On the French forecastle stood a brass 36-pounder carronade; this commanded the whole of the British ship, and with it the French opened a most destructive fire. The British ship, as it happened, could not bring a single gun to bear in return. Baker, however, had fitted the cabin window on either quarter of his ship to serve as a port, in preparation for exactly such a contingency as this; and the aftermost main-deck gun was dragged into the cabin, the improvised port thrown open, and Baker himself, with a cluster of officers and men, was eagerly employed in fitting tackles to enable the gun to be worked. As the sides of the two ships were actually grinding together the Frenchmen saw the preparations being made; a double squad of marines was brought up at a run to the larboard gangway, and opened a swift and deadly fire into the cabin, crowded with English sailors busy rigging their gun. The men dropped in clusters; the floor of the cabin was covered with the slain, its walls were splashed with blood. But Baker and the few men not yet struck down kept coolly to their task. The gun was loaded under the actual flash of the French muskets, its muzzle was thrust through the port, and it was fired! Its charge of langrage swept the French ship from her larboard bow to her starboard quarter, and struck down in an instant twenty-four men. The deadly fire was renewed again and again, the British marines on the quarter-deck meanwhile keeping down with their musketry the fire of the great French carronade. That fierce and bloody wrestle lasted for nearly thirty minutes, then the _Didon_ began to fore-reach. Her great bowsprit ground slowly along the side of the _Phoenix_. It crossed the line of the second aftermost gun on the British main-deck. Its flames on the instant smote the Frenchman's head-rails to splinters, and destroyed the gammoning of her bowsprit. Gun after gun of the two ships was brought in succession to bear; but in this close and deadly contest the _Phoenix_ had the advantage. Her guns were lighter, her men better drilled, and their fierce energy overbore the Frenchmen. Presently the _Didon_, with her foremast tottering, her maintopmast gone, her decks a blood-stained wreck, passed out of gunshot ahead. In the tangle between the two ships the fly of the British white ensign at the gaff end dropped on the _Didon's_ forecastle. The Frenchmen tore it off, and, as the ships moved apart, they waved it triumphantly from the _Didon's_ stern. All the colours of the _Phoenix_, indeed, in one way or another had vanished, and the only response the exasperated British tars could make to the insult of the _Didon_ was to immediately lash a boat's ensign to the larboard, and the Union Jack to the starboard end of their cross jack yard-arm.