found himself
in possession of the battery. But the alarm was given, and two
companies of French infantry, each one hundred strong, came resolutely
up to retake the battery. Eight against eighty seemed desperate odds,
but eight against two hundred is a quite hopeless proportion. Yet Mr.
Dwyer and his seven held the fort till one of their number was killed,
two (including the midshipman) badly wounded, and, worst of all, their
ammunition exhausted. When the British had fired their last shot, the
French, with levelled bayonets, broke in; but the inextinguishable
Dwyer was not subdued till he had been stabbed in seventeen places, and
of the whole eight British only one was left unwounded. The French
amazement when they discovered that the force which attacked them
consisted of seven men and a boy, was too deep for words.

Perhaps the most brilliant cutting-out in British records is the
carrying of the _Chevrette_ by the boats of three British frigates in
Cameret Bay in 1801. A previous and mismanaged attempt had put the
_Chevrette_ on its guard; it ran a mile and a half farther up the bay,
moored itself under some heavy batteries, took on board a powerful
detachment of infantry, bringing its number of men up to 339, and then
hoisted in defiance a large French ensign over the British flag. Some
temporary redoubts were thrown up on the points of land commanding the
_Chevrette_, and a heavily armed gunboat was moored at the entrance of
the bay as a guard-boat. After all these preparations the
_Chevrette's_ men felt both safe and jubilant; but the sight of that
French flag flying over the British ensign was a challenge not to be
refused, and at half-past nine that night the boats of the three
frigates--the _Doris_, the _Uranie_, and the _Beaulieu_--fifteen in
all, carrying 280 officers and men, were in the water and pulling off
to attack the _Chevrette_.

Lieutenant Losack, in command, with his own and five other boats,
suddenly swung off in the gloom in chase of what he supposed to be the
look-out boat of the enemy, ordering the other nine boats to lie on
their oars till he returned. But time stole on; he failed to return;
and Lieutenant Maxwell, the next in command, reflecting that the night
was going, and the boats had six miles to pull, determined to carry out
the expedition, though he had only nine boats and less than 180 men,
instead of fifteen boats and 280 men. He summoned his little squadron
in the darknes