ood saw therein the definition
of the enemy's purpose, the necessity laid on them to fly to the aid of
their exposed division, and the chance to anticipate them,--to gain an
advantage first, and to beat them afterwards.

Rodney's tentative and inadequate action was not improbably induced
partly by the "extreme want of water," which he reported in his
despatches; and this again was due to failure to prepare adequately
during the period of respite foreseen by Hood, but unnoted by his own
preoccupied mind. The result is instructive. Drake fell in with the main
body of the French, and of course had to retire,--fortunate in regaining
his commander-in-chief unmolested. De Grasse's movement had become known
in Barbados, and as soon as Drake appeared Rodney sailed with the fleet,
but upon arriving off Tobago, on June 5th, learned that it had
surrendered on the 2d. Its fall he duly attributed to local neglect and
cowardice; but evidently the presence of the British fleet might have
had some effect. He then returned to Barbados, and during the passage
the hostile fleets sighted each other on the 9th,--twenty British to
twenty-three French; but Rodney was unwilling to engage lest he might be
entangled with the foul ground about Grenada. As that island was then in
the enemy's hands, he could get no anchorage there, and so might be
driven to leeward of his opponent, exposing Barbados. It is perhaps
needless to point out that had he been to windward of Martinique when De
Grasse first arrived, as Hood wished, he would have been twenty to
twenty, with clear ground, and the antagonist embarrassed with convoy.
His present perplexities, in their successive phases, can be seen
throughout to be the result of sticking to St. Eustatius, not only
physically, but mentally.

And so it was with what followed. On reaching Barbados again, he had to
report that the French were back in Martinique, and now twenty-eight
through the arming of the ships _en flute_. Despite their superiority,
"they do not venture to move," he said somewhat sneeringly, and
doubtless his "fleet in being" had an effect on them; but they were also
intent on a really great operation. On July 5th, De Grasse sailed for
Cap Francois in Hayti, there to organize a visit to the continent in
support of Washington's operations. Rodney, pursuant to his sagacious
plan of the previous years, sent also a detachment of fourteen ships
under Hood, which he endeavored, but unsuccessfully, to