depth of water to enter the canal. “About seven o’clock in the evening the English fleet approached to anchor at Chef de Baie. But, to prevent them, I ordered the battery to fire fifty cannon-shot upon the vessels of the advance-guard, of which three struck the hulls of the vessels and killed a few men, and the others pierced their sails. This caused them to stand out to sea towards the Straits of Antioche,[115] where they cast anchor.” The English appear to have imagined that they had only to show themselves to enter the harbour, as they had been informed that the French had only a few ships and that the mole was but little advanced. They were astonished to behold the approach barred by twenty-nine vessels and a swarm of boats and armed shallops. The flanks of this fleet were protected by the batteries which bristled on the two promontories of Chef de Baie and Coreilles and on both sides of the canal. Even supposing that they were able to force this formidable barrier, they would find themselves confronted by the mole, now almost completed, which was fortified by four batteries, one at each extremity, and one on either side of a narrow opening left for the passage of the tides. A little fort, built in the canal, covered this opening on the side of the sea, and this fort was covered, in its turn, by twenty-four vessels lashed together in the shape of a half-moon. On the other side of the mole, a second floating stockade of armed boats prevented the Rochellois from communicating with their allies. It may be questioned, as Gardiner very justly observes, whether Drake or Nelson, followed by crews as high-spirited and as energetic as themselves, would have made an attack successfully. But Denbigh’s fleet was for the most part manned by pressed men, carried off against their will from their ordinary occupations to a service of danger, in which the reward was but scanty pay, or, most probably, no pay at all. Many of them were soldiers converted into sailors from sheer necessity. Such men could have had but little stomach for the business in hand, nor was Denbigh the kind of commander to inspire those under him with a more daring spirit. Denbigh would appear to have founded some hope on the superiority of his ships-of-war over any which the French could oppose to them; but he was assured by the Rochellois _émigrés_ who were with him that these great vessels would undoubtedly run aground in the shallow waters of the canal. He therefore decided to wait until the next spring tide made the attack easier for his fire-ships; but, in any case, it would have been impossible for him to have attempted anything of importance for nearly a week, as during that time, Bassompierre tells us, the wind was blowing hard off the coast.