A peculiar incident preceding the action has interest, as showing the strong preoccupation of men’s minds at the opening of war, before meetings with the enemy have lost novelty.  Pellew’s younger brother, Israel, a commander in the navy, being otherwise unemployed, had come out with him for the cruise.  The Cleopatre having been first seen in the early morning, Edward would not have him called till just as the Nymphe was closing.  As he came on deck, the brother said affectionately, “Israel, you have no business here.  We are too many eggs from one nest.  I am sorry I brought you from your wife.”  But the other was unheeding, his eyes fixed upon the stranger.  “That’s the very frigate,” he cried, “that I’ve been dreaming of all night!  I dreamt that we shot away her wheel.”  And, hastening to the after-gun, he made the French ship’s wheel the object of an unremitting fire.

By the way the enemy was handled it was evident that she was well manned and ably commanded.  She had, in fact, been in commission for over a year.  Great as was his own skill, Pellew could not venture upon manoeuvres with a green crew, untrained save at the guns, and only filled the night before by pressing from a merchant vessel.  He therefore determined upon a simple artillery duel.  The Frenchman waited under short canvas, while the Nymphe, with greater way, drew slowly up on his starboard, or right-hand side; both ships running nearly before the wind, but having it a little on the left side.  Each captain stood uncovered, and as the bows of the Nymphe doubled upon the stern of the Cleopatre, within three hundred feet, a French sailor was seen to run aloft and fasten a red cap of liberty to the mainmast head.  The eyes of the British seamen were fastened upon their commander, awaiting the gesture which he had set, instead of word of mouth, for opening fire.  At quarter-past six he gave it, raising his cap to his head.  A furious cannonade at once began, and, the Nymphe shortening sail as soon as fairly abreast her antagonist, the two frigates continued on parallel lines, maintaining their relative positions as though at anchor, and rolling easily in the soft summer sea under the recoil of their guns.  So nearly matched were the gunners that the conflict, unusually deadly though it was, might have lasted long, but at a little before seven Israel Pellew’s dream was fulfilled.  The Frenchman’s wheel was shot away, and, the mizzenmast going overboard at the same time, the Cleopatre yielded to the impulse of her forward sails, turned sharp round to the right, and ran perpendicularly into the Nymphe.  The British boarded her, fixed in this disadvantageous position, fought their way aft, and, although the French crew was numerically superior, in ten minutes hauled down the colors.  In this brief hour they had lost twenty-three killed and twenty-seven wounded, the enemy sixty-three killed and wounded, out of ships’ companies numbering respectively two hundred and forty and three hundred and twenty.