Meanwhile, on land one Major Lawrence--this is the first time that this honoured name appears over the horizon of Indian history--a distinguished King's officer, had come out to take over charge of the Company's forces. At first he certainly distinguished himself, for he began by discovering a deep-laid plot, in which Madame Dupleix was prime mover, to tamper with the fidelity of the few hundred sepoys which the English, following the example of the French, were bringing into discipline. Banishment and death having disposed of this conspiracy, Admiral Griffin and the British fleet were given a chance of more honourable warfare; but, unfortunately, at the time the French vessels showed close in to the coast the admiral and all his officers happened to be ashore enjoying themselves, and so once more honest battle degenerated into the looking for a needle in a bundle of hay; in the midst of which the French vessels achieved their object of landing £200,000 in specie, and four hundred soldiers at Pondicherry. Major Lawrence, however, almost neutralised this failure by a clever repulse of the French at Cuddalore, which lay but 3 miles north of Fort St David. Hearing that a large force was advancing, he ordered all the guns and stores from Cuddalore to be dismantled and taken in to the former fort. Native spies, naturally, brought the news of this to the enemy, who consequently advanced carelessly, applied their scaling ladders to the walls, and were surprised by perfect platoons of musketry and a shower of grape. The guns removed by day had been restored by night, and the garrison largely reinforced. The result was headlong flight. Once again it reads like a shilling shocker; one is tempted, almost, to take the whole story as the figment of a super-excited brain. All this time neither France nor England had--and small wonder--taken this game of French and English on the Coromandel Coast at all seriously; but at long last, in 1748, both the Government and the Company of the latter woke up to the necessity for doing something. The result being such a fleet as no Western nation had hitherto put into Eastern waters. Thirty ships in all, thirteen of them being ships of the line, and none of them less than 500 tons burden. With these, close on four thousand European troops, three hundred Africans, two thousand half-disciplined sepoys, and the support of the Nawâb of Arcot (who had once more changed sides), Fort St David rightly felt itself strong enough, not only to recover Madras, but also to take Pondicherry. But here, alas! begins one of the most fateful tales of sheer ineptitude to be found in the whole history of English warfare. Delay, crass ignorance, useless persistence, and exaggerated importance, marked the preliminary siege of Arrian-aupan, a small fort which might with ease have been left alone. For the season was already far advanced, and the object at which it was all-important to strike was, palpably, Pondicherry.