Page:History of the French in India.djvu/144

 122 THE RISE OF THE FRENCH FOWEi; IN I^DIA. chap, upon them, sailors sufficient to man them, and soldiers , to be conveyed by them, were alike wanting. But 1745. La Bourdonnais determined to make what he had not. He himself, carpenter, engineer, tailor, and smith, constructed with his own hands the model of all the articles that were required. Under his own personal superintendence, some men were trained to act as tailors, to cut out and prepare sails ; others, as carpenters, busied themselves with gun- carriages, and fitted the vessels to receive them. Some were set to work to prepare materials for building ships, others to put together those materials. Then, again, the sailors were trained to work together, to serve the guns, to scale walls, to fire at a mark, to use the grappling hook. Finding their number insufficient, he recruited from the negroes, and formed the whole into mixed companies. Working in this way, he soon found himself at the head of a body of men, well taught and well disciplined, and ready to undertake any enterprise he might assign to them. Nor was he less painstaking and energetic regarding the supply of provisions. He had already detained and had begun to equip five vessels, including the twenty- six gunship which had brought him the pressing requisition from Dupleix, when he received intelligence from France that a squadron of five ships had started from L'Orient, and would be with him in October of that year (1745). The arrival of this squadron would cause a double strain upon his slender stock of pro- visions. He therefore arranged that, so soon as a ship should be equipped, she should sail at once for the coast of Madagascar, and there lay in supplies of rice and other articles of food that might be procurable. In this way he managed to over-ride that which other- wise would have been an insurmountable difficulty. 1746. Xhe squadron, promised in October, 1745, arrived in January of the following year. It consisted of one