On the 3rd of September, Iberville anchored before Port Nelson. Anxiously, for two days, he scanned the sea for the rest of his fleet. On the morning of the fifth, the peaked sails of three vessels rose above the offing. Raising anchor, Iberville hastened out to meet them, and signaled a welcome. No response signaled back. The horrified watch at the masthead called down some warning. Then the full extent of the terrible mistake dawned on Iberville. These were not his consort ships at all. They were the English men-of-war, _The Hampshire_, Captain Fletcher, fifty-two guns and sixty soldiers; _The Dering_, Captain Grimmington, thirty guns and sixty men; _The Hudson’s Bay_, Edgecombe and Smithsend, thirty-two guns and fifty-five men—hemming him in a fatal circle between the English fort on the land and their own cannon to sea. One can guess the wild whoop of jubilation that went up from the Englishmen to see their enemy of ten years’ merciless raids, now hopelessly trapped between their fleet and the fort. The English vessels had the wind in their favor and raced over the waves all sails set like a war troop keen for prey. Iberville didn’t wait. He had weighed anchor to sail out when he thought the vessels were his own, and now he kept unswervingly on his course. Of his original crew, forty were invalided. Some twenty-five had been sent ashore to reconnoiter the fort. Counting the Canadians and Indians taken on at Newfoundland, he could muster only one hundred and fifty fighting men. Quickly, ropes were stretched to give the mariners hand-hold over the frost-slippery decks. Stoppers were ripped from the fifty cannon, and the batterymen below, under La Salle and Grandville, had stripped naked in preparation for the hell of flame and heat that was to be their portion in the impending battle. Bienville, Iberville’s brother, swung the infantrymen in line above decks, swords and pistols prepared for the hand-to-hand grapple. De la Potherie got the Canadians to the forecastle, knives and war hatchets out, bodies stripped, all ready to board when the ships knocked keels. Iberville knew it was to be like those old-time raids—a Spartan conflict—a fight to the death; death or victory; and he swept right up to _The Hampshire_, Fletcher’s frigate, the strongest of the foe, where every shot would tell. _The Hampshire_ shifted broadsides to the French; and at nine in the morning, the battle began. _The Hampshire_ let fly two roaring cannonades that ploughed up the decks of _The Pelican_ and stripped the French bare of masts to the hull. At the same instant, Grimmington’s _Dering_ and Smithsend’s _Hudson’s Bay_ circled to the left of the French and poured a stream of musketry fire across _The Pelican’s_ stern. At one fell blast, forty French were mowed down; but the batterymen below never ceased their crash of bombs straight into _The Hampshire’s_ hull.