The signal for sailing was enforced by gun after gun; the anchor was
hove up, and, with all her stores on deck, her guns not even mounted,
in a state of confusion unparalleled from her being obliged to hoist
in faster than it was possible she could stow away, she was driven out
of harbour to encounter a heavy gale. A few hours more would have
enabled her to proceed to sea with security, but they were denied; the
consequences were appalling, they might have been fatal. In the
general confusion some iron too near the binnacles had attracted the
needle of the compasses; the ship was steered out of her course. At
midnight, in a heavy gale at the close of November, so dark that you
could not distinguish any object, however close, the _Imperieuse_
dashed upon the rocks between Ushant and the Main. The cry of terror
which ran through the lower decks; the grating of the keel as she was
forced in; the violence of the shocks which convulsed the frame of the
vessel; the hurrying up of the ship's company without their clothes;
and then the enormous wave which again bore her up, and carried her
clean over the reef, will never be effaced from my memory."
This, after all, was not an inappropriate introduction to the stormy
three years which followed it. The story is written in the novels,
particularly _Frank Mildmay[1]_ where every item of his varied and
exciting experience is reproduced with dramatic effect. It would be
impossible to rival Marryat's narrative of episodes, and we shall gain
no sense of reality by adjusting the materials of fiction to an exact
accordance with fact.
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