“I know!”
“They are to sail in three days.”
“Lieutenant Dale has told me.”
“He did not tell you that we have issued orders to Thevenard, who commands the forts at the barrier, to sink the Alliance, should she try to put to sea.”
“Sink the Alliance!” Commodore Paul Jones is thunderstruck. “My dear Genet, you jest.”
“No jest, my friend. The orders have been given. Should the Alliance attempt to pass the harriers, Thevenard will fire on it with all his hundreds of big guns, and snuff it out like a candle. It is by request of your Doctor Franklin.”
“Do you tell me that Doctor Franklin asks you to sink the Alliance?”
“He has asked us—for he had some inkling of the designs of Lee and Landais—to prevent them sailing away with the ship. We know of but one way to do that. We must sink it, since we have no ship here to arrest them. So we gave the orders to Thevenard. Those orders, however, we did not impart to Doctor Franklin; and, in good truth, I tell them to you now, not as a French official, but as a friend.”
“This must be stopped!” cries Commodore Paul Jones, his habits of decision and iron promptitude reassumed in a moment. “What! Sink two hundred brave, good men, to punish a pair of traitors? Never!”
Genet, who makes a cult of red tape, shrugs his shoulders and spreads his hands.