Fortunatus Wright saw her coming, and measured the decreasing distance, calculating the time which remained for him to prepare with a cool and critical eye, while his men worked like giants; and, when all was done, he could mount but twelve guns, including the four pop-guns which he had been permitted to ship in port: while his crew--a medley of half a dozen nationalities, who had never worked together--numbered seventy-five all told. Hastily telling off his men to their stations, and leaving his four traders lying to in a cluster, Wright made sail for the Frenchman; the wind, we may conclude, must have been light or the latter would have been down upon him before. And now the royal favour and comfortable pension, the handsome donation from the Marseillaise merchants, must have loomed very large in the eyes of the French skipper. Even supposing, as would seem probable, that he was not altogether unaware of the operations of the Englishman, his vastly superior force, with his practised crew, should have placed the betting at three to one in his favour; but the layer of such odds would have failed to reckon with the forceful personality of Fortunatus Wright, which inspired his men with the conviction that, odds or no, they must win. When men go into action with that sort of spirit they invariably do win; nothing will stand against them. Handling his ship with his customary skill, Wright manoeuvred repeatedly to the disadvantage of his antagonist, while his rag-tag-and-bob-tail crew, standing to their guns with the utmost intrepidity, poured in such a hot fire that the French captain speedily realised that his only chance was to board and overwhelm the English by superior numbers; but when he got alongside he found them quite as handy with pikes and cutlasses as with guns, and a desperate minority, which is not going to acknowledge itself beaten, soon daunts the hearts of a superior force. The French were repulsed with great slaughter, and, after some further attention from the guns of the gallant little _St. George_, the enemy hauled off, and ran, having suffered such serious damage as rendered their vessel almost unseaworthy. Wright followed, but, seeing another Frenchman threatening his convoy, he returned to their protection, sent them back into Leghorn, and anchored there himself on the following day. According to the account in _The Gentleman's Magazine_, the French ship lost her captain, lieutenant, lieutenant of Marines, and 88 men killed and 70 men wounded.