Those old ships were not very good sailors in a gale. The French beat us hollow at ship-building, and we much improved by studying the make of the prizes we were constantly taking, so it is not to be wondered at if that rolling old tub, the _Swallow_, came to grief. The marvel would have been had it not occurred. Twice, before the Cape was made, they had to repair and refit. They were then ordered to the Mauritius, and eventually they went to the Coromandel coast, where they landed and laid siege to and took Areacopong. They then besieged Pondicherry (in September, 1748); but that town was not fated to fall into the hands of the British until 1760. In all the hardships of the siege Hannah Snell bore her full part, fording rivers breast high, sleeping in and working at the trenches, &c., until at last she was desperately wounded, receiving six shots in her right leg, five in her left, and a bullet in her groin. Anyone would think that thus wounded, and in hospital, her sex would have been discovered; but it was not. She managed to extract the ball from her groin, and with the connivance of an old black nurse, she always dressed the wound herself, so that the surgeons did not know of its existence. Three months she lay in hospital, going back to her duty as a Marine on her discharge. But her comrades bantered her on her somewhat feminine appearance, her smooth cheeks not being in accordance with her age. Besides, she was somewhat quiet, and different from the rollicking Jack Tars by whom she was surrounded, and so she earned the name of Miss Molly Gray. A continuance of this quiet _rôle_ might have led to discovery, so when they came to Lisbon, and the ‘liberty men’ went on shore, she was as racketty as any of them, and ‘Miss Molly’ was soon lost, and in her place was ‘Hearty Jemmy.’ From Lisbon they sailed for home, and on her arrival at Spithead, she was either discharged, or sent on furlough; at all events, there ended her military and naval career, for she went straight to her sister at Wapping, and was at once recognized.