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.

The French admiral had flattered himself that the enemy, ignorant of the
ground, would not dare to follow him round the Cardinals. He was soon
undeceived. Hawke's comment on the situation was that he was "for the
old way of fighting, to make downright work with them." It was an old
way, true; but he had more than once seen it lost to mind, and had
himself done most to restore it to its place,--a new way as well as an
old. The signals for the general chase and for battle were kept aloft,
and no British ship slacked her way. Without ranged order, save that of
speed, the leaders mingled with the French rear; the roar and flashes
of the guns, the falling spars and drifting clouds of smoke, now adding
their part to the wild magnificence of the scene. Though tactically
perfect in the sole true sense of tactics, that the means adopted
exactly suit