The Captain`s Vengeance

CHAPTER SIX

So, Mister Pollock, what's the best way to get at 'em, in your estimation?" Capt. Nicely eagerly enquired, once a parlour table had been cleared of decorations, and the maps and sea charts assembled. He took a slurp from a snifter of brandy, then used it to anchor a corner of a chart. "Should it be necessary, of course."

"Well, sir, ahem," Mr. Pollock carefully began, "you will note that New Orleans is situated a fair piece or better up the Mississippi River, an hundred miles or more. The river is somewhat unique in that its silt deposits form this massive delta on either bank that extends so far out into the Gulf of Mexico. The rules of Nature do not obtain in Louisiana… The streams don't flow into the river, they seep out in sloughs and bayous, and those meander and divide into a trackless maze. The land south of Baton Rouge is flat as a table-top, and but a few feet above sea level, ahem.

"No cellars or basements in Louisiana, sirs! Nor will you find the dead buried in the ground, hah hah! And what appears to be solid ground is so saturated, you may sink into spongy, saturated 'quaking' prairies… if not an outright marsh. Rich soil, yes, refreshed by the annual floods, where it's arable. But it also makes for swamps you must see to believe."

"Grand place for Frogs, then… swamps," Lewrie japed.

"As to getting upriver to New Orleans…" Pollock continued.

What the Devil's that t'do with capturing my pirates? he asked himself, cocking his head to one side as Pollock "prosed."

"There are several nevigable entrances to the Mississippi delta… the Southwest Pass, South Pass, and the Southeast Pass. I prefer the Southeast, myself, as closest to Jamaica, so…"

They want me t'take Proteus into the Mississippi? Lewrie gawped.

Lewrie took note that the chart was British, reading the description: The Entrance of the River Missisipi (misspelled) at Fort Balise, Taken in the King's Ship Nautilus in the Year 1764(Oh Christ, rather a long time ago!) with fathoms indicated in Roman numerals, and soundings in feet shown in Arabic… rather a lot of Arabic numbers, hmmm.

There was a mud bank, there was a large white expanse he took as a featureless alluvial island, and a hellish-shallow swath of soundings in feet betwixt; a narrower channel to the "West of the featureless island where Fort Balise was situated, and a note above the fort, indicating that ships anchored there to lighten themselves before attempting to cross the river bar. East of the blank might-be-an-island was illustrated what Lewrie first took for the faithfully reproduced tracks of several drunken chickens, or wee little "fishies." More on the eastern mud bank, hmmm… A closer perusal with a quizzing glass revealed that they were supposed to be an enormous maze of trees that had washed downriver; heaps that had drifted to the mud bank and had aided its formation. Hmmm… "Printed for R. Sayer J. Bennett, No. 53 Fleet St. as the Act directs, July 1779." Rather a long time ago, too! More trees littered the north bank of the tri-furcated channel.

Well, just thankee Jesus! he exultantly thought.

"A formidable fort, is this Balise, sir?" Nicely asked.

"Not really, Captain Nicely," Pollock said, shrugging. "Simple stone water bastion, faced with earth and its guns old and rusty."

Lewrie turned his concentration to his glass of brandy, let his eyes roam the parlour's furnishings, and stifled a yawn, giving Mr. Pollock's explanation but half an ear, and ready to stroll to a large bookcase and pull down a novel he'd heard of but hadn't yet read.

Pass a L'Outre was a shortcut to the Head of the Passes, where all the forking channels came together; bloody grand for someone. Up halfway at a Northwest bend was a better bastion, Fort Saint Phillip; ho-hum. Halfway to New Orleans was Pointe a La Hache, but no fort, so who cared? Ninety miles up past the Head of the Passes was the great Nor'east bend called the English Turn, and Fort Saint Leon, a substantial obstacle, though.

"Know why they call it the English Turn, sirs?" Pollock japed.

Now that's unattractive on him, too! Lewrie thought, grimacing.

"When the French still owned Louisiana, we actually put a fleet this far upriver," Pollock said with a lopsided smile, "but the old governor, Bienville I think it was, made such a belligerent display, daring us to come get slaughtered, that we fell for his bluff and put about… right there," he said, tapping the map with a forefinger.

"What's the current?" Nicely enquired, frowning.

