Page:History of the French in India.djvu/129

 LA BOUKDONNAIS. 107 any aggressive action on their part. Mr. Morse had no C ^ R course but compliance. , 1, But though he was thus saved from immediate attack, 1746. the situation of Dupleix was still particularly trying. The English squadron had come round to the coast, had even received reinforcements, and the vessels of which it was composed, cruising about, did their best to inter- cept and destroy the French merchantmen. The Com- pany of the Indies, even before the outbreak of the war, had ceased to send any ships to Pondichery, so that Dupleix was dependent for his information on stray arrivals. Still, amid the doubt and despondency that surrounded him, he maintained a bold and resolute bearing. Though within all was anxiety, without, there was the security of apparent composure. He was, how- ever, immensely relieved, when, in the month of May, 1746, he learned from a sure source, that the long- announced and long-despaired of squadron of M. de la Bourdonnais had been heard of at Mahe. La Bourdonnais was last introduced in these pages as the skilful and enterprising officer who had devised the means by which Mahe — so named, it will be re- membered, after himself — had been captured in 1725. We shall now briefly relate the course of his life during the nineteen years that had elapsed since that first brilliant essay of arms in India. Reduced by the peace, to which France at that period seemed disposed, to inactivity, La Bourdonnais, after the capture of Mahe, fitted out a ship on his own account, and traded for three or four years in the Arabian seas. The ascendency which he here speedily assumed over all with whom he came into contact, and which especially signalised itself on the occasion of a disturbance, that he succeeded in quelling, between some Portuguese and Arab sailors, in the harbour of Mocha, recommended him to the Governor of Goa, and induced that Viceroy to offer him the command of a ship of war under the King of