At half-past two firing began between the French rear and the leading British.  Of the two foremost in the chase, who thus opened the fight, one was the same Dorsetshire which in Mathews’s battle had played the laggard.  Her captain, who thus rose to his opportunity, was one of the two to whom Hawke addressed the enthusiastic compliment that they had “behaved like angels.”  Hawke himself was at this moment south of Belleisle, with several ships ahead of him; while the French admiral was leading his fleet, in order better to pilot them over dangerous ground, and by his own action show more surely than was possible by signal what he wished done from moment to moment.  At the southern extreme of the shoals which act as a breakwater to Quiberon Bay are some formidable rocks, known as the Cardinals.  Around these M. de Conflans passed soon after the firing began, his rear being then in hot action.

Hawke himself was without a pilot, as were most of his captains.  The sailing master of the flag-ship was charged with that duty for the fleet, but had of the ground before him no exact personal knowledge; nor could reliance be placed upon the imperfect surveys of a locality, which it was not the interest of an almost constant enemy to disclose.  Enough, however, was known to leave no doubt of the greatness of the risks, and it was the master’s part to represent them.  The occasion, however, was not one of a mere diversion, of a secondary operation, but of one vital to the nation’s cause; and Hawke’s reply, stamped with the firmness of a great officer, showed how little professional timidity had to do with his laudable care of his fleet in Basque Roads two years before.  “You have done your duty in warning me,” he replied; “now lay us alongside the French Commander-in-chief.”  So amid the falling hours of the day the British fleet, under the unswerving impulse of its leader, moved steadfastly forward, to meet a combination of perils that embraced all most justly dreaded by seamen,—­darkness, an intricate navigation, a lee shore fringed with outlying and imperfectly known reefs and shoals, towards which they were hurried by a fast-rising wind and sea, that forbade all hope of retracing their steps during the long hours of the night.

“Had we but two hours more daylight,” wrote Hawke in his official report, “the whole had been totally destroyed or taken; for we were almost up with their van when night overtook us.”  His success would have been greater, though not more decisive of issues than the event proved it; but nothing could have added to the merit or brilliancy of his action, to which no element of grandeur was wanting.  This was one of the most dramatic of sea fights.  Forty-odd tall ships, pursuers and pursued, under reefed canvas, in fierce career drove furiously on; now rushing headlong down the forward slope of a great sea, now rising on its crest as it swept beyond them; now seen, now hidden; the helmsmen straining at the wheels, upon which the huge hulls, tossing their prows from side to side, tugged like a maddened horse, as though themselves feeling the wild “rapture of the strife” that animated their masters, rejoicing in their strength and defying the accustomed rein.