What took place elsewhere on the scene of battle, during the short three-quarters of an hour that the waning daylight of the stormy winter’s afternoon lasted, before the fighting had of necessity to cease, are beyond our limits. How, for instance, the master of the _Royal George_, getting anxious about the reefs and sandbanks that showed up amid the breakers on either side as they surged ahead into the fight, declared that he dared not take the big three-decker further inshore, and drew from Hawke’s lips the heroic words, “You have done your duty in pointing out the danger; now go on and lay me beside the French Admiral!”; how the _Royal George_ herself after that came within an ace of shipwreck as she fought; of the catastrophe to the French _Superbe_, sent to the bottom in attempting to keep the _Royal George_ from closing with her flagship, by one terrific broadside from the _Royal George_, to the horror of the British flagship’s crew themselves as the smoke of the guns blew off and they saw three topmasts disappear under water, “in a hideously sudden manner,” where thirty seconds earlier had floated a noble man-of-war; how finally Conflans himself sheered off before the _Royal George’s_ guns, and ran away to wreck his flagship and burn her next morning:—to recount in detail these and the many other dramatic incidents of that “thunderous miscellany of cannon and tempest,” as Carlyle called the battle of Quiberon Bay, are beyond our present scope. All was over about five o’clock. As soon as might be after that, victors and vanquished alike let go anchors where they lay, each ship where best she could, as the guns gave over firing in the dark, to ride the fearful night out as well as it was possible on both sides, each holding to her anchor for dear life, and powerless to help others. “In the night we heard many guns of distress fired, but, it blowing hard, want of knowledge of the coast, and whether they were fired by a friend or an enemy, prevented all means of relief.” As the result to England of the afternoon’s work, two French ships were sunk and one was burned; two surrendered (one stole away before the weather would allow a boat from an English ship to take possession of her), one—the _Formidable_—was taken and secured. Of the rest of the enemy some scraped over the mud-flats at the mouth of the little river Vilaine, a few miles off, and lay there with broken backs, unable ever to put to sea again; a small remnant got into Rochfort, losing one of their number by shipwreck on the way. In killed and wounded and drowned, the total loss to France in the battle, it has been calculated, numbered between four and five thousand men. It was probably nearer the higher figure, for most of the French ships were crammed with men. There were twelve hundred, it was said, sailors and soldiers, on board Conflans’ flagship, the _Soleil Royal_, alone. A thousand officers and men were returned as on board the _Formidable_.