The fleet left France at midsummer, had a very rough passage through the Bay of Biscay, and ran into a long, dead calm off the Azores. This ended in a storm, during which several vessels were struck by lightning, which, in one case, caused a magazine explosion that killed and wounded over thirty men. It was not till the last week of September that d'Anville made the excellently safe harbour of Halifax. The four ships under Conflans were nowhere to be seen. They had reached the rendezvous at the beginning of the month, had cruised about for a couple of weeks, and had then gone home. D'Anville was now in no position to attack Louisbourg, much less New England. Some of his vessels were quite unserviceable. There was no friendly port nearer than Quebec. All his crews were sickly; and the five months' incessant and ever-increasing strain had changed him into a broken-hearted man. He died very suddenly, in the middle of the night; some said from a stroke of apoplexy, while others whispered suicide. His successor, d'Estournel, summoned a council of war, which overruled the plan for an immediate return to France. Presently a thud, followed by groans of mortal agony, was heard in the new commander's cabin. The door was burst open, and he was found dying from the thrust of his own sword. La Jonquiere, afterwards governor-general of Canada, thereupon succeeded d'Estournel. This commander, the third within three days, was an excellent naval officer and a man of strong character. He at once set to work to reorganize the fleet. But reorganization was now impossible. Storms wrecked the vessels. The plague killed off the men: nearly three thousand had died already. Only a single thousand, one-tenth of the survivors, were really fit for duty. Yet La Jonquiere still persisted in sailing for Annapolis. One vessel was burned, while four others were turned into hospital ships, which trailed astern, dropping their dead overside, hour after hour, as they went. But Annapolis was never attacked. The dying fleet turned back and at last reached Port Louis, on the coast of Brittany. There it found La Palme, a frigate long since given up for lost, lying at anchor, after a series of adventures that seem wellnigh impossible. First her crew's rations had been cut down to three ounces a day. Then the starving men had eaten all the rats in her filthy hold; and when rats failed they had proposed to eat their five British prisoners. The captain did his best to prevent this crowning horror. But the men, who were now ungovernable, had already gone below to cut up one prisoner into three-ounce rations, when they were brought on deck again, just in time, by the welcome cry of sail-ho! The Portuguese stranger fortunately proved to have some sheep, which were instantly killed and eaten raw.