The _Verite_ was now the least injured of the French battleships. To look at she was merely a floating mass of ruins, but her engines were intact, and her primary battery as good as ever. Her captain, like the hero that he was, determined to risk his ship and everything in her in the hope of destroying the monster which had wrought such frightful havoc along the line. She carried two twelve-inch guns ahead, a 6.4 on each side of the barbette, and four pairs of 6.4 guns behind these, and the fire of all of them was concentrated ahead.
As the _Britain_ came round for the third time every one of the guns was laid upon her. He called to the engine-room for the utmost speed he could have, and at nineteen knots he bore down upon the leviathan. The huge guns on the _Britain_ swung round, and a tempest of shells swept the _Verite_ from end to end. Her armour was gashed and torn as though it had been cardboard instead of six-and eleven-inch steel; but still she held on her course. At five hundred yards her guns spoke, and the splinters began to fly on board the _Britain_. The Captain of the _Verite_ signalled for the last ounce of steam he could have--he was going to appeal to the last resort in naval warfare--the ram. If he could once get that steel spur of his into the _Britain's_ hull under her armour, she would go down as certainly as though she had been a first-class cruiser.
When the approaching vessels were a little more than five hundred yards apart, the _Ithuriel_, who had settled up with all the destroyers and torpedo boats she could find, rose to the north of the now broken French line. Erskine took in the situation at a glance. He snatched the receiver from the hooks, shouted into it:
The _Ithuriel_ dived and sprang forward, and when the ram of the _Verite_ was within a hundred yards of the side of the _Britain_ his own ram smashed through her stern, cracked both the propeller shafts, and tore away her rudder as if it had been a piece of paper. She stopped and yawed, broadside on to the _Britain_. The chases of the great guns swung round in ominous threatening silence, but before they could be fired the Tricolor fluttered down from the flagstaff, and the _Verite_, helpless for all fighting purposes, had surrendered.