ed the situation, this was a battle of incidents, often
untold,--not one of manoeuvres. As the ships, rolling heavily, buried
their flanks deeply in the following seas, no captain dared to open his
lower tier of ports, where the most powerful artillery was arrayed--none
save one, the French _Thesee_, whose rashness was rebuked by the
inpouring waters, which quickly engulfed both ship and crew. The
_Superbe_ met a like fate, though not certainly from the same cause. She
sank under the broadside of the _Royal George_, Hawke's flag-ship. "The
_Royal George's_ people gave a cheer," wrote an eye witness, "but it was
a faint one; the honest sailors were touched at the miserable state of
so many hundreds of poor creatures." Americans and English can couple
this story of long ago with Philip's ejaculation off Santiago de Cuba,
but three years since: "Don't cheer, boys, those poor devils are dying."

By five o'clock two French ships had struck, and two had been sunk.
"Night was now come," wrote Hawke, "and being on a part of the coast,
among islands and shoals of which we were totally ignorant, without a
pilot, as was the greatest part of the squadron, and blowing hard on a
lee shore, I made the signal to anchor." The day's work was over, and
doubtless looked to him incomplete, but it was effectually and finally
done. The French Navy did not again lift up its head during the three
years of war that remained. Balked in their expectation that the foe's
fear of the beach would give them refuge, harried and worried by the
chase, harnessed to no fixed plan of action, Conflans's fleet broke
apart and fled. Seven went north, and ran ashore at the mouth of the
little river Vilaine which empties into Quiberon Bay. Eight stood south,
and succeeded in reaching Rochefort. The fate of four has been told.
Conflans's flag-ship anchored after night among the British, but at
daybreak next morning cut her cables, ran ashore, and was burned by the
French. One other, wrecked on a shoal in the bay, makes up the tale of
twenty-one. Six were wholly lost to their navy; the seven that got into
Vilaine only escaped to Brest by twos, two years later, while the
Rochefort division was effectually blocked by occupying Basque Roads,
the islands of which and of Quiberon were cultivated as kitchen gardens
for the refreshment of British crews.

Of the British, one ship went on a shoal during the action, and on the
following day another coming to her assistance a