zeal not according to knowledge; but, upon the pleading of her captain in their name, it was agreed that they should work all day, and by watches at night.  So it happened, by systematic distribution of effort and enthusiastic labor, that the Caesar, whose mainmast on the 9th was out and her rigging cut to pieces, was on the 12th able to sail in pursuit of the foe.