On February 2, when the 'Alliance' was only a few hundred miles from port, the mutiny was scheduled to break out. That afternoon at four o'clock, as the watch was being changed, one of the plotters was to cry, 'A sail!' and as passengers and officers rushed on deck, four cannon prepared by a renegade second-master-cannoneer were to blow them to pieces. At twelve o'clock that day, the friendly American sailor informed the ship's lieutenant what was to happen, and the lieutenant flew to his superiors. Landais immediately called together all his officers and passengers (Raimondis, Broves, Mauduit-Duplessis, Noirmont de la Neuville, Pontgibaud, and others) and some trusted sailors, told them of their danger, and armed them. They made a party of forty men altogether. Lafayette took charge; and while Mauduit-Duplessis covered the American informant with his pistol, ready to kill him if his story turned out to be part of the plot, they went below.
Lafayette In America by Louis Gottschalk, Book 2, pp. 325-326. The Marquis and a rebel ship would've made a tempting prize for any seafarer, but the crew of the 'Alliance' were largely Irish and English and knew how handsomely King George III was paying for such prisoners.
