The _Fougueux_ came on as though bent on rescuing the _Redoutable_. It did not look an impossible task. Both the _Victory_ and the _Temeraire_ showed signs of having undergone a very severe mauling, and there was the French _Neptune_ near by, apparently quite fresh and ready to lend a hand, only waiting for an opportunity to join in the fray. The _Temeraire_ particularly, looked in a bad way. Under the _Neptune's_ punishing fire, she had been reduced aloft to the appearance of a wreck. Her topmasts had gone, her foreyard was gone, her foremast was tottering, all her rigging was torn and tangled, her sails hung down in rags. Her ensign, too, had been shot away, or at least was down owing to the fall of the gaff; very few men were to be seen alive on her upper deck; not a shot came from her guns on the broadside facing the _Fougueux_. Captain Baudoin, the captain of the _Fougueux_, seemed at first uncertain whether he would lie off to leeward, and with the _Neptune's_ help rake and cannonade the _Temeraire_ into submission, or come to close quarters at once and board. The second alternative seemed to promise quicker results, and he adopted it. He made up his mind to bring the matter to an issue on the spot before other British ships could interfere, and carry the _Temeraire_ by a _coup de main_. The few people he saw about on the _Temeraire's_ upper deck was one inducement to try boarding her. He could not know, of course, that Captain Harvey had ordered everybody who could possibly be spared to go below so as to avoid unnecessary loss of life from the _Redoutable's_ musketry. Another was that the _Temeraire's_ attention seemed to be wholly devoted to the _Redoutable_. Captain Baudoin put the _Fougueux's_ head directly for the _Temeraire_, and as they closed, the French ship's shrouds quickly became black with men, cutlass in hand, while more swarmed on the forecastle and gangways cheering and shouting 'A l'abordage! a l'abordage!' So the _Fougueux_ neared the _Temeraire_. For her part, as it befell, the _Temeraire_ had for some time foreseen what was coming. She was by no means so incapable of meeting a new antagonist as she looked.