It must not be supposed that men like Captain Ball and Captain Hallowell passed their stranded consort without the endeavour to tow her off, on which the little _Leander_ of fifty guns had already been engaged for some time; but Captain Troubridge was soon convinced of the hopelessness of the task, and rightly judged that the instant arrival of three ships in the battle was of more consequence than trying to deliver his own ship. They therefore, though very unwillingly, cast off and proceeded to take their places in the line. As I have said, the fortunate accident of their deferred arrival crushed the French centre. For when the _Orient_, although she had blown the _Bellerophon_ out of action, discovered that her poop was on fire, up came two of the best ships and the stoutest captains of our Navy, not to mention the little _Leander_, which did yeoman's service on that day. The _Swiftsure_, Captain Hallowell, at once anchored on the _Orient's_ starboard bow, while the _Alexander_, taking advantage of the defective ordering of Admiral Brueys which left five hundred yards between each pair of ships, passed under the stern of the _Orient_, and raking her with a terrific broadside, reserved after the English fashion till she was within a few feet, took up her position on the great ship's inner quarter. Both English captains noted the fire on the French flagship, and training their upper guns on the spot where it was raging, effectually prevented any attempt to save the ship. With their flagship as helpless as a bee in the meshes of a couple of spiders, the misfortunes of the French did not cease, for the cables of the _Peuple Souverain_ being shot away, she drifted from her position to the quarter of the _Franklin_, where she was raked by the _Orion_. Her drifting also left a gap of a thousand feet in front of the _Franklin_, of which the fifty-gun _Leander_ took advantage with the utmost coolness, calmly anchoring across the bows of the French eighty-gun ship, and raking her with broadside after broadside. And thus the battle raged till just about ten o'clock, when the _Orient_, which like the _Heureux_ and _Tonnant_ had been completely in our power for some time, blew up. The French ships who were on her lee had slipped their cables and drifted some minutes before this, but Captain Ball resolutely refused to budge before the destruction of the _Orient_ was made inevitable, as a result of which portions of the burning ship fell upon the _Alexander_, and indeed ignited one of her 'tops,' which was happily extinguished.