readiness to fire his guns by snapping his pistol at the touch-hole. Nothing could exceed the determined valor with which the Saratoga and the Confiance kept up the fight. The Linnet presently turned her attention to the Saratoga, and poured one raking broadside into her after another, besides what she had to take from the Confiance. The brave Captain Downie had been mortally wounded early in the engagement, but the ship was still admirably fought. On the Saratoga three times the cry went up that Commodore Macdonough was killed, for three times was he knocked senseless to the deck; but each time he rose, none the worse except for a few cuts and bruises. The guns on the engaged side of the Saratoga became disabled one by one, by the long twenty-fours in the main-deck battery of the Confiance, which, though suffering from the musketry fire of the Americans, was yet doing magnificent work. At last but a single gun of the starboard batteries of the Saratoga remained serviceable, and in firing it the bolt broke, the gun flew off the carriage, and actually tumbled down the hatchway. The ship was afire in several places, due to the hot shot poured into her by the Confiance, one-fourth of her men were killed, and she had not a gun available on her engaged side; while both the Confiance and the Linnet were giving her one raking broadside after another. In this awful extremity Commodore Macdonough determined to wind his ship, which means to turn the ship completely around so that she could use her uninjured batteries. This difficult but brilliant manoeuvre was executed with the utmost coolness, and soon she sprung a new broadside on the Confiance. The Confiance attempted the same manoeuvre, but she only got partly round, when she hung with her head to the wind, in a terrible position, where the fresh batteries of the Saratoga raked her fore and aft. No ship could stand this long and live; and after two hours of as desperate fighting as was ever seen, the Confiance was forced to haul down her colors.