From off the _Monmouth's_ deck all that at first could be seen of the chase was that she 'loomed large,' as the old sea phrase went--looked likely to be a tough customer. That, though, was so much the better. Going ahead before the wind with every reef shaken out, on her best point of sailing, the _Monmouth_ soon outstripped the _Swiftsure_ and the _Hampton Court_. By early in the afternoon she had left them both some leagues astern--mere dots on the far horizon. At the same time she was overhauling the big Frenchman fast. The _Monmouth_ had the reputation of being the fastest line-of-battle ship in the Royal Navy. 'She never gave chase to any ship that she did not come up with,' said the newspapers of her, when, in 1767, the _Monmouth_, unfit for further service and worn out after twenty-five years on the effective list of the fleet, was brought in to be broken up. To-day the ship displayed a speed in keeping with her reputation. Hand over hand the _Monmouth_ drew up nearer and nearer to her prospective foe, which loomed ever larger and larger. From the stranger's vast bulk and what gun-ports of her double tier could be counted end-on, from nearly dead astern, the chase was either an eighty-gun ship or an eighty-four. If that was really so, it made all the difference in the world. French eighty-fours were at that day the most powerfully armed ships afloat. A French eighty-four carried 42-pounders as her main armament, and threw a broadside of 1136 lbs. at every discharge. That, in point of fact, was heavier metal than the _Royal George_ herself, the biggest first-rate in the British fleet, could throw. The _Monmouth_ was a small third-rate, one of the very smallest ships of the line in the Royal Navy, a sixty-four. Her heaviest guns were 24-pounders. Her total broadside amounted only to some 540 lbs. There would also be on board the eighty-four from 800 to 900 men, as against 470 in the _Monmouth_. Who and what was the stranger? One man on board the _Monmouth_ knew, and apparently one man only. The captain of the _Monmouth_ knew. He had already identified the ship ahead of him as the great _Foudroyant_ of 84 guns, until recently the flagship of the French Mediterranean fleet. Arthur Gardiner had good reason to know the _Foudroyant_.