ck.
Holliwell, the captain of the _Swiftsure_, was about to fire, thinking
it was an enemy, but on second thoughts hailed instead, and got for an
answer the words, "_Bellerophon_; going out of action, disabled." The
_Swiftsure_ passed on, and five minutes after the _Bellerophon_ had
drifted from the bows of the _Orient_ the _Swiftsure_, coming
mysteriously up out of the darkness, took her place, and broke into a
tempest of fire.

At nine o'clock the great French flagship burst into flame. The
painters had been at work upon her on the morning of that day, and had
left oil and combustibles about. The nearest English ships
concentrated their fire, both of musketry and of cannon, on the burning
patch, and made the task of extinguishing it hopeless. Brueys, the
French admiral, had already been cut in two by a cannon shot, and
Casablanca, his commodore, was wounded. The fire spread, the flames
leaped up the masts and crept athwart the decks of the great ship. The
moon had just risen, and the whole scene was perhaps the strangest ever
witnessed--the great burning ship, the white light of the moon above,
the darting points of red flame from the iron lips of hundreds of guns
below, the drifting battle-smoke, the cries of ten thousand
combatants--all crowded into an area of a few hundred square yards!

The British ships, hanging like hounds on the flanks of the Orient,
knew that the explosion might come at any moment, and they made every
preparation for it, closing their hatchways, and gathering their
firemen at quarters. But they would not withdraw their ships a single
yard! At ten o'clock the great French ship blew up with a flame that
for a moment lit shore and sea, and a sound that hushed into stillness
the whole tumult of the battle. Out of a crew of over a thousand men
only seventy were saved! For ten minutes after that dreadful sight the
warring fleets seemed stupefied. Not a shout was heard, not a shot
fired. Then the French ship next the missing flagship broke into
wrathful fire, and the battle awoke in full passion once more.

The fighting raged with partial intermissions all through the night,
and when morning broke Brueys' curved line of mighty battleships, a
mile and a half long, had vanished. Of the French ships, one had been
blown up, one was sunk, one was ashore, four had fled, the rest were
prizes. It was the most complete and dramatic victory in naval
history. The French fought on the whole wit