The `mounseers,' as the Captain explained to Bob, were beaten off in the battle and most of their vessels captured, a result owing largely to the part played by the gallant _Marie Rose_; though, sad be it to relate, while resisting all the efforts made by the enemy to carry her by the board, being somewhat top-heavy, "she `turned the turtle' at the very moment when her guns were brought to bear a-starboard, to give a final broadside to the French admiral and settle the action, the poor thing then incontinently sinking to the bottom, where her bones yet lie." "Not far-off either," continued the Captain, "the _Royal George_ also foundered in the last century, with over nine hundred hands, there being a lot of shore folk in the ship beside her crew.

Her Admiral, Kempenfeldt, was also on board, and--" "Yes," said Mrs Gilmour, interrupting him; "and, sure, there's a pretty little poem my favourite Cowper wrote about it which I recollect I learnt by heart when I was a little girl, much smaller than you, Nell.
The lines began thus-- `Toll for the brave, the brave that are no more,'-- don't you remember them; I'm sure you must, Captain ?" "Can't say I do, ma'am," he replied--"poetry isn't in my line.

But, as I was saying, the _Royal George_ heeled over pretty nearly in the same way as the other one did that I just now told you about; and, I remember when I was studying at the Naval College in the Dockyard ever so many years ago, when I was a youngster not much older than you, Master Bob, being out at Spithead when the wreck of the vessel was blown up, to clear the fairway for navigation.

I've got a ruler and a paper-knife now at home that were carved out of pieces of her timber which I picked up at the time." "How nice!" observed Mrs Gilmour.

"A charming recollection, I call it!" "Well, I don't know about that," replied the Captain, who seemed a little bit grumpy, and was fumbling in his pockets without apparently being able to find the object of which he was in search--"my recollection is not so good as I would like it!" On Mrs Gilmour looking at him inquiringly, noticing the tone in which he spoke, the truth came out.
"The fact is, ma'am, I've lost my snuff-box," he said apologetically to excuse his snappy answers.