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In return, when the Americans have complained to Turreaux against the piracy of our privateers, he has sent them here to seek redress, where they also will, to their cost, discover that in civil cases our justice has not the same rapid march as when it is a question of arresting or transporting suspected persons, or of tormenting, shooting, or guillotining a pretended spy, or supposed conspirator.
If that is your view, you will permit me to say that you know very little of the matter. I have handled a sloop, a corvette, and a frigate, and I have found a great variety of duties in each of them. I have had to avoid the enemy's battleships and to fight his cruisers. I have had to chase and capture his privateers, and to cut them out when they run under his batteries.
The West Indiamen hauled to the wind on the other tack, and the three privateers shortened sail and awaited our coming.
The Etruscans were not content with dislodging the Greeks from Aethalia and Populonia; even the individual trader was apparently not tolerated by them, and soon Etruscan privateers roamed over the sea far and wide, and rendered the name of the Tyrrhenians a terror to the Greeks.
Only where privateers and sloops swept West Indian waters and hung about British convoys was there much to satisfy American feelings; and all the while the blockading squadrons cruised at their ease in Chesapeake and Delaware bays and Long Island Sound.
"In that case our expedition has been more satisfactory than I expected," the captain said. "We shall have discovered and destroyed their depot here, captured anyhow some valuable stuff, and caused the two privateers that we have been hunting for so long to leave the islands, to say nothing of this brig of yours, of which we had not heard. Well, Mr. Wylde, what is your report?"
I just glanced round and saw what looked like two French fishermen, and thought that you must be two of the lugger's crew who, for some reason or other, had turned the guns against their own ship. "It will be a triumph, indeed, for us when we enter Saint Helier. The Annette has been the terror of our privateers.
While the French were striving in vain to regain equality upon the sea and repair their losses, but to no purpose, for "in building and arming vessels they labored only for the English fleet," yet, "notwithstanding the courage and vigilance of English cruisers, French privateers so swarmed that in this year they took two hundred and forty British vessels, chiefly coasters and small craft."
Before this period, French and Spanish gold and silver, brought into the country by pirates, privateers, and the over-balance of trade with the West Indies, answered all the purposes of internal commerce, and very little English coin was circulating in the country.
The gibbets were actually erected, when, on the very morning of the day fixed for the executions, he received despatches that wholly disconcerted him and stopped their completion. To avoid an open rupture with Spain, the queen of England had just at this time interdicted the Dutch and Flemish privateers from taking shelter in her ports.
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