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- dashing the boats against them, and causing indescribable confusion.
The squall ended in a violent gale. Getting his men on board with all
dispatch, Paul essayed his best to withstand the fury of the wind, but
it blew adversely, and with redoubled power. A ship at a distance went
down beneath it. The disappointed invader was obliged to turn before
the gale, and renounce his project.
To this hour, on the shores of the Firth of Forth, it is the popular
persuasion, that the Rev. Mr. Shirrer’s (of Kirkaldy) powerful
intercession was the direct cause of the elemental repulse experienced
off the endangered harbor of Leith.
Through the ill qualities of Paul’s associate captains: their timidity,
incapable of keeping pace with his daring; their jealousy, blind to his
superiority to rivalship; together with the general reduction of his
force, now reduced by desertion, from nine to three ships; and last of
all, the enmity of seas and winds; the invader, driven, not by a fleet,
but a gale, out of the Scottish water’s, had the mortification in
prospect of terminating a cruise, so formidable in appearance at the
onset, without one added deed to sustain the reputation gained by
former exploits. Nevertheless, he was not disheartened. He sought to
conciliate fortune, not by despondency, but by resolution. And, as if
won by his confident bearing, that fickle power suddenly went over to
him from the ranks of the enemy—suddenly as plumed Marshal Ney to the
stubborn standard of Napoleon from Elba, marching regenerated on Paris.
In a word, luck—that’s the word—shortly threw in Paul’s way the great
action of his life: the most extraordinary of all naval engagements;
the unparalleled death-lock with the Serapis.
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