Terre, and praying that something would turn up to pay him for his patience, Truxtun sighted a vessel coming up from the southeast, which from her size and build was evidently a French frigate of the first class. As she approached, the keen-eyed American naval officers, scanning her through their glasses, recognized her as the fifty-two-gun frigate La Vengeance, one of the most formidable vessels in the French Navy. It was evident from the first, however, that she would much rather run than fight, this anxiety to avoid an encounter being due to the fact that she had on board a large number of officials, high in the colonial service, whom she was bringing out to the colonies from the mother country. No sooner did she perceive the character of the Constellation, therefore, than she piled on every yard of canvas and headed for Basse Terre and the protecting guns of its forts. Never had the Constellation a better opportunity to display her remarkable sailing qualities, and never did she display them to better advantage. It was well after nightfall, however, before she was able to overhaul the flying Frenchman, so that it was by the light of a full moon, which illumined the scene almost as well as though it were day, that the preparations were completed for the combat. The sea, which was glasslike in its smoothness, as is so often the case in Caribbean waters, seemed to be covered with a veil of shimmering silver, while the battle-lanterns which had been lighted on both vessels swung like giant fireflies across the purple sky.

Seeing that escape was hopeless, the French commander hove to and prepared for a desperate resistance. Now, Truxtun had made up his mind that this was to be no long-range duel, in which the Frenchman's heavier metal could not fail to give him an advantage, but a fight at close quarters, in which the smashing broadsides which the Constellation was specially designed to deliver could not fail to tell. Just before the beginning of the battle the stout commodore, red-faced, white-wigged, cock-hatted, clad in the blue tail-coat and buff breeches of the American Navy, descended to the gun-deck and walked slowly through the batteries, acknowledging the cheers of the gunners, but emphatically warning them against firing a shot until he gave the word. No one knew better than Truxtun the demoralizing effect of a smashing broadside suddenly delivered at close quarters, and it was this demoralization which he intended to create aboard the enemy. "Load with solid shot," he ordered, and added, speaking to his officers so that the men could hear: "If a man fires a gun before I give the order, shoot him on the spot." Then with boarding-nettings triced up, decks sanded, magazines opened, and the tops filled with marines whose duty it was to pick off the French gunners, the Constellation, stripped to her fighting canvas, swept grandly into action. As she came within range the French commander opened with his stern-chasers, and in an instant the ordered decks of the American were turned into a shambles. The wounded were carried groaning to the cockpit, where the white-aproned surgeons, their arms bared to the elbow, awaited their grim work, while the dead were hastily ranged along the unengaged side—rows of stark and staring figures beneath the placid moon. Again and again the guns of La Vengeance belched smoke and flame, and redder and redder grew the sand with which the Constellation's decks were spread, but she still kept coming on. Not until she was squarely abreast of the Frenchman did Truxtun, leaping into the shrouds, bellow through his speaking-trumpet: "Now, boys, give 'em hell!" The American gunners answered with a broadside which made La Vengeance reel. The effect was terrible. On the decks of the Frenchman the dead and dying lay in quivering, bleeding heaps. But not for an instant did the French sailors flinch from their guns. Broadside answered broadside, cheer answered cheer, while the men, French and American alike, toiled and sweated at their work of carnage. So rapidly were the American guns fired that the men actually had to crawl out of the ports, in the face of a withering fire, for buckets of water with which to cool them off.

The different tactics adopted by the two commanders soon began to show results, for, whereas Truxtun had given orders that his men were to disregard the upper works and to concentrate their fire on the main-deck batteries and the hull, the French commander had from the first directed his fire upon the American's rigging in the hope of crippling her. Shortly after midnight the French fire, which had grown weaker and weaker under the terrible punishment of the Constellation's successive broadsides, ceased altogether, and an officer was seen waving a white flag in token of surrender. Twice before, in fact, La Vengeance had struck her colors, but owing to the smoke and darkness the Americans had not perceived it. And there was good reason for her surrender, for she had lost one hundred and sixty men out of her crew of three hundred and thirty, while the Constellation had but thirty-nine casualties out of a crew of three hundred and ten. Though the French fire had done small damage to the Constellation's hull, and had killed a comparatively small number of her crew, it had worked terrible havoc in her rigging, it being discovered, just as she was preparing to run alongside her capture and take possession, that every shroud and stay supporting her mainmast had been shot away, and that the mast was tottering and about to fall. The men in the top were under the command of a little midshipman named James Jarvis, who was only thirteen years old. He had been warned by one of his men that the mast was likely to fall at any moment, and had been implored to leave the top while there was still time, which he would have been entirely justified in doing, particularly as the battle was over. But that thirteen-year-old midshipman had in him the stuff of which heroes are made, and resolutely refused to leave his post without orders. The orders never came, for before the crew had time to secure it the great mast crashed over the side, carrying with it to instant death little Jarvis and all of his men save one. Though his name and deed have long since been forgotten by the nation for which he died, he was no whit less a hero than that other boy-sailor, Casabianca, whose self-sacrifice at the battle of the Nile has been made familiar by song and story.

The falling of the Constellation's mast reversed conditions in an instant, for the surrendered frigate, taking prompt advantage of the victor's temporary helplessness, crowded on all sail and slowly disappeared into the night. By the time the wreck had been chopped away any pursuit of her was hopeless. A few days later she put into the Dutch port of Curaçao in a sinking condition.

Thus continued until February, 1801, an unbroken series of American successes, French war-ships, French privateers, and French merchantmen alike being sunk, captured, or driven from the seas. France's trade with her West Indian colonies was paralyzed, and the prestige of her navy was enormously diminished. Napoleon, as First Consul, had abolished the Directory, and was now the virtual ruler of France, having entire command of all administrative affairs, both civil and military. Forced to admit that from first to last his ships had been out-sailed, out-fought, and out-manœuvred by the despised Americans, and that a continuance of the war could only result in further disaster and loss of prestige, he began negotiations which led, about the time that the nineteenth century passed its first birthday, to a suspension