But the flood-tide was running strong, and it drove the vessel above the town, there being no wind. At day-light the lugger became the centre of a general attack of the armed vessels of the port. The Diamond could not move from want of wind; and, after a desperate resistance of three quarters of an hour, Sir Sidney and his companions were forced to surrender. Six officers and nineteen seamen were taken. Sir Sidney's capture was a national triumph, and he was instantly ordered to be sent to Paris. No exchange could be obtained; his name was too well known. He was charged with incendiarism for the burning of Toulon; and it was even hinted that his being found so close to Havre was for the purpose of burning the town. Sir Sidney's imprisonment was at first in the Abbaye, which had been made so infamously memorable by the slaughters of September 1793. He was afterwards placed in the prison of the Temple. In all probability, the first object was to exhibit him to the Parisians. An English captain as a prisoner was a rare exhibition, and his detention also saved them from the most active disturber of their Norman and Breton navigation. But his confinement was not strict, and he was even suffered occasionally to walk about Paris on giving his parole to the jailer. At length, after various British offers of exchange, which were all rejected by the French, he escaped by a counterfeit order of liberation; and, encountering several hair-breadth hazards, reached Havre, seized a boat, put off, and was taken up at sea by the Argo frigate, commanded by Captain Bowen, who landed him at Portsmouth, and he arrived in London in April 1798, having been in France about two years and a month. It is sometimes difficult to know, respecting any event, peculiarly in early life, whether it is a misfortune or the contrary. Sir Sidney's capture must have been often felt by him as the severest of calamities, by stopping a career which had already made him one of the national favourites, and had given him promise of still higher distinction. From the command of the Diamond to the dreary chambers of the Temple was a formidable contrast; yet the event which placed him there may have been an instance of something more than what the world terms "good luck." If he had remained in command of his frigate, he might have fallen in some of those fights with the batteries and corvettes which he was constantly provoking. But in his French prison he was safe for the time, and yet not less before the public eye. In reality, the sympathy felt for him there, and the fruitless attempts of the Admiralty to effect his exchange, kept him more the _Lion_ than before; and he returned just in time, to be employed on a service of the first importance, and which, by its novelty, adventure, and romantic peril, seemed to have been expressly made for his genius.