At eight o'clock, in bright moonlight, Walker was within speaking distance, cleared for action, his men lying down at their quarters. He hailed in Portuguese: no reply. Then he hailed in English, asking her name; in reply, she asked his name, also in English. "The _King George_!" replied Walker, and then came a thundering broadside, dismounting two guns and bringing down the maintopsail yard. Walker's men were on their feet and had their broadside in in a few seconds; and then this ridiculously uneven contest went on, the huge Spanish ship--her name, the _Glorioso_--towering above the other, and both letting drive with guns and small arms for all they were worth. Why the _King George_ was not sunk it is impossible to say. The chronicler of the fight says that the Spaniards did not manage to fire their broadsides regularly but only a few guns at a time, while the _King George's_ men got theirs in with great precision and regularity, and also maintained a very hot fire of musketry, under the control of the Captain of Marines. This desperate conflict was maintained for three hours, at close range--so close at times that some burning wadding from the Spaniard's guns set fire to the _King George's_ mainsail. The incident, as Sir John Laughton remarks, was unique in naval warfare; there have been instances in which a vessel of vastly inferior force has contrived to maim or delay her big antagonist until assistance arrived, and so to contribute very materially to her capture, advantage being taken of superior speed and handiness, or circumstances of wind and sea, and so on; but for a vessel of the _King George's_ size to maintain a close ding-dong action with a 74-gun ship, in fine weather, for this space of time is entirely unprecedented. Had Walker been in command of a king's ship, he would certainly have been held blameless if he had run away; but running away, even from a vastly superior force, was not, as we have seen, a proceeding which found any favour in the eyes of George Walker; and there was, of course, the strong inducement of the assumed treasure, which, after all, was not there. The writer attributes their immunity from destruction and their trifling casualties--one killed and fifteen wounded--partly to the very closeness of the action, the Spanish ship's shot not hitting the hull; and also, to the fact that, probably from the overloading of the guns with several shot, in the hope of knocking a huge breach in the _King George's_ side, the shot came with such reduced force that, when they hit, they did not penetrate. Walker's device of high bulwarks of elm planking, before alluded to, he likewise considers had a share in their miraculous salvation. [Illustration: ACTION BETWEEN THE SPANISH 74-GUN SHIP "GLORIOSO" AND THE "KING GEORGE" AND "PRINCE FREDERICK" OF THE "ROYAL FAMILY" PRIVATEERS]