During this period of litigation the privateer hero had, of course, revisited St. Malo and seen his family and friends; and there he also fell in love with Mlle. Marie Blaize, to whom he became engaged. But the sea was calling him again, and he left her without being married.
His new command was the Clarisse, 14 guns, with a crew of one hundred and forty hardy seamen of St. Malo and elsewhere; while Nicolas Surcouf, brother to the captain, and a man of similar type, was chief officer. She sailed in July 1798 for the old familiar cruising-ground in the Indian Ocean; and just after crossing the Equator, fell in with a large armed English vessel, from which, after a sharp action, she parted, considerably damaged; but Surcouf consoled himself for this failure—from which, as his biographer puts it, "there remained only the glory of having seen the flag of England flying before the victorious standard of France!"—by the capture of a rich prize off Rio Janeiro; and anchored in December 1798 at Port Louis, Mauritius, "where his expected return from Europe was awaited with impatience by those who had built great hopes upon the conqueror of the Triton."
Space does not admit of following the adventures of Robert Surcouf in detail; his grand-nephew spares no pains, indeed, in this respect, spinning out his narrative, embellished with admiring outbursts of national and personal eulogy, in a somewhat tedious fashion. In the Clarisse Surcouf had more successes, capturing two armed merchant vessels very cleverly at Sonson, in Sumatra, not without damage, which rendered it advisable to return to Port Louis to refit: thence, putting out again, he was on one occasion chased by the English frigate Sibylle; and so hard pressed was he that he was compelled to have recourse to desperate measures to improve the speed of his vessel: eight guns were thrown overboard, together with spare spars and other loose material, the rigging was eased up, the mast wedges loosened, the between-deck supports knocked away. It was a light breeze, of course, and these measures have a remarkable effect under such circumstances, rendering the vessel "all alive," as it were, and exceedingly susceptible of the smallest variation of pressure on the sails—and so the Clarisse escaped. Two days later she captured an English vessel, the Jane—which is misnamed James in French narratives—whose skipper wrote a long account of the affair. She sailed in company with two Indiamen, the Manship and Lansdowne, having been warned that Surcouf was on the prowl outside. The captain imagined that, by keeping company with the two large Indiamen—armed vessels, of course—he would be safe from molestation; but he was sorely mistaken, for when the privateer hove in sight, and he signalled his consorts, they calmly sailed on and left the Jane a victim, after a trifling resistance. Surcouf, being informed that these two large vessels, still in sight, were Indiamen, contemptuously remarked: "They are two Tritons," and he and his officers expressed the opinion that the captains deserved to be shot.
Next he encountered two large American ships: there was much ill-feeling between France and the United States, though war had not been declared, and when they met they fought like dogs of hostile owners. One of these vessels Surcouf captured by boarding, the other escaping; and this was his last cruise in the Clarisse.
It is in connection with his next command that Surcouf's name is, perhaps, most familiar. This was the Confiance, a new ship, and by all accounts a regular beauty. Before he got away, however, he had a quarrel with Duterte, another privateer captain of some note, commanding the Malartic, who had recourse to a ruse to obtain the pick of the available seamen in Mauritius for his own ship. Surcouf eventually contrived to circumvent him, and, after some high words in a café, they arranged a meeting with swords at daybreak. The Governor, General Malartic, however, intervened, commanding their attendance at the hour arranged for the duel, and, after an harangue from him, the two corsairs embraced and remained friends thereafter—they cruised, in fact, in consort for a time, in the Bay of Bengal, with much success.
Surcouf's great exploit in the Confiance was the capture of the Kent, East Indiaman, at the end of her voyage. M. Robert Surcouf, in describing this event, dwells upon every detail, from the moment the Kent was sighted, with most tedious prolixity, as though this was one of the decisive battles of the world. What happened is as follows:
On October 7th, 1800, a large sail was sighted at daybreak. After careful scrutiny, Surcouf decided that she was an Indiaman, a rich prize, and determined to have her if possible; so he hailed from aloft, where he was inspecting the stranger: "All hands on deck, make sail—drinks all round for the men! Clear for action!"
Then, coming down from aloft, he mounted on the companion hatch, ordered everybody aft, and harangued them—he was great at a speech on an occasion of the kind, though probably his biographer has embellished it—told them the Englishman was very strong, but that he intended to board at once.
"I suppose each one of you is more than equal to one Englishman? Very good—be armed ready for boarding—and, as it will be very hot work, I will give you an hour of pillage."
It was very hot work. The Kent's people certainly greatly outnumbered the privateer's; she had on board a great proportion of the crew of the Queen, another East Indiaman, which had been destroyed by fire on the coast of Brazil. Surcouf says she had 437 on board, and the Confiance only 130; but the figures for the Kent are probably greatly exaggerated.