Escorting accused prisoners through the seaport streets, eyes open for the prettiest women and girls who threw corsages, and now and then themselves, at such a well-knit and stalwart young patriot. Then, when he had been urged to turn informer and spy upon suspect shipmates, surviving officers, and town citizens, and he'd come to court to testify, tricked out in his scrubbed-up, borrowed best, Hainaut had gotten even more favourable attention… from the young female citizens most of all!

After all, it wasn't as if the people he'd testified against were all that innocent, and if he hadn't done it, there were two dozen more eager to make names for themselves standing in line behind him, so what did it matter when "traitors" were trundled to the guillotines in the big tumbrils, to fill the baskets with their heads. They were not family, they weren't friends of his, and most had been unattractive or outright ugly, or simply not clever enough to keep their mouths shut and dissemble the latest revolutionary cant, which could change from month to month as the various factions in the Assembly rose or fell.

Hainaut had advanced to the rank of Timmonier, the trusty Coxswain to a rising young star of a Lieutenant who had come up from the lower deck, just as he had. He ate better than most, drank very well, and had first pick of the loot, could make a pig of himself every night of the week, and had thought he had risen high… when he had met the man who would change his life.

He knew he'd met real power when his Lieutenant had nearly shat his culottes in fear of him after one interview. He knew he'd met the consummate unscrupulous cynic, out to use the Revolution to claw back his former honours and position; and, perhaps, Le Capitaine had seen a fellow spirit in Hainaut, despite his outward protestations of adoration for the Revolution.