The Price of Honor (Canadiana Series Book 1) by Susanne Matthews

Author:Susanne Matthews [Matthews, Susanne]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: MHSLM Publishing
Published: 2018-03-26T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Fifteen

Guy, certain Isabelle an Sophie would be fine alone for a few minutes, approached the captain of La Jeunesse and the governor.

“Gentlemen,” he addressed the men. “Since I’ll have to give Jean Talon a full accounting of what happened, I would like to get more details from Captain St. Jean about the attack.”

“Of course, Guy. I’ll see you both at dinner,” the governor said. “If you need me sooner, I’ll be in my office.”

Guy nodded, and together with La Jeunesse’s captain, he headed back to the pier, walking a good twenty feet behind Captain Étier.

“Our ships were scheduled to sail on the same day, and yet you were ahead of us by at least two or three days. You made good time,” Guy said, hoping the man would be informative.

“We did,” Captain St. Jean concurred, “but we left port a day earlier than we expected to. Our hold was full, all the passengers were aboard. I saw no reason to delay. There was talk of a storm, and I decided to try and outrun it, which I did. I’d been warned about Barbary pirates off the coast of Portugal, but that ship was the last thing we expected.” He stopped walking and turned to him. “My lord, I can’t say for sure that it was a pirate vessel. They attacked at dusk.”

“Tell me what happened,” Guy ordered.

Captain St. Jean removed his hat and wiped his brow before he began walking again.

“Whoever attacked us must be new at the game or untried as a sea captain. I’ve never heard of this type of assault. It was as if he was specifically targeting the passengers. It happened so quickly, I couldn’t evacuate them to a safer part of the vessel. They never stood a chance. He firebombed the bow and then the stern before unloading his cannons on the same areas. My lord, not one shot was fired to disable my guns, almost as if he didn’t expect us to fight back, and when we did, with great success, instead of finishing us off, he disappeared without a trace.”

“What kind of damage did you do?”

“We took out the main mast, and I’m pretty sure I put a couple of holes in the hull at or below the water level. Once they stopped firing at us, we reloaded ready to defend ourselves if they came back, but they didn’t. The rain started and thanks to God and buckets of sea water, we were able to douse the flames, but the ship is done. She’ll need to be scrapped.” He shook his head. “It’s a great loss.”

“What will you do?” Guy asked, knowing how hard the loss of the ship and so many of his crew had to be on the captain.

“Some of my men have decided they want to stay here, salvage what they can from the vessel, and try their hand at fishing. With Captain Étier’s permission, the rest of my men and I will join him and travel to Cayenne, where we hope to help defend the colony.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.