There was a glimpse of hope in the early morning when the _Ville de Paris_ was sighted two miles to windward. The storm had subsided, a sort of breathing-spell between the outbreaks of terrific weather. The stately three-decker of a Frenchman lifted all her masts against the foaming sky-line and was even setting a topsail. Plunging her long rows of painted gun-ports under, she climbed buoyantly to meet the next gray-backed comber, while the copper glinted almost to her keel as she wildly rolled and staggered. This captured flag-ship in which De Grasse, fresh from the triumph of Cornwallis’s surrender at Yorktown, had confidently expected to crush Rodney and so sweep the seas of the New World for France, seemed to have been vouchsafed some peculiar respite by the god of storms. To those who beheld her from the drowning _Centaur_ the impression conveyed was the same as that reported by Admiral Graves, that she had miraculously come through unhurt, the only ship of this great fleet whose lofty spars still stood. Captain Inglefield began firing guns in token of distress, and the _Ville de Paris_ bore straight toward him, responding to her helm and handling like a ship which was under complete control. Two merchant vessels passed close enough to hail the _Centaur_ and offer help, but Captain Inglefield waved them on their courses, so confident was he that the _Ville de Paris_, now flying the ensign of the British navy, would stand by. Another merchantman passing close aboard, the _Centaur_ asked her to take word to Captain Wilkinson of the _Ville de Paris_ that he was urgently needed. A little while and, inexplicably, the captured flag-ship passed without making a signal and held on the same tack until she vanished in the mist, passed forever with her eight hundred men just as she had disappeared from the sight of those who gazed and wondered from the decks of the _Ramillies_. The sea holds many an unfinished story, and the tall _Ville de Paris_ was one of them. On board the _Centaur_ they pumped and they baled and gulped down the stiff rations of grog and hoped to fetch her through, as is the way of simple sailormen. Captain Inglefield noted that “the people worked without a murmur and indeed with cheerfulness.” In 1782 men-of-war’s-men were singing Didbin’s hearty sea-songs, which held sentiment enough to please a mariner’s heart, and possibly the clattering beat of the chain pumps of the _Centaur_ were timed to the chorus of “Blow High, Blow Low,” and the gloomy, reeking main-deck echoed the verses: “And on that night when all the crew, The memory of their former lives O’er flowing cans of flip renew, And drink their sweethearts and their wives, I’ll heave a sigh and think on thee: And, as the ship rolls through the sea, The burden of my song shall be Blow high, blow low, let tempests tear The mainmast by the board.”