Gardiner had been Byng's flag-captain, and the _Foudroyant_ had been the flagship of the French fleet off Minorca. The evidence at Byng's trial had absolutely exonerated Captain Gardiner.[3] It showed that Admiral Byng himself had practically taken the charge of the flagship out of his captain's hands, and had rejected his advice to go straight for the enemy without waiting for ships that were out of station, but in spite of that Gardiner had refused to be satisfied. He felt his connection with the affair bitterly, as a personal disgrace, he said. Indeed, as he told one of his friends, he only lived to find an opportunity of wiping out what was a slur on his good name, a stain on his honour. Apparently the idea became fixed in Captain Gardiner's mind that he was a marked man, that people said things of him; especially, that it was thought he had been 'shy' about laying his ship alongside the French flagship. That was intolerable, and out of it grew a feeling of peculiar antipathy towards this particular ship, the _Foudroyant_, that had become a sort of monomania with Captain Gardiner. It must, in these circumstances, have seemed to Captain Gardiner like the hand of Providence, when, some four months after the Byng court-martial, he was appointed to the _Monmouth_ and ordered out to the Mediterranean. And now his day had actually come. There was the very _Foudroyant_ right ahead of him, by herself, and with his own ship overtaking her fast. At a quarter-past one in the afternoon the _Foudroyant_ ran a red flag up to the foretopgallant mast-head.[4] Apparently it was meant as a signal to her nearest consort, the ship that the _Revenge_ and _Berwick_ were in pursuit of, _L'Orphee_, to hoist her colours and commence firing. As the _Monmouth_ as yet was out of gunshot, three or four miles distant, the _Foudroyant_ had no need for the moment to hoist her own colours--nor did she show any until towards four o'clock, when the _Monmouth_ had at length begun to come within range. Then, exactly at six minutes to the hour, as an eye-witness notes, the French flag was displayed on the _Foudroyant's_ ensign staff, and a commodore's broad pennant at the main. The _Monmouth's_ men had not long to wait.