The interval was profitably spent otherwise. It so happened that the French officers responsible for blocking the fairway had either neglected to remove the masts of the sunken vessels or were unable to do so before the English squadron came in sight. Anyhow, they were left sticking up out of the water—in the cases of five of the six vessels—and showed what the enemy’s plans in that direction were. Admiral Watson’s first step was to remove the boom and the two bomb-vessels behind the line of the sunken vessels, together with the fireships. The boats of the men-of-war were sent up with muffled oars after dark on the first night after the arrival of the squadron and cleared these off, by cutting through the boom and sending the bombs and fireships adrift, causing them to run ashore and ground hard and fast. “Mr. Delamotte, the master of the _Kent_,” relates Dr. Ives, “on the second day sounded between the sunken vessels, whose masts were above water, under continuous cannon shot from the fort, and found room for our ships to pass between.” Treachery, as the French afterwards said, enabled him to do this. One of their artillery officers, according to French accounts, had a quarrel with the Governor, deserted and sold the secret of the passage for a large sum to Admiral Watson. He sent the money, so the story proceeds, to help his father in France, an aged and poor man, only, however, to receive back again the price of his treason, together with a bitter letter of reproach on the receipt of which the traitor hanged himself. On the other hand, Dr. Ives, on board the flagship, says nothing of any traitor. Admiral Watson in his dispatch simply says that he was delayed “until ... I could further discover by sounding a proper channel to pass through, which the pilots found out without being at the trouble of weighing any of the vessels.” There was hardly need for a traitor, and no need at all to pay for information with the masts of the sunken French vessels in the river standing up in the air, right across the bed of the Hooghly, for every man and boy in the English squadron to see. There was a traitor at Chandernagore, De Terraneau, an artillery officer; but he deserted to Clive’s camp, and, useful as his information proved to the land attack, he knew nothing about the river defences.