the West Indies, and then steered home. He anchored at Spithead on the 14th November. He had done an admirable piece of service. If it was rather a triumph in the handling of a fleet and in seamanship than such a triumph in fighting as Nelson would have won twenty years later, we must remember that much had happened in the interval to give British officers a well justified confidence. When the war died down on the Atlantic and in the West Indies, it was still being fiercely waged in the Bay of Bengal. In those waters it had flamed into energy only as it drew towards its final crisis and end elsewhere. Until 1782 the Eastern seas presented a languid scene. In 1778 England and France were alike feebly represented at sea to the east of the Cape. When the Company, hearing that war had begun in Europe, resolved to seize the French settlement of Pondicherry, it had a squadron at hand. One line-of-battle ship, the =Ripon=, 60, three small men-of-war of the Royal Navy, and one armed ship of the Company’s, constituted the whole force commanded by Sir Edward Vernon. The still weaker French squadron was at the Île de France. Vernon blockaded Pondicherry on the 8th August, in order to support Sir Hector Munro’s besieging army. On the 10th the French squadron appeared. It consisted of the _Brillante_, 64, two small ships of the king’s, and two armed merchant-vessels. A feebly conducted action ended by the separation of the combatants. The French commander, M. de Tronjolly, anchored at Pondicherry, and remained there till the 21st August. He brought no effective help, and when Vernon began to threaten him again, he slipped away, leaving Pondicherry to resist as it best could, till it was forced to surrender on honourable terms on the 16th October. The French had ceased to be rivals of England in the East Indies, and would in all probability never have reappeared there, if the Company had not found a new and a most formidable enemy in Hyder Ali, the great Sultan of Mysore. Their few ships remained, partly by necessity, but not a little by the free choice of their officers, at and about the Cythera of the French Navy, the Île de France. Tronjolly was replaced in 1779 by M. D’Orves, who brought a 74-gun ship with him, _L’Océan_. In January 1781, D’Orves made a transient appearance on the coast of Coromandel. His tardy arrival and prompt departure served only to disappoint and anger Hyder Ali.