It is difficult to resist the impression that greater energy on Hughes’s part might have brought him up in time to prevent this mishap.  He reached Madras only on July 20th, a fortnight after the late action; and he did not sail thence until the 20th of August, notwithstanding that he apprehended an attempt upon Trincomalee.  Hence, when he arrived there on the 2d of September, not only had it passed into the hands of the enemy, but Suffren had reembarked already the men and the guns that had been landed from his fleet.  When Hughes’s approach was signalled, all preparations for sea were hastened, and the following morning, at daybreak, the French came out.  Hughes had been joined since the last action by the Sceptre, 64, so that the respective forces in the action fought off Trincomalee on September 3d were twelve of the line to fourteen, viz.:  British, three 74’s, one 70, one 68, six 64’s, one 50; French, four 74’s, seven 64’s, one 60, two 50’s.  Suffren had also put into the line a 36-gun ship, the Consolante.[146]

While the French were getting underway from Trincomalee, the British fleet was standing south-south-east towards the entrance, close-hauled on the starboard tack, a fresh south-west monsoon blowing.  When Hughes made out the hostile flags on the works, he kept away four points,[147] and steered east-south-east, still in column, under short canvas (A).  Suffren pursued, being to windward yet astern, with his fleet on a line of bearing; that is, the line on which the ships were ranged was not the same as the course which they were steering.  This formation, (A), wherein the advance is oblique to the front, is very difficult to maintain.  Wishing to make the action, whatever the immediate event, decisive in results, by drawing the French well to leeward of the port, Hughes, who was a thorough seaman and had good captains, played with his eager enemy.  “He kept avoiding me without taking flight,” wrote Suffren; “or rather, he fled in good order, regulating his canvas by his worst sailers; and, keeping off by degrees, he steered from first to last ten or twelve different courses.”  Hughes, on his part, while perfectly clear as to his own object, was somewhat perplexed by the seeming indecision of an adversary whose fighting purpose he knew by experience.  “Sometimes they edged down,” he wrote; “sometimes they brought-to; in no regular order, as if undetermined what to do.”  These apparent vacillations were due to the difficulty of maintaining the line of bearing, which was to be the line of battle; and this difficulty was the greater, because Hughes was continually altering his course and Suffren’s ships were of unequal speed.