Now, it is a sad thing to have to say all this of naval commanders; and still more humiliating to reflect that, had George Walker, master-mariner and privateer skipper, been in command of that squadron, no such fiasco would have occurred; but this is most undoubtedly true. Walker would have had those French treasure ships had he been in command of the _Hampton Court_, as surely as he was then a prisoner on board one of them, watching with shame and disgust the paltry tactics of his countrymen, and compelled subsequently to listen to the boastful and disparaging comments of the Frenchmen. Arrived at Brest, the Englishmen had no cause to complain of their treatment. Walker had by this time so ingratiated himself with the captain of the _Fleuron_, that the latter acceded to his request that the crew of the _Mars_ might be landed at once, on the day after their arrival, and might receive every possible consideration until they could be exchanged; and he resisted strenuously Walker's request that he might go and see personally to the comfort of his men, begging to know in what he had fallen short, to be thus deprived of his esteemed company. Walker politely insisting, the French captain gave him a most flattering letter of introduction to the Governor, who liberated the English captain and all his officers on parole, and treated them handsomely in every respect. They left the _Fleuron_ none too soon. On the following day, while Walker was in the act of writing to the captain to beg him to send him his letter of credit, which was in a tin box with his commission, people came running in crying that the _Fleuron_ had blown up. It was, indeed, too true; and the catastrophe was entirely due to the gross carelessness of the gunner, who, landing the powder, left some four or five barrels in the magazine for saluting purposes, and did not even have the loose powder, spilt in emptying the cartridges, swept up under his own eye. Some stupid fellows, engaged afterwards in this work, took a decrepit old lantern down with them; the handle broke, the flame ignited the loose powder, and that was the end of the _Fleuron_; she burnt to the water's edge, and then went down, treasure and all; and the guns having been left loaded--it seems almost incredible, but we have the account of an eye-witness--kept going off at intervals, preventing the approach of boats, etc., which might have saved many of the crew. Walker had to mourn the loss of his friend, the courteous and generous captain, and also that of his letter of credit--a serious temporary inconvenience.