At the very moment that Rodney was sending Blane below, the wind suddenly shifted. It veered to the southward and headed the French fleet off, taking them all aback and throwing them out of order all along their line. It checked their way, and cast every ship round with her head to starboard, half-right as it were, setting the whole line _en echelon_. For the British, on the other hand, the shift of wind made things more favourable than before. It sent Rodney's ships briskly forward. Its effect was instantly apparent in the immediate neighbourhood of the _Formidable_. The mastless hull of the _Glorieux_ drove down steadily on the _Formidable_. The ship next astern of her in the French line, the _Diademe_, a seventy-four, hung back and then swung round sharply at right angles, paying off on the wrong tack. A wide gap was made at once in the enemy's line, and just opposite the _Formidable_. What was to be done? Ink enough to float the _Formidable_ herself has been spilled over the incidents of the next three minutes on board the British flagship, and we cannot even now say that we know the true story. According to one officer, who, as a quarter-deck midshipman, was an eye-witness of what took place, but did not put pen to paper about it until half a century after the event, a highly dramatic--and in the interests of discipline not very edifying--scene followed, between Rodney personally and Sir Charles Douglas his flag-captain. [Illustration: HOW THE FRENCH LINE WAS BROKEN From 'Military Drawings of Battles and Sieges ... from Original Surveys by Lieut.-Colonel C. Hamilton Smith,' now in the Department of MSS., British Museum. [No. 19 C is the _Formidable_. The centre one of the three French flagships is the _Ville de Paris_. No. 13 is the _Bedford_. No. 6 D is the _Barfleur_.]] Here is Midshipman Dashwood's narrative as he wrote it down from memory some forty years or so after both Rodney and Sir Charles Douglas had been laid in the grave. Dashwood was then an admiral, Sir Charles Dashwood, K.C.B. The account was written for Sir Howard Douglas, son of Rodney's flag-captain.[38]