Iberville shouted for the infantrymen to fire into _The Dering’s_ forecastle, to pick off Grimmington if they could; and for the Canadian sharp-shooters to rake the decks of _The Hudson’s Bay_. For four hours, the three-cornered battle raged. The ships were so close, shout and counter-shout could be heard across decks. Faces were singed with the closeness of the musketry fire. Ninety French had been wounded. _The Pelican’s_ decks swam in blood that froze to ice, slippery as glass, and trickled down the clinker boards in reddening splashes. Grape shot and grenade had set the fallen sails on fire. Sails and mastpoles and splintered davits were a mass of roaring flame that would presently extend to the powder magazines and blow all to eternity. Railings had gone over decks; and when the ship rolled, only the tangle of burning débris kept those on deck from washing into the sea. The bridge was crumbling. A shot had torn the high prow away; and still the batterymen below poured their storm of fire and bomb into the English hull. The fighters were so close, one old record says, and the holes torn by the bombs so large in the hull of each ship that the gunners on _The Pelican_ were looking into the eyes of the smoke-grimed men below the decks of _The Hampshire_. For three hours, the English had tacked to board _The Pelican_, and for three hours the mastless, splintered _Pelican_ had fought like a demon to cripple her enemy’s approach. The blood-grimed, half-naked men of both decks had rushed _en masse_ for the last leap, the hand-to-hand fight, when a frantic shout went up! Then silence, and fearful confusion, and a mad panic back from the tilting edges of the two vessels with cries from the wounded above the shriek of the sea! The batteries of _The Hampshire_ had suddenly silenced. The great ship refused to answer to the wheel. That persistent, undeviating fire bursting from the sides of _The Pelican_ had done its work. _The Hampshire_ gave a quick, back lurch. Before the amazed Frenchmen could believe their senses, amid the roar of flame and crashing billows and hiss of fires extinguished in an angry sea, _The Hampshire_, all sails set, settled and sank like a stone amid the engulfing billows. Not a soul of her two hundred and fifty men—one hundred and ninety mariners and servants, with sixty soldiers—escaped. The screams of the struggling seamen had not died on the waves before Iberville had turned the batteries of his shattered ship full force on Smithsend’s _Hudson’s Bay_. Promptly, _The Hudson’s Bay_ struck colors, but while Iberville was engaged boarding his captive and taking over ninety prisoners, Grimmington on _The Dering_ showed swift heel and gained refuge in Fort Nelson. * * * * *