night under the
lee of the island of Dumet.

It was a wild night, filled with the thunder of the surf and the shriek
of the gale, and all through it, as the English ships rode, madly
straining at their anchors, they could hear the sounds of distress
guns. One of the ships that perished that night was a fine English
seventy-four, the _Resolution_. The morning broke as wild as the
night. To leeward two great line-of-battle ships could be seen on the
rocks; but in the very middle of the English fleet, its masts gone, its
hull battered with shot, was the flagship of Conflans, _Le Soleil
Royal_. In the darkness and tempest of the night the unfortunate
Frenchman, all unwitting, had anchored in the very midst of his foes.
As soon as, through the grey and misty light of the November dawn, the
English ships were discovered, Conflans cut his cables and drifted
ashore. The _Essex_, 64 guns, was ordered to pursue her, and her
captain, an impetuous Irishman, obeyed his orders so literally that he
too ran ashore, and the _Essex_ became a total wreck.

"When I consider," Hawke wrote to the Admiralty, "the season of the
year, the hard gales on the day of action, a flying enemy, the
shortness of the day, and the coast they were on, I can boldly affirm
that all that could possibly be done has been done." History confirms
that judgment. There is no other record of a great sea-fight fought
under conditions so wild, and scarcely any other sea-battle has
achieved results more decisive. Trafalgar itself scarcely exceeds it
in the quality of effectiveness. Quiberon saved England from invasion.
It destroyed for the moment the naval power of France. Its political
results in France cannot be described here, but they were of the first
importance. The victory gave a new complexion to English naval
warfare. Rodney and Howe were Hawke's pupils, Nelson himself, who was
a post-captain when Hawke died, learned his tactics in Hawke's school.
No sailor ever served England better than Hawke. And yet, such is the
irony of human affairs, that on the very day when Hawke was adding the
thunder of his guns to the diapason of surf and tempest off Quiberon,
and crushing the fleet that threatened England with invasion, a London
mob was burning his effigy for having allowed the French to escape his
blockade.

THE NIGHT ATTACK ON BADAJOS

"Hand to hand, and foot to foot;
Nothing there, save death, was mute:
Stroke, and thrust, and f