ing her helm to bring her course parallel to that of the enemy,
exchanged broadsides with the Frenchman. Ship after ship came into action
in the same way. The speed was nearer three than four knots, and the lines
some six miles long, so it was more than an hour before the leading English
battleship was abreast of and engaged with the rearmost Frenchman. As ship
passed ship there was a thunder of artillery, a rattle of small arms. Then
a brief lull till the guns of two more opponents bore on each other. But
in this cannonade the English had the advantage of the heavy blows struck
by their large-bore carronades at close range, and the fact that their
gun-mountings enabled them to keep a passing ship longer under fire than
was possible for the French gunners. In De Grasse's ships, crowded with
troops, the slaughter was terrible. As the fight went on and the French
ships came under the crushing fire of adversary after adversary, it was
seen that it was only with difficulty the officers kept the men at the
guns. In this first hour of the fight the French began to throw the dead
overboard to clear their encumbered decks, and a strange horror was added
to the scene, for shoals of sharks that had followed the fleets to pick up
anything thrown overboard now swarmed around them, lashing the water into
foam as they struggled for their human prey.

At length the leading English ship was abeam of the rearmost of De Grasse's
fleet. Over some six miles of sea the two battle lines extended, every ship
ablaze with fire-flashes from her guns and with the dense smoke-clouds
drifting around the English vessels and wrapping them in the fog of war. If
the battle was now to be fought out on the old traditional method, the
fleets would clear each other, wear and tack and repass each other in
opposite directions with a second exchange of fire. But now came the event
that made the battle of the Saints' Passage epoch-making in naval history.

What precisely happened is wrapped in a fog of controversy as dense as the
smoke-fog that enveloped Rodney's fleet at the decisive moment. One thing
is certain. The old admiral suddenly changed all his plans, and executed a
new manoeuvre with the signal he himself was disobeying--the order to
engage to leeward--still flying from his flagship. The act was the sudden
seizing of an unexpected opportunity. But some of the merit of the new
departure was due to Rodney's right-hand man, his "Captain of the Fleet,"
S