A detailed description of the battle is an impossibility. The wind shifted suddenly from W.N.W. to N.N.W., and increased in violence as it travelled round, adding to the already frightful confusion of the forty and odd great ships manœuvring in the confined triangle of water bounded by the coast and the islands. The sea was heaving underfoot, driven in great waves before the wind, and dragged seaward by the ebb. The storm howled through the rigging. The ships under reduced canvas made short tacks to avoid the rocks all around. Conflans, after stretching up to Quiberon Bay, turned back to the help of the ships behind him, and the two fleets were mingled in a wild whirl of storm and battle. Collisions were incessant between enemies and friends, but the English, as being the more practised seamen, avoided them better, and suffered from them less. To the French admiral it suggested itself as a possibility that he might fight his way out again, and get once more to windward of Belleisle. Signals followed one another rapidly from the _Soleil Royal_, but they were not, and they could not be obeyed. The rolling of the ships rendered their fire ineffective, and the danger of wreck compelled the captains to think constantly of the safety of their vessels. Sunset, too, came early, and the dark put a stop to all manœuvring. Thus there was neither time nor opportunity to take many prizes. One other French ship, the _Superbe_, shared the fate of the _Thésée_, and the _Héros_, dismasted and riddled by the English fire, hauled down her flag and dropped anchor. But the enemy was none the less completely beaten. Seven of his ships found refuge in the Vilaine by grovelling over the mud bar of the river. Others fled down the coast to the south, where one of them, the _Juste_, was stranded near St. Nazaire. Her first and second captains, the brothers Allouar, had both fallen. Conflans himself ran inside the Point du Four, and anchored off Croisic. When darkness came down, Hawke made the signal to anchor. It was, according to the code of the time, two guns fired to leeward, and was naturally not distinguished while cannon were being fired on all sides. Several of the English ships kept under way all night, but most anchored between the Grands Cardinaux and the little island of Dumet, which lies to north-east towards the mouth of the Vilaine. Two English ships, the =Essex= and the =Resolution=, were lost on the Four in the dark. The captain of the _Héros_ finding that he was not boarded by an English prize crew, took advantage of the darkness to cut his cables and allow his vessel to drive ashore near Croisic, when Conflans had anchored in the _Soleil Royal_. In the morning the admiral found himself alone, with the bulk of Hawke’s fleet at anchor a few miles off. Hopeless of escape, he ran his flagship ashore to prevent her from falling into our hands.