Captain Baudoin, the captain of the Fougueux, seemed at first uncertain whether he would lie off to leeward, and with the Neptune's help rake and cannonade the Téméraire into submission, or come to close quarters at once and board. The second alternative seemed to promise quicker results, and he adopted it. He made up his mind to bring the matter to an issue on the spot before other British ships could interfere, and carry the Téméraire by a coup de main. The few people he saw about on the Téméraire's upper deck was one inducement to try boarding her. He could not know, of course, that Captain Harvey had ordered everybody who could possibly be spared to go below so as to avoid unnecessary loss of life from the Redoutable's musketry. Another was that the Téméraire's attention seemed to be wholly devoted to the Redoutable. Captain Baudoin put the Fougueux's head directly for the Téméraire, and as they closed, the French ship's shrouds quickly became black with men, cutlass in hand, while more swarmed on the forecastle and gangways cheering and shouting 'À l'abordage! à l'abordage!' So the Fougueux neared the Téméraire. For her part, as it befell, the Téméraire had for some time foreseen what was coming. She was by no means so incapable of meeting a new antagonist as she looked.
The Téméraire, as it happened, had not yet fired a single shot from her guns on the starboard broadside. She had her triple tier of 32-pounders and long 18's ranged there all ready, all double-shotted and clear for action. To man these guns was quick work. Without checking the fire that the Téméraire was keeping up into the Redoutable and the Neptune, Lieutenant Kennedy, the first lieutenant, rapidly called away sufficient hands from the guns on the port side to man all the starboard batteries. Then the gallant officer and his men waited—the captain of each gun standing ready with arm raised and his firing lanyard out-stretched stiff as wire—all eagerly watching the coming on of the Fougueux. Not a sign that the guns were manned came from the Téméraire's ports, as nearer and nearer the French seventy-four swept down on her. Now she was 200 yards off—now 150—now 100—now 80 yards! Confidently came the Fougueux on as to certain conquest, amid wild tempestuous shoutings of 'A l'abordage!' 'Vive l'Empereur! Vive l'Empereur!' The supreme moment came.
'Téméraires—stand by—fire!'
Holding back until the yard-arms of the two ships all but touched, with a deafening thunder-burst that for the instant overpowered all other sounds of battle, the Téméraire's whole starboard broadside went off at once, in one salvo, like one gigantic gun. A terrific crash re-echoed back, with yells and shrieks. There was no more shouting from the Fougueux. As the smoke drifted off, the Téméraire's men looked and saw the enemy's rigging and forecastle and decks swept clean and bare. The next minute, with her whole side practically beaten in, crushed in like an eggshell trampled under foot, the hapless seventy-four ran, blundering blindly, in hopeless confusion, right into the Téméraire.[105]
Like the Redoutable she was promptly lashed fast, and then—'Boarders away!' was the call. A master's mate, a little middy, twenty seamen, six marines, followed close behind Lieutenant Kennedy as he clambered into the Fougueux's main rigging, and thence down on to the Fougueux's quarter-deck. One of the seamen with the boarding-party had a Union Jack rolled round his neck. 'It'll come handy perhaps,' said the brave fellow as he followed his messmates over the side. There was a sharp tussle on the quarter-deck of the Fougueux, where Captain Baudoin, struck down by the Téméraire's broadside, lay mortally wounded. Second-Captain Bazin hastily rallied seventy or eighty men, called up from below to meet the boarders, but the impetuous onset of the nine-and-twenty Téméraires carried everything before it despite the odds. The Fougueux's second captain was cut down. A lieutenant who took his place was shot dead with a pistol bullet through the heart. The Frenchmen then gave way and broke and were driven off the quarter-deck pell-mell. Slashing and stabbing their way, without a single fresh man from the ship, in less than twelve minutes Lieutenant Kennedy's party were masters of the Fougueux. They hustled the surrendered Frenchmen down into the hold, clapped the hatches on them, and then the Union Jack came in 'handy' to hoist over the tricolour on the Fougueux' ensign staff.
So the Redoutable's would-be rescuer was added to the row of four ships, all fast to one another side by side, the Victory, Redoutable, Téméraire, and Fougueux.
Relieved from the hostile presence of the Fougueux, the Téméraire turned her attention to finishing off the Redoutable, now plainly at her last gasp, though still unsubdued. Her guns were silenced, but musket shots still came from the tops. A few minutes later the Victory broke herself clear and steered away from the group. She boomed herself off, leaving Captain Harvey to receive in due course the submission of the Redoutable.
But even now Captain Lucas would not give up. 'The Téméraire, to quote Captain Lucas's own words once more, 'hailed us to give ourselves up and not prolong a useless resistance. I ordered some soldiers near me to answer this summons by firing, which was done with alacrity.' The end, though, was at last really at hand. Scarcely had the British flagship broken away than the Redoutable's main and mizen masts came down. The main-mast crashed over the Téméraire's poop, and in its fall formed a bridge from ship to ship, across which a party of the Téméraire's officers and men, headed by the second lieutenant, John Wallace, promptly clambered. With more than 500 of his original crew of 600 odd hors de combat, dead or wounded, there was no opposition possible, and Captain Lucas had to yield up his sword.
