Elsewhere at this time, towards four o'clock, there was a good deal of 'partial and desultory' firing, to use Dr. Blane's term, going on here and there, principally in the direction of De Grasse's squadron. The French admiral's attempt to rally and re-form line had failed. Bougainville's ships kept away in a body, apparently too much occupied in repairing their own damages to pay attention to their commander-in-chief. Many of De Vaudreuil's seemed equally shy, although De Vaudreuil himself, with two or three of his command, gallantly beat to windward and joined the _Ville de Paris_, making up a forlorn-hope band round De Grasse that comprised the rearmost formed group of the French fleet. They moved away at the best speed they were capable of, but owing to the state of the _Ville de Paris's_ masts and spars, the rate of sailing was dangerously slow. De Grasse's group, numbering, with De Vaudreuil's accession and others, nine ships in all, formed, as it were, a lodestone to the British captains. It drew towards it all who could possibly make for the spot. The great French flagship in the centre, with the commander-in-chief's flag at the mast-head, was for all eyes the supreme attraction. Each followed as well as the wind, which was variable and at times very light, and the state of his own masts and spars, would let him. The French _Hector_ was their first victim, between five and six o'clock in the evening,--the third Frenchman to surrender. She had been badly hammered by Hood's squadron when it broke the line, losing so many men that to supply the main and upper deck batteries the quarter-deck and forecastle guns had to be abandoned, but had been able to keep up with the _Ville de Paris_ for most of the afternoon. For the last two and a half hours, according to a letter from one of the _Hector's_ officers, they had been firing their stern chasers to try and keep the advancing British back, but in vain. Then, towards the end of the time, two British seventy-fours drew out and ranged alongside the _Hector_. They were the _Canada_ and the _Alcide_. The two pushed up abreast and came to close quarters. Their attack was met by the _Hector_ in a spirit worthy of her heroic name. She struck out right and left like a wounded tigress at bay. She looked, in the words of an eye-witness, 'like a blazing furnace vomiting fire and iron.' The display was brilliant, but it could not last. De la Vicomte, the gallant captain of the _Hector_, was struck down, mortally wounded, and with his fall the spirit of the defence flickered out. 'Some men on the main deck having run from their quarters,' says the letter just referred to, 'the captain was putting his foot on the ladder to go below to kill with his own hand the dastards, when a cannon-ball smashed his thigh.' He was carried to the cockpit, and a few minutes later De Beaumanoir, the first lieutenant, 'seeing the ship being knocked to pieces and powder running short,' after a hasty consultation