oast. The wild weather, Conflans reckoned, would
keep Hawke storm-bound in Torbay till this scheme was carried out.

But Hawke with his whole fleet, fighting his way in the teeth of the
gale, reached Ushant on the very day Conflans broke out of Brest, and,
fast as the French fleet ran before the gale, the white sails of
Hawke's ships, showing over the stormy rim of the horizon, came on the
Frenchman's track. Hawke's frigates, outrunning those heavy
sea-waggons, his line-of-battle ships, hung on Conflans' rear. The
main body of the British fleet followed, staggering under their
pyramids of sails, with wet decks and the wild north-west gale on their
quarter. Hawke's best sailers gained steadily on the laggards of
Conflans' fleet. Had Hawke obeyed the puerile tactics of his day he
would have dressed his line and refused to attack at all unless he
could bring his entire fleet into action. But, as Hawke himself said
afterwards, he "had determined to attack them in the old way and make
downright work of them," and he signalled his leading ships to attack
the moment they brought an enemy's ship within fire. Conflans could
not abandon his slower ships, and he reluctantly swung round his van
and formed line to meet the attack.

As the main body of the English came up, the French admiral suddenly
adopted a strategy which might well have baffled a less daring
adversary than Hawke. He ran boldly in shore towards the mouth of the
Vilaine. It was a wild stretch of most dangerous coast; the granite
Breton hills above; splinters of rocky islets, on which the huge sea
rollers tore themselves into white foam, below; and more dangerous
still, and stretching far out to sea, wide reaches of shoal and
quicksand. From the north-west the gale blew more wildly than ever;
the sky was black with flying clouds; on the Breton hills the
spectators clustered in thousands. The roar of the furious breakers
and the shrill note of the gale filled the very air with tumult.
Conflans had pilots familiar with the coast, yet it was bold seamanship
on his part to run down to a lee shore on such a day of tempest. Hawke
had no pilots and no charts; but he saw before him, half hidden in mist
and spray, the great hulls of the ships over which he had kept watch so
long in Brest harbour, and he anticipated Nelson's strategy forty years
afterwards. "Where there is room for the enemy to swing," said Nelson,
"there is room for me to anchor." "Where there