across her poop, where it was seized and torn away by some of the British seamen.  The enemy, having on board nearly a thousand soldiers besides her crew, replied with rapid volleys of musketry, and, as the frigate passed ahead, sheered impetuously towards her, attempting to board, and in her turn grazing the stern of the Indefatigable.  In another hour the Amazon drew up, and then the British vessels took their positions, one on either bow of the Droits de l’Homme, whence, by movements of the helm, they alternately raked her.  The labor of the gunners, however, was arduous, due to the deep rolling of the ships, on board which, also, the seas poured in volumes through the gun-ports.  On the main decks the men fought up to their middles in water, the heavy cannon broke away from the breechings, or ropes used to control them, and even iron bolts tore out from the ships’ sides under the severe recoil of the guns.  Thus through the long winter night the three ships rushed headlong before the gale towards the French coast, intent on mutual destruction; the constant storm of shot, though flying wild under the violent motions of the vessels, tearing through spars and rigging, and crippling them in much that was essential to their safety.

At four o’clock in the morning of the 14th, long before daybreak, land was sighted right ahead.  The Indefatigable hauled at once to the southward, the Amazon to the northward; the enemy alone, seemingly unconscious of the danger, kept on, and as she passed Pellew’s ship fired a broadside which severely wounded all the masts.  The situation of the combatants was well-nigh desperate.  They had reached the coast of France at a point where it forms a deep recess, called Audierne Bay, from either side of which project capes that must be cleared in order to gain once more the open sea.  One only of the three escaped.  The Droits de l’Homme, unmanageable for want of sail power, tried to anchor, but drove, and struck on a shoal some distance from the beach.  Of sixteen hundred souls on board when the battle began, over one hundred had been killed; and of those who survived the fight three hundred perished in the wreck.  The Amazon, likewise crippled, though not so badly, had gone ashore to the northward only ten minutes after she ceased firing.  Of her people, but six were drowned.  The Indefatigable, beating back and forth against the gale before the scene of the French disaster, upon which her crew gazed with the solemn feeling that such might soon be their own fate, succeeded at last in clearing the southern cape.  At eleven o’clock, nearly twenty-four hours after first meeting the foe, and with six feet of water in her hold, she passed only three-quarters of a mile outside of the Penmarcks, a rocky promontory thirty miles south of Brest.