now properly garrisoned post. Doubtless a successful campaign, by
destroying or driving away the French sea power, would achieve this
result; but Suffren might well believe that, whatever mishaps might
arise on a single day, he could in the long run more than hold his own
with his opponent.

Seaports should defend themselves; the sphere of the fleet is on the
open sea, its object offence rather than defence, its objective the
enemy's shipping wherever it can be found. Suffren now saw again
before him the squadron on which depended the English control of the
sea; he knew that powerful reinforcements to it must arrive before the
next season, and he hastened to attack. Hughes, mortified by his
failure to arrive in time,--for a drawn battle beforehand would have
saved what a successful battle afterward could not regain,--was in no
humor to balk him. Still, with sound judgment, he retreated to the
southeast, flying in good order, to use Suffren's expression;
regulating speed by the slowest ships, and steering many different
courses, so that the chase which began at daybreak overtook the enemy
only at two in the afternoon. The object of the English was to draw
Suffren so far to leeward of the port that, if his ships were
disabled, he could not easily regain it.

The French numbered fourteen ships-of-the-line to twelve English. This
superiority, together with his sound appreciation of the military
situation in India, increased Suffren's natural eagerness for action;
but his ships sailed badly, and were poorly handled by indifferent and
dissatisfied men. These circumstances, during the long and vexatious
pursuit, chafed and fretted the hot temper of the commodore, which
still felt the spur of urgency that for two months had quickened the
operations of the squadron. Signal followed signal, manoeuvre
succeeded manoeuvre, to bring his disordered vessels into position.
"Sometimes they edged down, sometimes they brought to," says the
English admiral, who was carefully watching their approach, "in no
regular order, as if undetermined what to do." Still, Suffren
continued on, and at two P.M., having been carried twenty-five miles
away from his port, his line being then partly formed and within
striking distance of the enemy, the signal was made to come to the
wind to correct the order before finally bearing down. A number of
blunders in executing this made matters worse rather than better; and
the commodore, at last losing patience