e, and says he will hoist his flag on board of her."

On April 17th Hood, having vainly urged his commander to improve the
situation by more energetic action, represented to him that the small
detachment convoying the _Hector_ and _Glorieux_ might fall in with a
superior enemy, if not supported. Rodney then directed him to go ahead
with ten ships until as far as Altavela, midway on the south side of
Santo Domingo, where he was to await the main body. Hood gave a wide
construction to these orders, and pushed for the Mona Passage, between
Santo Domingo and Porto Rico, where on the 19th he intercepted two
sixty-four gun ships, and two smaller cruisers. In reporting this
incident to Rodney, he added, "It is a very mortifying circumstance to
relate to you, Sir, that the French fleet which you put to flight on the
12th went through the Mona Channel on the 18th, only the day before I
was in it." That sustained vigorous chase could not have been fruitless
is further shown by the fact that Rodney himself, deliberately as he
moved, apparently lying-to each night of the first half-dozen succeeding
the battle, reached Jamaica three days only after the main body of the
defeated French gained Cap Francois, though they had every motive to
speed.

Of the reasons for such lethargic action, wholly inconsistent with true
military principle, and bitterly criticised by Hood,--who affirmed that
twenty ships might have been taken,--Rodney drew up an express account,
which cannot be considered as adequate to his justification. In this he
argued that, if he had pursued, the enemy, who "went off in a close
connected body, might have defeated by rotation the ships that had come
up with them, and thereby exposed the British fleet, after a victory, to
a defeat." "They went off in a body of twenty-six ships-of-the-line, and
might, by ordering two or three of their best-sailing ships or frigates
to have shown lights at times, and by changing their course, have
induced the British fleet to have followed them, while the main of their
fleet, by hiding their lights, might have hauled their wind, have been
far to windward before daylight, and intercepted the captured ships, and
the most crippled ships of the English;" and he even conceived that, as
the main body of the British would at the same time have gone far to
leeward, the French, regaining their own ports in Guadaloupe and
Martinique, might have taken Antigua, Barbados, and Santa Lucia.

The prin