It was soon after nine that the fire on the _Orient_ broke out. Brueys was dead; he had received three wounds, yet would not leave his spot; a fourth cut him almost in two. He desired not to be carried below, but to be left to die upon deck. The flames soon mastered his ship. Her sides had just been painted, and the oil-jars and paint-buckets were lying on the poop. By the prodigious light of this conflagration, the situation of the fleets could now be perceived, the colours of both being clearly distinguishable. About ten o’clock the ship blew up, with a shock which was felt to the very bottom of every vessel. Many of her officers and men jumped overboard, some clinging to the spars and pieces of wreck with which the sea was strewn; others swimming to escape from the destruction which they momently dreaded. Some were picked up by our boats; and some, even in the heat and fury of the action, were dragged into the lower ports of the nearest British ships by the British Sailors. The greater part of her crew, however, stood the danger to the last, and continued to fire from the lower deck. This tremendous explosion was followed by a silence not less awful; the firing immediately ceased on both sides; and the first sound which broke the silence was the dash of her shattered masts and yards falling into the water from the vast height to which they had been exploded. It is upon record, that a battle between two armies was once broken off by an earthquake:--such an event would be felt like a miracle: but no incident in war produced by human means, has ever equalled the sublimity of this coinstantaneous pause, and all its circumstances. About seventy of the _Orient’s_ crew were saved by the English boats. Among the many hundreds who perished were the Commodore, Casa Bianca, and his son, a brave boy only ten years old. They were seen floating on a shattered mast when the ship blew up. She had money on board (the plunder of Malta) to the amount of six hundred thousand pounds sterling. The masses of burning wreck which were scattered by the explosion, excited for some moments apprehensions in the English which they had never felt from any other danger. Two large pieces fell into the main and foretops of the _Swiftsure_, without injuring any person. A port-fire also fell into the main-royal of the _Alexander_; the fire which it occasioned was speedily extinguished. Captain Ball had provided, as far human foresight could provide, against any such danger. All the shrouds and sails of his ship, not absolutely necessary for its immediate management, were thoroughly wetted, and so rolled up, that they were as hard and as little inflammable as so many solid cylinders.