“Hold your volley till they touch!” cried the captain of marines.
The huge loom of the Frenchman was seen bursting through the smoke. Thick clusters of boarders hung upon her sides and shrouds. A final broadside leapt from her ports, and the mainmast of the “Leda,” snapping short off a few feet above the deck, spun into the air and crashed down upon the port guns, killing ten men and putting the whole battery out of action. An instant later the two ships scraped together, and the starboard bower anchor of the “Gloire” caught the mizzen chains of the “Leda” upon the port side. With a yell the black swarm of boarders steadied themselves for a spring.
But their feet were never to reach that blood-stained deck. From somewhere there came a well-aimed whiff of grape, and another, and another. The English marines and seamen, waiting with cutlass and musket behind the silent guns, saw with amazement the dark masses thinning and shredding away. At the same time the port broadside of the Frenchman burst into a roar.
“Clear away the wreck!” roared the captain. “What the devil are they firing at?”
“Get the guns clear!” panted the lieutenant. “We’ll do them yet, boys!”
The wreckage was torn and hacked and splintered until first one gun and then another roared into action again. The Frenchman’s anchor had been cut away, and the “Leda” had worked herself free from that fatal hug. But now suddenly there was a scurry up the shrouds of the “Gloire,” and a hundred Englishmen were shouting themselves hoarse.
“They’re running! They’re running! They’re running!”
And it was true. The Frenchman had ceased to fire, and was intent only upon clapping on every sail that she could carry.
But that shouting hundred could not claim it all as their own. As the smoke cleared, it was not difficult to see the reason. The ships had gained the mouth of the estuary during the fight, and there, about four miles out to sea, was the “Leda’s” consort bearing down under full sail to the sound of the guns. Captain de Milon had done his part for one day, and presently the “Gloire” was drawing off swiftly to the north, while the “Dido” was bowling along at her skirts, rattling away with her bowchasers, until a headland hid them both from view.
But the “Leda” lay sorely stricken, with her mainmast gone, her bulwarks 212 shattered, her mizzen topmast and gaff shot away, her sails like a beggar’s rags, and a hundred of her crew dead and wounded. Close beside her a mass of wreckage floated upon the waves. It was the stern post of a mangled vessel, and across it, in white letters on a black ground, was printed “The Slapping Sal.”