Though to follow the cruise of D’Estaign and Byron to its close will compel us to overlap contemporary operations elsewhere, an even greater degree of confusion would be created by making an arbitrary break in the narrative of one continuous series of movements. Yet it is necessary to go back for a brief space to explain what the rival admirals found waiting for them, when they came escaping from the snowstorms and icy cold of the North to the unfailing easterly trade winds, the baffling land breezes, the sun, and the purple seas of the West Indies. The French possessions in those waters consisted of part of San Domingo, of Guadaloupe, Martinique, and Marie Galante. Dominica, between Martinique and Guadaloupe, was in our hands. Next to the South came Santa Lucia, a French island, and beyond it St. Vincent and Grenada, English possessions. The whole of the Lesser Antilles constituted the Leeward Station, so called because they lie to leeward of Barbadoes. The reader may be reminded that as the easterly trade wind is permanent in the West Indies, and is therefore called “the true breeze,” to leeward always means to westward, and to windward is to eastward for the Creole and the seafaring man. During the early months of 1778 there had been the usual examples of breaches of the law of nations on both sides, and the consequent mutual accusations, very loud and very futile. The French had no naval force at hand except a few frigates and sloops. Our own squadron consisted of one 74-gun ship, one 70, with frigates and sloops to the number of fourteen. From the month of June onwards they were under the command of Samuel Barrington, a member of the well-known Irish family. Barrington remained at Barbadoes waiting to see what the French would do. In September he discovered. The Marquis de Bouillé, Governor of Martinique, collected a flotilla of frigates, sloops, and trading-craft, embarked troops and Creole volunteers, and soused down on Dominica. It fell at once, and the history of its fall is highly characteristic of our management in those days. Forts had been built and guns landed for the defence of the island. Nothing was wanting except a garrison. There was no force in Dominica save parts of two companies of the 48th and a handful of artillerymen—not enough to hold a small fort. Having nothing else to do, they surrendered. Barrington complained that he was misinformed as to the strength of the enemy. If he had not kept his line-of-battle ships idle at Barbadoes, he could have found out for himself, and one of them cruising round Martinique would have stopped Bouillé. It was quite in keeping with this sloth and this dependence on information supplied by governors that Barrington joined the noble band of officers who refused to serve in responsible places under Sandwich because their honour was not safe with him. Having allowed Dominica to go for want of support, he left Barbadoes in order to see after the safety of Antigua,