Page:A history of the military transactions of the British nation in Indostan, Volume 1.djvu/98

90 sail, and with the sea-wind come near the shore, where they are ready to avail themselves again of the land-wind as soon as it sets in. By these operations a vessel that sails well sometimes gets ten or fifteen miles to the south in a day; but it is not uncommon to see others employed a month in getting only 100 miles to the southward. On the 10th of June at an hour and a half after noon the French ships were discerned in the south-east. The sea-wind was set in, and they were sailing directly before it toward Fort St. David. The position of the English squadron, at anchor near the land to leeward, rendered it impossible for them to get nearer the enemy during the sea-wind; for had they weighed anchor immediately, the nearest course they could have made would have been to the north-east out to sea, and this would very soon have earned them to leeward of Pondicherry. Mr. Griffin therefore determined not to weigh anchor till night, when the land-wind should set in: in the interval the men on shore were ordered to join their ships. At four in the afternoon the French squadron, being within three leagues of the road, altered their course, and plied to the south-west. This operation made the English believe that they kept to windward with intention to gain Pondicherry at all events. About midnight the English put to sea with the land-wind, endeavouring to keep in the latitude of Fort St. David; and in the morning they shortened sail, in expectation every minute of seeing the enemy again to the south; but before the evening they fell to leeward of Pondicherry, when Mr.Griffin, finding his expectations deceived, made sail to Madrass, where he arrived the next evening, and found no French ships in the road. The French squadron was commanded by Mr. Bouvet, governor of the isle of Bourbon, an able and experienced mariner. He had been apprized, at the French settlement of Karical, of the superior force of the English: his operations, when in sight of Fort St. David, were designed to make the English believe that he intended to engage them the next morning: but as soon as the night set in he changed his course, and crouding all the sail his ships could carry, went away to Madrass, where he arrived the next morning the 11th of June, and immediately landed 400 soldiers, with 200,000 pounds in silver, which had been sent from France to the island of Mauritius