were, however, as follows : that fought in line with the Hoche, that between the Loire and four other frigates with the disabled Anson, that between the Loire and Kangaroo (we suppose this must be meant), and that with the Mermaid alone. That the heavy fire, which the Loire opened upon the latter, did not sink her appears, by the following remark, to have surprised the French themselves. "L'avantage n'était pas pour les canonners de la Loire, qui, faute d'adresse, ou, ce qui est plus croyable, par trop de precipitation, n'ajustaient pas aussi bier leurs coups que les Anglais."* Yet, why the Loire, with her decided superiority of force and the subsequent fall of her opponent's mizenmast, did not push the contest to an issue, is nowhere explained ; not even in an account which, by its minuteness in other respects, as clearly proves that it was drawn up on board the Loire, as that, from among the troops in his ship, or from somewhere else, " l'excellent man�uvrier le capitaine Segond" had provided himself with a still more excellent trumpeter.

Scarcely had the Mermaid's crew time to knot the remaining shrouds, and get their ship a little into order, before there came on a violent gale of wind. The men had just furled the fore topsail, when the remains of the mainsail blew away ; and, in the act of hauling up the foresail, the foremast, fore topmast, fore yard, and foretopsail yard, all fell in-board on the forecastle. Constant fatigue was now endured by the crew, in refitting, pumping, and clearing the wreck ; and the ship, under a bare pole, the mainmast, scudded before the wind in a dreadful sea, rendered ten times more alarming by the open state of the cabin, from the cause already explained. At length, on the 19th, the Mermaid was fortunate enough to get into Loughswilly. Fortunate, indeed, it was, as the bread had all been destroyed by a shot-hole leak in the bread-room, and the ship, having been eight weeks at sea, had only 12 tuns of water left.

The Loire had only escaped from one antagonist to fall into the hands of another. At daylight on the 18th, the very day succeeding that on which she had been so roughly handled by the Mermaid, the Loire unexpectedly found herself to leeward of a ship of more than double the size of her former antagonist. The Loire, at this time, lay without her fore and main topmasts ; the one having been shot away by the Mermaid, and the other, as Captain Newman had conceived would be the case, having fallen over the top in the course of the ensuing night. The ship to windward, which was the 44-gun frigate Anson, Captain Philip Charles Durham, had lost her mizenmast, main yard, and main cross-trees ; and, in her previous action with the Loire and her four companions, had had her bowsprit and fore yard shot

* Victoires et Conquêtes, tome x., p. 418.

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