The canister, chain-shot, and langrel of the French foe had caused much
injury to the Ariadne, and her canvas was in a sore plight. Fifty of her
seamen had been killed, and a hundred and fifty were wounded by the time
she reached the starboard side of the Aquitaine. She would have lost
many more were it not that her onset demoralized the French gunners,
while the cheers of the British sailors aboard the Beatitude gave
confidence to their mutineer comrades.
On his own deck, Dyck watched the progress of the battle with the joy of
a natural fighter. He had carried the thing to an almost impossible
success. There had only been this in his favour, that his was an
unexpected entrance--a fact which had been worth another ship at least.
He saw his boarders struggle for the Aquitaine. He saw them discharge
their pistols, and then resort to the cutlass and the dagger; and the
marines bringing down their victims from the masts of the French flag-
ship.
Presently he heard the savagely buoyant shouts of the Beatitude men, and
he realized that, by his coming, the admiral of the French fleet had been
obliged to yield up his sword, and to signal to his ships--such as could
--to get away. That half of them succeeded in doing so was because the
British fleet had been heavily handled in the fight, and would have been
defeated had it not been for the arrival of the Ariadne.
Never, perhaps, in the history of the navy had British ships clamped the
enemy as the Aquitaine was clamped by the Beatitude and the Ariadne.
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