About this story
You take a room at the isolated farm Escampobar, where Arlette, its quiet young mistress, decides your fate before her suspicious guardian Scevola can finish questioning you. A cove below the farm holds an old boat, a watchful naval lieutenant, and signal flashes passing between the cliff and an English sail waiting offshore.
How it opens
Dawn revealed Toulon beyond the battered prize ship you had carried past cruisers and hunger.
The anchor chain ran out before a quay crowded with red caps, uniforms, and expectant officials.
Citizen CommandantYour papers call you master-gunner Peyrol, but say little of forty years abroad.
Citizen CommandantSome would call that long absence desertion before they called this arrival service.
Choose
Whatever I was under kings, I returned with a lawful prize for the Republic.
Judge the papers and cargo; my private history owes this office nothing.