keeping blue lights burning on the four ships which sported the blue
ensign, to enforce the illusion that they were the naval escort of the
convoy, and were eager for battle. In the morning Linois was quite
satisfied that he really had to contend with a fleet pugnaciously
inclined, which, if he tried to hurt them, would probably hurt him more.
Cheers broke from the British decks as the Marengo bore up. Dance then
manoeuvred as if his intention were to shut in the French squadron
between two lines, and rake them on both flanks. This clever movement so
scared the Rear-Admiral that he determined to run. A shot was fired from
his flagship, which killed one man and wounded another on the Royal
George; whereupon the British sailors fired their guns in return, and
kept up a furious, but quite harmless, cannonade for forty minutes. Not a
single French ship was hit; but under cover of the thick smoke which "the
engagement" occasioned, Linois and his squadron sailed away, and left the
cheering Britons in the peace which they so certainly required, but had
so audaciously pretended that they did not in the least degree desire.

Dance became temporarily a national hero. The Englishman enjoys a joke,
and at a period of extreme tension the impudent exploit of the commodore
provoked a roar of delighted and derisive laughter throughout the British
Isles. He was feted by the City of London, knighted by King George,
presented with a sword of honour, and endowed by the Company with a
handsome fortune.

On the other hand, Napoleon was furious. Linois "has made the French flag
the laughing stock of the universe," he wrote to his Minister of Marine,
Decres.* (* Correspondance de Napoleon I (1858 to 1870) volume 9 document
8024.) Again he said, "The conduct of Linois is miserable"; and in a
third letter, summing up in a crisp sentence the cause of so many French
failures on the blue water, he said: "All the maritime expeditions that