The despatch specified no other delinquent by name; but the selection of five captains to receive personal commendation, and the persistent refusal of the same to all other subordinates, including the junior flag-officers, made censure sufficiently individual; and the admiral’s subsequent line of conduct emphasized rebuke bitterly.  The cruise was not yet finished; for the French having taken refuge at Guadaloupe, it was important to prevent them from regaining Martinique, their chief depot and place of repairs.  To intercept them there, Rodney at first took station off Fort Royal, and when compelled for a moment to return to Santa Lucia, kept lookouts to warn him betimes of the enemy’s appearance.  So, when De Guichen approached from the windward side of the islands, on May 9th, he found the British getting underway to meet him.  From that time until the 20th—­eleven days—­the fleets were manoeuvring in sight of one another, beating to windward; the British endeavoring to force action, the French to avoid it.  De Guichen’s orders from home were “to keep the sea, so far as the force maintained by England in the Windward Islands would permit, without too far compromising the fleet entrusted to him.”  Such instructions compelled him to defensive tactics; as Rodney’s views, and those traditional in his service, impelled him to attack.  Hence ensued a struggle of sustained vigilance, activity, and skill, profoundly interesting professionally, but which does not lend itself to other than technical narrative.  “For fourteen days and nights,” wrote Rodney, “the fleets were so near each other that neither officers nor men could be said to sleep.  Nothing but the goodness of the weather and climate could have enabled us to endure so continual a fatigue.  Had it been in Europe, half the people must have sunk under it.  For my part, it did me good.”  No evidence of professional aptness could be given clearer than the last words.  A man is easy under such circumstances only when they fit him.  De Guichen asked to be superseded; “my health cannot endure such continual fatigue and anxiety.”  Twice the wary Frenchman was nearly caught, but the wind did not favor Rodney long enough to give him the weather position, the only sure one for offence.  But, while thus unable to compass results, he gave conclusive evidence of the quickness of his eye, the alertness of his action, and the flexibility which he was enabled to impress upon his fleet by sheer force of personal character.  The contest resembled that of two expert swordsmen; more intermittent doubtless, but also much more prolonged.

There can be no trifling with such conditions.  A moment’s relaxation, or inaptness, may forfeit opportunity, offered only by chance and not to be regained by effort.  Rodney was fixed that no such slip should occur through the neglect of others, and his stern supervision, as represented by himself to his wife, was that of a slave driver, lash in hand.  “As I had given public notice to all my captains,