Again we are on the coast; by Donegal Bay. It is the morning of Friday, the 12th of October, ’98, between seven and eight o’clock. Eager-faced, excited watchers line the crags of Bloody Foreland. From the wide, flat expanse of sea below comes up on the wind the dull, heavy, throbbing sound of a distant cannonade. It has been getting nearer since daybreak. It now comes nearer and nearer still; and by degrees, from the direction of Tory Island, on the horizon over yonder, where a grey rolling cloud of powder-smoke lies heavy over the sea, two squadrons of men-of-war, two straggling lines of ships, most of them firing fiercely, come dimly into view. One is assuredly the long-looked-for French—Commodore Bompart’s squadron from Brest, bringing three thousand French soldiers and Wolfe and Matthew Tone. They were to have landed at Lough Swilly yesterday and raised the country-side. The other is the English fleet—a British squadron that has followed round from Cawsand Bay under press of sail to look after M. Bompart. They picked up news of him off the Fastnet and Achill Island, and pushed on here. On the previous day at noon—as we learn later on—off Malin Head in a stiff north-westerly gale, the British look-outs sighted the French squadron; and they have been working to bring Monsieur Bompart to battle ever since. It looks likely to go hard with the French. At the last moment a mishap checked their attempt to give the British the go-by. Their best ship, the _Hoche_, a fine 80-gun two-decker, and M. Bompart’s own flagship, got disabled in a squall last night. Her maintopmast carried away, bringing down with it the main and mizen top-gallant masts and tearing a gaping rent in the mainsail. So Sir John Borlase Warren, the British Commodore, has been able to get level with his enemy, on whom he is now tacking to bring the fight to close quarters, in conditions where his superior force—three line-of-battle ships and five frigates to one line-of-battle ship, eight frigates, and a schooner—ought to decide M. Bompart’s fate before dinner-time. Eleven o’clock. The inevitable has happened. The Frenchmen have been overpowered at all points and broken up. The French Commodore is now only holding out as long as possible _pour l’honneur du pavillon_. In the centre of the battle, a dismantled wreck, with the scuppers running blood at every heave of the vessel on the swell, lies M. Bompart’s flagship, the hapless _Hoche_. Three British ships together—a sixty-four and two frigates—are pouring broadside after broadside into her without ceasing for a moment.