The French prisoners were still on board the _Foudroyant_. They went to England in the ship, most of them to be shut up in Porchester Castle, the great war-prison of the South of England in those times. The visitor to the ruins of Porchester Castle to-day, if he explores in a certain part of the keep, will find at one spot, rudely cut in the wall, a string of French names, under a sort of scroll similarly carved roughly in the stonework, with the legend '_Vive le vaisseau le Foudroyant_--1758,' the handiwork, it can hardly be doubted, of some of these very men. The Marquis du Quesne and his first and second captains came to England by themselves, in the _Gibraltar_ frigate, and were interned on parole at Northampton. The other surviving officers of the ship were paroled at Maidstone. All England rang with Arthur Gardiner's name when, in the first week in April, the _Gibraltar_ arrived at Spithead with Admiral Osborn's despatches, and the _London Gazette_ told the story of how Gardiner had died 'as he was encouraging his people and inquiring what damage they had sustained between decks.' Everywhere, we are told, the news of the taking of the 'mighty _Foudroyant_' and how it was done excited the liveliest enthusiasm. Inn signboards were repainted with pictures of the fight, a favourite way with our eighteenth-century forefathers of commemorating great events; and a ballad was composed about it which was set to a popular tune of the day and sung all over the country. One of the signboards so painted was in existence a very few years ago,--and may be so still,--at Lostwithiel in Cornwall, bearing a representation of two old-fashioned men-of-war in desperate combat, with the legend 'The memorable battle of the _Monmouth_ and _Foudroyant_.'[8] Of the ballad and its music no trace is to be found, although some lines on the fight, apparently contemporary, are in print. One can, though, hardly fancy them being set to any sort of tune, still less anybody trying to sing them. Their shortcomings as verse too are obvious, but one must remember that it was the period when the Poet Laureate was Colley Cibber. There was no market in the days of George the Second for what our present Poet Laureate calls 'the higher kind of poetry.' STANZAS On the capture of the _Foudroyant_, of 84 guns, by the _Monmouth_, of 64, Anno 1758. As Louis sat in regal state, The monarch, insolently great, Accosts his crouching slaves, 'Yon stubborn isle at last must bend, For now my _Foudroyant_ I send, The terror of the waves. 'When once he bursts in dreadful roar, And vomits death from shore to shore, My glory to maintain; Repenting Britons then will see Their folly to dispute with me The empire of the main.' He spake, th' obedient sails were spread, And Neptune reared his awful head, To view the glorious sight; The Tritons and the Nereids came, And floated round the high-built frame, With wonder and delight.