of the Irish regiment of Clare; all intermingled with Dragoons de la Rochefoucauld and de Tessé; Dragoons de la Reine, in their queer-looking “bonnets de guerre” of royal blue; Dragoons du Dauphin in green coats with violet facings, silver buttons and silver lace, and helmets covered with leopard’s skin; Dragoons de Mailly, and the long red cloaks of the Penthièvre horsemen, adding a flower-bed touch of colour to the scene. Coast militiamen were in the throng, garbed like the regulars in the white coats of the line; heavy artillerymen, in sombre blue and dull red—there were two brigades of them on shore at Quiberon, de Chabrie, and de la Brosse—the whole mingled together in a motley crowd that stretched for miles round the bay, gazing their hardest to seaward and facing the gusts of blinding rain in their anxiety to see what they might of the battle thundering out in the storm over yonder. Quite a third of the “État Militaire de France,” of King Louis’ army list, formed the audience for Hawke and Conflans on the day that saw the _Formidable’s_ name entered on the roll of the British Fleet. The soldiers, indeed, too, had a personal interest in the battle beyond the general issue. Some of their comrades were on board the fleet with Conflans, doing duty as marines; among them two whole battalions of Saintonge, and a draft or two of the regiment de Guyenne. They had been shipped at Brest. Poor wretches! If it was bad for the lookers-on to stand here in the open, drenched to the skin and chilled to the marrow, what was it over there, out yonder—heaving and pitching and rolling, at the mercy of a raging storm, sea-sick and helpless and hopeless, and being shot at with English cannon balls all the while! * * * * * It was not until some little time after their collision that the _Montagu_ and the two other British ships, the _Warspite_ and the _Magnanime_, got clear of one another. By that time they had drifted to leeward of the _Formidable_, and were too far off to reopen their attack. But fresh foes for the brave de Verger’s ship were soon at hand. First of these the _Torbay_, Commodore Keppel’s ship, a smart and powerful seventy-four, ranged alongside. Setting-to briskly by himself, Keppel gave the Frenchmen a cruelly trying quarter of an hour, after which the _Resolution_ and the _Swiftsure_, both seventy-gun ships, drew near to take their part. Keppel, according to his own log, “had silenced her,” and without waiting to see her colours come down, as the new arrivals neared the spot he moved off, intent on finding a single-handed fight for himself further ahead.