and
to fire into her, and to continue to fire until all mutiny or resistance
should cease; and that, should it become absolutely necessary, he should
even sink the ship in face of the fleet.'

"Accordingly, at seven the next morning, all the launches, thus armed,
proceeded, from the _Prince_ to the _Blenheim_, and thence, Captain
Campbell having assumed the command, to the _Marlborough_.

"Having lain on his oars a short time alongside, the captain then formed
his force in a line athwart her bows, at rather less than pistol shot
distance off, and then he ordered the tompions to be taken out of the
carronades, and to load.

"At half-past seven, the hands throughout the fleet having been turned
up to witness punishment, the eyes of all bent upon a powerfully armed
boat as it quitted the flag-ship; every one knowing that there went the
provost-marshal conducting his prisoner to the _Marlborough_ for
execution. The crisis was come; now was to be seen whether the
_Marlborough's_ crew would hang one of their own men.

"The ship being in the centre between the two lines of the fleet, the
boat was soon alongside, and the man was speedily placed on the cathead
and haltered. A few awful minutes of universal silence followed, which
was at last broken by the watch bells of the fleet striking eight
o'clock. Instantly the flag-ship's gun fired, and at the sound the man
was lifted well off; but then, and visibly to all, he dropped back
again; and the sensation throughout the fleet was intense. For, at this
dreadful moment, when the eyes of every man in every ship was straining
upon this execution, as the decisive struggle between authority and
mutiny, as if it were destined that the whole fleet should see the
hesitating unwillingness of the _Marlborough's_ crew to hang their
rebel, and the efficacy of the means taken to enforce obedience, by an
accident on board the ship the men at the yard-rope unintentionally let
it slip, and the turn of the balance seemed calamitously lost; but then
they hauled him up to the yard arm with a run. The law was satisfied,
and, said Lord St. Vincent at the moment, perhaps one of the greatest of
his life, 'Discipline is preserved, sir!'"

Again a year later, in May, 1799, when twenty-five French
ships-of-the-line broke through the wretchedly inefficient guard at that
time kept before Brest, and entered the Mediterranean, a reinforcement
of over a dozen was sent from the Channel to Lord St. Vincent,