Speedily her sixty-four guns turned the tide of battle. Whilst her heavy broadside of thirty-two guns soon battered Principe d’ Asturias into silence, her consorts poured their fire into the Spanish fleet, which, now short of powder, struck its colors. After a conflict of two hours, San Carlos was the only point of defense left to the Spaniards, and that too, threatened by a new foe. Bienville was in its rear ready for an assault, which he soon boldly made. He was, however, so much impeded by the stockade that he withdrew his men until he could be better prepared for another attack. In the assault, it is said, his Indian allies emulated the French soldiers in daring and in their efforts to tear away the impeding stockade. But their war-whoop was more effectual and decisive than their valor. Impressing the Spaniards, as it did, with visions of blood-dripping scalps, it disposed them to obviate by surrender the dire consequences of a successful assault, for they felt that Bienville, however so disposed, would be powerless to stay the Indian’s scalping knife when his blood was at battle heat. Accordingly, before the assault was repeated, Metamoras signaled for a parley, which resulted not in a capitulation on terms which he asked for, but in a surrender at discretion. Even after the cooling process of the time required for the parley and arranging the surrender, the Indians were so loath to forego their scalping pastime, the precious boon of victory, that it was necessary for Bienville to redeem the scalps of the Spaniards by bestowing one-half of their effects upon his allies, and reserving the other half only for his own soldiers. When Don Alphonso, the commander of the Spanish fleet, surrendered his sword to Champmeslin, the latter returned it with the complimentary assurance that the Don was worthy to wear it. But Bienville would not even condescend to accept that of Metamoras, but directed him to deliver it to a by-standing soldier. But the real hero of this battle, like the real heroes of many other fields of glory, must be unnamed, for though it is recorded that the pilot of the _Hercules_ was rewarded with a patent of nobility for his skill and daring, there is no accessible record of his name. Having won a surrender at discretion, it was Bienville’s pleasure to send Metamoras and a sufficient number of Spanish troops to Havana, in a Spanish vessel, to be exchanged for the Frenchmen who had been sent there in August; and thus it was that he worked the deliverance of his brother Chateaugné from his imprisonment in Mora Castle. The rest of the Spaniards were sent to France as prisoners of war. It was his will and pleasure likewise to burn the town of Pensacola, and to utterly destroy San Carlos by blowing it up with powder. The only structure left undestroyed was the magazine which stood about half a mile from the fort.