STOB 31

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Thirty-six hours later Philip found himself intimately concerned with the line between acceptable and unacceptable behavior in warfare. The Badger had met the Chasseur in the early morning fog off of Arcades, on the Sicilian coast, and now the two brigs stood across the mouth of that long harbor, the Chasseur under French colors, the Badger wearing the French colors over the English ensign, as if she were a prize of the French brig rather then the other way around. Philip had placed the two flags on different lines, so that although from even as close as a dozen yards away they appeared to be flying together, he could strike the French colors without lowering the English ones; but the question of when to strike them troubled him: strike them too early and the convoy would scatter before he had a chance to snap them up, strike them too late and his captures would be illegal.

For the moment, though, the convoy still rode at anchor: three brigs, two sloops (one ship-rigged, the other brig-), and a snow, all of them deeply laden and no doubt undermanned, as merchantmen so often were. The Chasseur and the Badger hove to just outside the bar, and the Chasseur raised the blue peter and fired two guns - one to windward, the other to leeward: the signal for the convoy to get under way, according to the code book Philip had captured with the French brig.

But not one of the merchantmen responded. Philip trained his glass on them, clustered together at the end of the harbor. The crew of one of the brigs had actually gathered around her capstan, and as he watched the capstan gave a preparatory turn, pulling in some of the anchor cable’s slack. Behind the brig Philip made out a puff of smoke, and refocussing he saw that the snow had fired up its donkey engine in preparation for winning its anchor. But the other vessels, with the exception of one of the other brigs, who raised the blue peter and fired a gun, lay motionless. Philip had participated in convoys who were only able to get under way at last with much harrying from their escorts, by shouted threat and unshotted gun, and he feared that this convoy might prove the same.

Philip shifted his gaze to the fort that guarded the harbor, high on Franciscan Hill. Half a dozen cannon peered from its embrasures, and several men clustered around each of them. An officer, his telescope to his eye, focussed on the Chasseur. Why was he focussed on the Chasseur? Had he smoked the cheat? The six cannon under his command would be more than enough to smash the Badger and Chasseur into kindling.

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