Incidentally the admiral had other matters to attend to. One--it will be interesting to make a small point of it here--was to correspond personally with his opponent. The subject was the interchange of prisoners taken at St. Kitts and earlier in the campaign. The British sloop-of-war _Alert_ was the intermediary, going and coming under a flag of truce. Nothing could exceed the courteous tone of Rodney's correspondence with the French admiral; and, on the other hand, De Grasse was civility itself. He treated Captain Vashon of the _Alert_, while that officer was at Fort Royal, with every consideration, made him his guest for the time, and expressed in conversation with the British captain the highest esteem and consideration for 'le Chevalier Rodney.' Rodney wrote to De Grasse, for instance, in one letter, after dealing in the pleasantest way with the business in hand:-- It will make me happy if at any time this island produces anything worthy your acceptance, or that may be the least useful to your table. As the merchant ships which have lately arrived from Europe may have brought different species of necessaries that may be agreeable to your Excellency, it will make me happy, Sir, to obey your commands. The bearing of the two admirals to one another in their personal dealings affords a pleasing instance of the high-bred, chivalrous courtesy that was so characteristic of the old-time fighting days. It was the way with the men of the _ancien regime_ on both sides the Channel when they met in war never to forget that, first and foremost, they were gentlemen. In this spirit, almost at that very moment, indeed, De Crillon at Gibraltar was exchanging similar compliments with the 'old Cock of the Rock,' General Eliott--'Eliott the Brave': the same spirit that at Fontenoy, as all the world knows, moved one side to challenge the other to fire first. It was the same chivalrous spirit that prompted the captains of the British fleet in the East Indies to pay their unique compliment to the great De Suffren at the close of this war. Hostilities were over, peace had been proclaimed, and the rival fleets, so lately enemies, met, both on their way home, in Table Bay. They had fought five fierce battles within sixteen months--each one a drawn action, with honours divided. On finding the Bailli de Suffren and his fleet in Table Bay when they arrived, the British captains, brave old Commodore King, the senior officer, at their head, proceeded in a body to call on the gallant leader of their quondam foes, and pay the homage of brave men to the brilliant tactician they had more than once been hard put to it to keep at bay. Their generous tribute delighted the warm-hearted Provencal immensely, as he described, by the spontaneity and peculiar graciousness of the act. The intercourse between Rodney and De Grasse was in essentials of the same kind: the outcome of two warriors' sense of _noblesse oblige_ the one