'There are a few, mostly able seamen and a gunner or two,' Hainaut had to admit, reddening, and crossing his legs defensively.
'As I suspected,' Griot grunted.
'To crew another escort ship means weakening ours,' MacPherson added, 'using our men to brace up shirkers, incompetents, and inexperienced fools. How long would they have to work up together, two days? It takes months to season a crew to competency. No, no, your suggested armed schooner would be no help, perhaps even a hindrance. Our strength would be diluted, making our corvettes less capable, and we'd all be in the soup.'
'Messieurs …' Hainaut spluttered, ready to glower and sneer at those well-salted but faint-hearted captains, before remembering he no longer could swagger or speak in his old master, Le Hideux's, stead.
'Surely there is something that we may do to get the convoy through?' he wheedled.
'Pray for a gale of wind and a spell of bad weather in which a convoy may hide,' Capt. MacPherson piously intoned, almost making the sign of the cross on his breast. 'The British would not expect that.'
'And keep them in port, or more concerned with their own survival,' Griot contributed. 'Something we can do, well… oui, our ships will crack on for Basse-Terre, quick as we can. You, Lieutenant, will take charge of guarding our slower prize ship, and make for habour as quick as you can. She's richly and deeply laden, gosse. You lose her or cost us a sou of her value, and God help you, hein?'
'I understand, m'sieur,' Hainaut crisply responded, as a junior should; though seething to be called 'gosse'-a youngster! Hainaut promised himself to remember that slight, and somehow, someday, find a way to make that shit-arsed Breton oaf pay for it.
Clump-swish-tick-clump-swish-tick. Guillaume Choundas took a deep breath of clean air on the ramparts of Fort Fleur d'Epee, after the long, exhausting climb from its cells, far below ground next to its magazines and powder rooms. Even with Victor Hugues suspended from his office, Choundas could not order things to suit him. Hugues was gaoled in relative comfort in his own quarters, under honourable arrest. His loyal staff, smug in their graft and greed, continued much as they had before, expecting Hugues to be exonerated and freed after the new man, Desfourneaux, had received the proper 'emolument,' so an office for Choundas was still impossible; and prisoners were never put in chambers with easy access, which amounted to easy egress or contact with co-conspirators, so there would be no chance to whip up matching stories, or let those already caught escape. Besides, the noises that those under rigourous interrogation made disturbed the digestion, and a Frenchman could never risk such harm to Le digestif!
Choundas had barely gotten his wind back, and ached like sin in his over-worked good leg and bad, braced, one, when his weary leaning on the parapet was interrupted by the brisk arrival of that officious, pompous prig Desfourneaux, who came clattering up the stone stairs in his colourful waist sash, costly sword, and belt, and that ridiculous hat of his, bound with another heavily tasseled Tricolore sash for a band, and red-white-blue plumes jutting upward to mark him as one of the Directory's own.
'Your work goes slowly, Capitaine?' Desfourneaux asked him with a faint whinny.
'Slowly, yes, Citizen. And yours?' Choundas asked in return.
'Oh, we'll have him in the end,' Desfourneaux idly vowed, waving a hand as if shooing the ever-present island flies. 'Paris has enough reason to recall Citizen Hugues already. But to profit so massively from the execution of one's proper duties…! The Directory is most upset that the infernal man took our reasonable edicts regarding the control and identity of neutral merchant shippers who might aid those invidious British so literally. His overzealous prosecution at regulation of that trade, he turned into a vicious guerre du course, and an unfortunate, uhm… diplomatic incident. Now it looks as if the Americans have rewarded our gracious aid to their Revolution with typical Anglo-Saxon churlishness and become British allies in open war… if your young officer's report may be credited. One would expect formal declaration of war sent here by a truce ship, first, but those rustics may not understand how nations are supposed to deal with each other. I fear Hugues's greed, and zeal, caused another war. One which our hard-pressed Republic cannot afford.'
'Then he should lose his head,' Choundas decided aloud, feeling uncharitable to both Hugues and Desfourneaux, and averse to pleasantly idle palaver. 'And my suggestions, Citizen? What of them?'
'Withdrawing Letters of Marque and Reprisal from all but French owners and masters, yes, at once,' Desfourneaux said, nodding, as if a committee decision was instantly enforceable law in every port in the Caribbean, no matter how far-flung; as if those just shy of piratical endeavours would cease their depredations when they heard the news! A snarl at Desfourneaux's idiocy escaped Choundas's lips.
'Conscripting the rest into the Navy, though, arming and training a whole squadron of small ships under your command,' good Citizen Desfourneaux maundered on, making a moue, 'might be too expensive, for now… marvelously effective though they might prove, under your well-famed and experienced leadership, m'sieur Capitaine, ha ha!
'Not all, then, merely the best dozen or so,' Choundas pressed, though he'd be damned if he would plead or bargain.
'Well, perhaps two or three more, for now,' Desfourneaux said as he shrugged. 'Paris sent me to curtail Hugues's war on commerce, fearing his excesses would lead to war with the Americans.'
'The privateers will then be idle, in need of employment! If I can offer the best, the largest and best-armed naval commissions…' Choundas insisted, 'it will keep them from real piracy…'
'Which requires naval pay, which France cannot afford, m'sieur!' Desfourneaux quickly told him. 'I will, of course, write Paris to ask for a proper squadron be sent to these waters, a real fleet, capable of facing the British… possibly the Americans, too, to guard Guadeloupe and Saint Domingue against invasion. Then, there will be a place for a man such as yourself as… Commodore of the small ship flotilla. Such a position could make you an Admiral, hein?
'As long as nothing, ah… unfortunate occured in the meantime,' Desfourneaux slyly added. 'As long as you executed your present duties so well until their arrival that I could recommend you?'
Choundas bristled with resentment. Was the bastard hinting at a bribe, or was he about to propose another onerous, thankless chore for him to perform, just like the aristos had trotted him about the world like the donkey forever chasing the dangled carrot? Though Desfourneaux wore his neck-stock and shirt collars loose and open like a good Republican, or the revolutionaries of the Bastille's storming, what was he but a canting shop-keeper, a jumped-up… attorney mimicking a real zealot, sent to salvage the mess made by governmental idiocy!
'What did you have in mind, Citizen?' Choundas gravelled.
'To fulfill General Hedouville's demand for the convoy to Saint Domingue, Capitaine' Desfourneaux smoothly replied. 'Quickly.'
'The munition ships are ready to sail, and my corvettes will be here, perhaps within days,' Choundas promised. 'Storm season is nearly over, and the cooler winds of winter will speed them along, once they depart. I am more than ready to fulfill the general's demand, so…'
'Your spy… who flourished undetected for so long, almost in your very pocket, Capitaine' Desfourneaux interrupted, with a snarky little shark's grin, shedding his airy unconcern and amiability. 'He has confessed? He has named others? Your probes yield results?'
'Not yet,' Choundas said with a frustrated grunt through gritted teeth. 'The little traitor's resistance is surprising, coming from a meek worm such as he. I am unable to employ my usual techniques, you see,' Choundas said, raising his remaining good hand, 'and people in Hugues's employ are so oafish that de Gougne would perish under their clumsy brutality before he could begin to break. I have arrested all the
