The Privateer's Revenge

Cheslyn consulted the charts against the prevailing late-season winds and decided on six days north of the Azores and four south before making for home.

The weather was good, but the sport was not. Day after day in blue seas and trade winds and never a sighting. Could it be because now was the season of hurricanes?

D'Auvergne was solicitous when Renzi returned but the strain was showing in the lines of his face. Date and places duly came; Henri had survived the incident but there was no mention of the fate of any other.

Renzi threw himself into the work. The place of embarkation agreed on, it was possible to assess from the depths of water the size of ship they could use. Bonaparte and his gaol-keepers would be a sizeable party, and while bulwarks would have to be low, deck space was vital.

Word came that Querelle, the final link with Brittany, was in hiding six miles out of Paris. Georges had the keys of the citadel— his plot was manifestly coming together. Reliant on couriers for their news, however, Renzi and d'Auvergne could only await its unfolding.

The indomitable Pichegru was smuggled into the capital and concealed close by the barracks. Others converged on Paris, and within a city in a fever of rumour, Napoleon was said to have secret police reports brought to him in bed as soon as he awoke.

From somewhere deep in the Normandy countryside Henri sent advice that the tenuous line of escape that linked Paris to the coast was complete. Horses were staged ready, parties of soldiers set to delay pursuits. It was the last act.

D'Auvergne alerted his commander-in-chief; for security reasons the time and place of Napoleon's embarkation were not given out to the fleet, but Saumarez promised that, within a bracket of time, the Navy would be conducting live exercises at that precise spot, brig-sloops inshore, frigates in depth.

The day dawned: a crystal clear winter's morning like any other, the French coast the same iron-grey granite the other side of a cold sea. The hours passed: when Renzi and d'Auvergne sat down at last to dinner, tired and overwrought, they ate without conversation.

At the end of the meal they raised a glass in silent tribute to the men who were undoubtedly at that moment engaged in mortal struggle in Paris and those who would be stretched out in a desperate gallop towards them.

'I should think it time now . . .' Renzi said thickly. He got to his feet; d'Auvergne stood up and stretched out his hand. Renzi grasped it, neither man able to find words. Abruptly, Renzi left to bring back Napoleon Bonaparte.

Every vessel was in position. Discreet light signals were exchanged with the shore and Renzi's vessel closed slowly with the coast. It was a tricky task in seamanship, the flat beach selected ideal for carriages but a tidal trap. Kedge anchors were prudently laid to seaward for if they were to ground on the sand as the tide went out . . .

And they waited. Arrival had been timed for early dark but there was still no sign from the interior. Hours passed and men grew edgy and anxious for they were vulnerable from sea and shore.

Midnight approached; the plan called for tight timing and this was an ominous sign.

In the long early hours the tide rose again, and in the deathly silence an hour before dawn, they were close enough to hear shouts and disorder carrying in the stillness. The commotion grew nearer and Renzi knew it could have only one meaning.

With desperate sadness he watched running figures burst from the trees, hurling themselves into the shallows towards the waiting ships. The first made it and were hauled up while others, so pitifully few, broke for safety and followed. 'It's Georges—he's been taken,' gulped one. 'We're betrayed—that vermin Querelle turned informer. It's all over for us—finished.'

The Witch of Sarnia passed Flores once more and continued south. After barely a day they sighted something in the west: a tiny blob of white on the rim of the world, a sail. At first blinking in and out of existence, then keeping steady, it seized the attention of every soul. They altered towards it instantly, knowing they had the advantage that as their sails were edge on to the other ship their sighting would be delayed.

Then more and more sail came into view. 'A convoy,' Cheslyn grunted. 'But whose?'

Kydd held his telescope steady and tried to make out clues. Anonymous merchant shipping—blue-water vessels certainly. There was a frigate in the van; a large one, possibly of 32 guns, no colours. He swung back to the merchantmen. Nothing remarkable; if they had been closer he would see identifying vanes at their mastheads, numbers in white on their stern quarters.

He began counting the ships—six, eight . . . and that was all. This was very likely not a British convoy; it was a telling comment on his nation's primacy at sea that convoys of sixty or a hundred ships were more the rule.

'Johnny Crapaud,' he said crisply, and while the Witch closed with the distant ships he took in the situation. They were running before the south-westerly directly towards the French coast, over a week away. The frigate was protectively at their head and far too formidable even to think of engaging, but if anything happened to it he could take his pick of the brood.

'We stay with th' convoy,' he told Cheslyn.

Easing sheets he allowed the ships to advance on him, edging round as the frigate pointedly took position between the privateer and the convoy and shortened sail, allowing its charges to sail on steadily until they were all past, while still remaining between the Witch and her intended victims.

This was exactly what Kydd would have done in the circumstances. They were now astern of the convoy, which was downwind of them, but between them and any prize was the impossible menace of the heavy frigate.

The convoy ploughed on, the frigate on guard and immovably positioned astern. Experimentally Kydd allowed the schooner to ease round the rear of the convoy and begin dropping down towards the van but there was no advantage whatsoever to their fore-and-aft rig in this point of sailing and the frigate kept effortlessly with them.

Kydd eased away and the convoy moved ahead again, the frigate keeping pace with the Witch as though on wires. Eventually they took their place astern of the convoy once more and it was time to think again.

Aboard every one of those ships there would be fear of the privateer dogging them but Kydd could not see how to move against them. He could go tearing downwind to fall on one of the leading vessels but well before he could secure his victim the frigate would be upon him.

On the other hand his advantage of better sailing into the wind was of no use, for the frigate was already on the windward edge of the convoy and perfectly positioned to go to the aid of any as they were all to leeward and in