But very soon they had "other fish to fry;" for one of the Indiamen, the _Royal George_, made the signal that there were four strange sail in the S.W.
"A gun from the commodore, sir," reported Newton, who was officer of the watch.

"The flags are up--they are not our pennants." It was an order to four ships of the fleet to run down and examine the strange vessels.
Half-an-hour elapsed, during which time the glasses were at every mast-head.

Captain Drawlock himself, although not much given to climbing, having probably had enough of it during his long career in the service, was to be seen in the main-top.

Doubts, suspicions, declarations, surmises, and positive assertions were bandied about, until they were all dispelled by the reconnoitring ships telegraphing, "a French squadron, consisting of one line-of-battle ship, three frigates, and a brig." It was, in fact, the well-known squadron of Admiral Linois, who had scoured the Indian seas, ranging it up and down with the velocity as well as the appetite of a shark.

His force consisted of the _Marengo_, of eighty guns; the famed _Belle Poule_, a forty-gun frigate, which outstripped the wind; the _Semillante_, of thirty-six guns; the _Berceau_, ship corvette, of twenty-two, and a brig of sixteen.