What onerous task Lieutenant de Vaisseau Jules Hainaut had been given, to scour the Windwards and the Spanish Main in search of those two absent corvettes, had barely gotten underway, when, like a pair of old shoes beneath the bed-stead, La Resolue and Le Gascon had suddenly heaved up over the Sou'west horizon not five dawns since his sailing, sullenly dragging in their wakes a lone, dowdy three-masted merchant ship, with a badly faded American 'grid-iron' flag hung beneath a much brighter and larger Tricolour to signify her new ownership.
An hour later, after making their private numbers to each other, all four ships were hove-to on a gently heaving and sun-glittered sea, and Hainaut was proudly taking his first salute as the commander of a warship being welcomed aboard another man o' war. Despite the Liberte, Egalite, and Fraternite the Republic presented to the world, the French Navy put a bit more stock in the old customs than the Directory in Paris would have preferred. Swords swirled like mercury droplets, polished St. Etienne Arsenal muskets were slapped about to Present Arms, and well-blacked Naval Infantry boots stamped on pale sanded decks in creditable precision. Sailors stood facing the entry-port, doffing red-wool-stocking Liberty caps or tarred straw hats with wide brims as Hainaut doffed his egret-plumed, gilt-laced bicorne hat to them and stepped aboard the starboard gangway, to the surprise of a fair number of the watch officers and midshipmen of Le Gascon.
'You've come up in the world, Lieutenant Hainaut,' Capt. Griot the senior officer of the pair of corvettes, glumly commented. 'With a ship of your own, so soon? How delightful for you, I am sure. And you have come South from Guadeloupe, why, exactly?' the older Breton asked, sucking on his teeth for the last bits of his interrupted meal.
'Capitaine Choundas sent me in search of you, m'sieur' Hainaut archly replied, knowing just where he stood in the doughty Griot's estimation. 'He has desperate need of you both, as quickly as you can be off Basse-Terre. I am charged to inform you that…'
Griot silenced him with a subtle finger upon his lips, then he pointed overside at Capt. MacPherson's gig, which was just coming near the entry-port. 'We will speak of this later. Below,' Griot said in a faint mutter from the side of his mouth.
'A disaster,' the expatriate Scot MacPherson grunted a few minutes later in the privacy of Capt. Griot's great- cabins. 'All the officers and men of both raiders gone? Poor, poor Pelletier, and Digne! There has been no word of their fates from the British, or the Americans who took them?'
'None came before I sailed, m'sieur' Hainaut sadly told him as he savoured a grudgingly given glass of wine, his eyes surreptitiously evaluating Griot's taste in furnishings and estimating the depths of his purse. 'La Vigilante sank very quickly, after a single broadside, so… we can only hope, m'sieur le Capitaine.'
'Worse, though,' Capt. Griot quickly got to the larger point of things, 'we very well may be in a declared war with the Americans, and they, so you report, Lieutenant Hainaut, openly sail allied with the 'Bloodies.' In spite of that, Hainaut, Le Hi- The Capitaine means to press on with the convoy to Saint Domingue?'
'Worse than disaster, Capitaine MacPherson,' Hainaut said, with his nose in the air, 'it was betrayal, treason. A ring of spies which Capitaine Choundas even now is rooting out. That was how the 'Bloodies' knew when Le Bouclier would be at her weakest, how the first munitions ship was lost the same day, and a guard schooner was lost. How one of commissaire Hugue's rich merchant vessels was intercepted mere hours after her sailing, and… so Capitaine Choundas believes, the 'Bloodies' and the 'Amis' certainly knew to intercept our prizes and raiders.'
'Hugues, too?' Griot barked, jadedly amused. 'Serves the greedy salaud right. Maybe teach him to stop acting like a pirate.'
'Their prime source of information was Etienne de Gougne,' Lt. Hainaut spat, then sat back to relish how they took that. 'Our master has arrested him. There is a new official from France, who will likely arrest commissaire Hugues, too, once they get a look at his books.'
'Bon/' Griot quite joyfully snarled. 'Couldn't happen to a better person.'
'With the spy ring broken, our master is certain that a convoy can make it to Saint Domingue… to Jacmel,' Hainaut loftily further informed them, more than happy to be the font of all intelligence. 'A letter came from General Hedouville. He's made his choice, and he now will back the Mulatto Rigaud. British agents have been on the island, courting both factions, so the convoy is urgent. Before the 'Bloodies' can put one together, with more and better bribes, messieurs.'
'That diable Lewrie isn't the only British ship at sea,' Griot grumbled, 'no matter that our efficient superior lops off the heads of spies and traitors by the tumbril-load, there are other watchers, more warships that keep a distant blockade than that, that… Proteus!'
'And the fastest, most direct passage to Jacmel is simply stiff with British ships,' MacPherson cagily muttered, stroking his six days' growth of beard. 'American ships reported at the North end of Dominica on our way… Antigua, Nevis, and Saint Kitts, Barbuda… the British Virgins, and frigates from their Jamaica Squadron. This late in storm season, their ships of the line return from Halifax, freeing lesser ships from close patrolling, to range out far afield.'
'And every one delighted to be so freed, and starving for prize money, and action, aussi' Capt. Griot chimed in, his voice 'chiming' as glum as funeral bells. 'Without more ships as escort…'
'Well, there is my Mohican' Hainaut gently pointed out to them, 'and, now that our master is temporarily in charge of the privateers that commissaire Hugues directed…'
Hainaut's face stung as both of those tarry captains laughed in derisive glee at his expense for being so callow. Where was all their vaunted elan, their esprit? he wondered as he was forced to sit and take it. They, the hand-picked master captains, carefully chosen from among the hundreds whom Choundas could have requested, doubted that such a thing could be done, even if the British no longer knew when a convoy departed. Why, they even sounded dis-loyal to Le Maitre, who'd made them, promoted them, gotten them to sea when those hundreds he had not chosen still languished ashore without ships, or swung idle in home ports for fear of blockading British fleets and squadrons!
'Privateers are cowardly… trash,' Capt. MacPherson scoffed. 'Overly cautious mercenaries at best… drunken pirates at worst. Why, most of ours aren't even French! The gutter sweepings of the Americas!'
'There is another large schooner, the equal of mine, which was taken by La Vigilante and Lieutenant Pelletier, messieurs' Lt. Hainaut told them, smugly proud of the success of his short raiding cruise in comparison to theirs, 'La Chippewa could be commissioned quickly, given additional guns, and added to the escort. She's ready for sea.'
'And manned by whom?' Capt. Griot snapped, not even attempting to hide the sneer he shared with Capt. MacPherson. 'Desplan's sailors were lost with Houdon and Pelletier. We have run out of officers, we're short of seasoned midshipmen to make acting officers, and those few left are cripples, sick, or incompetent. To man your own schooner, Lieutenant Hainaut, didn't Capitaine Choundas scrape the bottom of the barrel? Do you not carry privateersmen aboard, bribed by extra pay to sign Navy articles, just for a few months, not unlimited ser-vice?
