The luckless Wolfe Tone passed from the quarter-deck of the _Hoche_ to the condemned cell and a suicide’s grave. It came about in this way. The _Hoche_ was towed into Lough Swilly and the prisoners were landed and marched to Letterkenny. The Earl of Cavan invited the French officers to breakfast. Tone was amongst the guests. He was in a French military uniform. An old college companion at T.C.D., Sir George Hill, recognized him. “How do you do, Mr. Tone?” said Hill pointedly. “I am very happy to see you.” Tone greeted Hill cordially, and said, “How are you, Sir George? How are Lady Hill and your family?” The police, who had had information that Tone would be among the prisoners, lay in waiting in an adjoining room. Hill went to them, pointed to Tone, and said, “There is your man.” Tone was called from the table. He knew what it meant—that his hour had come, but he went cheerfully to his doom. Entering the next apartment, he was surrounded by police and soldiers, arrested, loaded with irons, and hurried off to Dublin Castle. There he was tried by court-martial and sentenced to be hanged within forty-eight hours. His request for a firing party was curtly refused. Curran got a writ of habeas corpus from Lord Chief Justice Kilwarden. But he was too late. Tone anticipated the execution of the law, and died by his own hand—with a penknife. * * * * * The _Donegal_ man-of-war served Great Britain for forty-seven years, keeping up to the last her reputation of being one of the swiftest two-deckers afloat. Trafalgar should have been one of her battle honours. One of the very smartest captains that ever trod a British quarter-deck, “a dear Nelsonian” of exceptional ability and merit, the gallant and chivalrous Sir Pulteney Malcolm, commanded the _Donegal_ at that time. The _Donegal_ had been sent by Nelson to Gibraltar to shift the low tier of water-casks just four days before the battle. While there, at two o’clock on the morning of Trafalgar day, Monday, the 21st of October, the _Weazle_ sloop-of-war came bustling into Gibraltar Bay, and firing alarm guns. She brought the fateful news that the enemy had left Cadiz and were at sea. Captain Blackwood, of the _Euryalus_, in command of Nelson’s inshore frigate squadron, had packed the _Weazle_ off to Gibraltar to call up the six ships of the line, recently detached from Nelson’s fleet, that had gone in there to fill up water-casks and refit. The _Donegal_ was lying with her sails unbent from the yards, her bowsprit out, and her fore-topmast and foreyard struck. All her powder had been landed, and the ship was fast alongside the Mole. The crew had not turned in, as Captain Malcolm was keen to rejoin Nelson off Cadiz at the earliest moment. When the _Weazle’s_ guns were first heard, they were hard at work shifting the lower tier of casks in the hold.