Page:Final French Struggles in India and on the Indian Seas.djvu/62

34 III.

It was whilst the events just recorded were progressing on land that intelligence from time to time reached Haidar Ali of the gallant contests which Suffren had been delivering on the sea. The enthusiasm of the tried and gallant old warrior knew no bounds. "At last," he said to his confidants, "at last the English have found a master. This is the man who will aid me to exterminate them: I am determined that two years hence not one of them shall remain in India, and that they shall not possess a single inch of Indian soil." Then turning to the French agent in his camp, M. Piveron de Morlat, he begged him to write at once to his master, and to tell him of his own great desire to see him, to embrace him, to tell him how much he esteemed him for his heroic courage.

Before this message could reach the French commomodore, Suffren had sailed with his refitted and augmented squadron in the direction of Kadalúr. It had been his original intention to do the work which Duchemin had declined to attempt, viz., to take possession of Negapatam, which would have formed an important depôt for the operations of the land and sea