"Five to six knots, sir," Pollock supplied. "It takes nearly a week to ascend the river. Boresomely slow passage. In small vessels, and with the help of hired locals, one could approach the city up the various minor rivers and bayous. Bayou Teche, Bayou La Fourche, from Atchafalaya Bay, or from Barataria Bay further west, where there is a lake and a major bayou of the same name. Very few people live on the coasts, but they make wondrous hidey-holes, and privateers and pirates have been reputed to use them, now and again."

Lewrie abandoned the idea of borrowing the novel and returned his interest to the chart at the mention of "pirates" and the coastal lairs they might be using.

"Do you envisage an overland expedition?" Pollock grimaced in distaste for such an endeavour.

"Through the swamps?" Nicely said, shying from the idea, too.

"Wouldn't have a corporal's guard left by the time you got to New Orleans," Lewrie said, chuckling, half his mind on that topic, too, still intent on the passes into the aforementioned bays. "Snakes and hornets, alligators… biting, bloodsucking insects? God help the poor, tasty British soldier subjected to that!"

"Captain Lewrie, when a Lieutenant in the last war, sir, did a stint ashore in the Spanish Floridas," Capt. Nicely explained. "With the Creek Indians up the Apalachicola, was it not, Lewrie?"

"Aye, sir. Once was enough for me," Lewrie said, mock-shivering. "Does Sir Hyde intend a descent upon Spanish Louisiana, I could think of no worse way to go about it."

"Um, then," Nicely grunted, sounding hellish disappointed. "If it must be a coup de main, and nothing stealthy, then, Mister Pollock, what about coming in from the East? These tempting bodies of water, this Lake Pontchartrain or Lake Borgne, for instance. Looks to me as if our pirates could hide in there, too, hey, Lewrie?"

"How large a vessel was it?" Pollock asked.

"A large two-masted, tops'l schooner," Nicely quickly answered. "Might have six to eight feet of draught, if laden with booty?"

"Well, one could enter the Mississippi Sounds and get to Lake Borgne below, ah… here. Below Cat Island, there is Pass Maria, and a vessel could find sufficient depth to enter. As for any ships they captured, though, hmm… ahem. They'd be much larger, with deeper draught, and there'd be no place to strip them of goods and fittings, 'less they did it in plain sight."

"And getting to New Orleans itself from there?" Nicely added.

"From the West shore of Lake Borgne it's fifteen or so miles to the city, or, one could enter Lake Pontchartrain from Lake Borgne by the Rigolets Narrows," Pollock hazily surmised. "But, that pass is guarded by Fort Coquilles, and once into Pontchartrain-a very shallow body of water, I must tell you-there is still Fort Saint John on the city's northern outskirts, to guard that approach, and the fast water route down Bayou Saint John."

"If we did invade New Orleans from there, Lewrie," Capt. Nicely prompted, "sometime in the future, ah… how does it look to you? If our pirates could use it to get their goods into the town, couldn't a military expedition use the same route, perhaps?"

"Well, sir…" Lewrie stated, then took time to read the depth notations and slowly shook his head. "Mister Pollock is right. The ships of the line and the troop transports would have to lay off this Cat Island, outside the Sounds, and you'd need hundreds of cutters and barges to pull it off, lots of gunboats and bomb ketches to reduce this Fort Coquilles, too, I s'pose. I could sail Proteus up there and take fresh soundings for you, if Mister Pollock thinks the pirates might've used this short approach to the main market for their loot."

"Yes, hmm," Nicely grumbled, sounding guarded.

"If our presence, scouting and sounding their water approaches didn't give the game away, of course, sir," Lewrie added. "For later."

"Perhaps a covert approach," Nicely posed, "in a civilian ship flying, oh… an American flag might suit. Sound and scout this way to the city… perhaps even sail up the Mississippi right up to the town! Take a look at their garrisons, their river forts, ah… just in case we are forced to use blunt force, and risk the English Turn once more, hmm?"

"Whilst I'm looking for pirates, sir?" Lewrie asked, grinning widely at how eager (yet cagy) Capt. Nicely looked to have an active part in whatever it was that Admiral Sir Hyde Parker, the general in charge of their Canadian possessions, and far-off London might have in mind. "Of course. My frigate could back you up should you get into trouble. Just so long as you're near the coast, not actually upriver beyond that… what did you call it?… the Head of the Passes?"

Poor fellow, bored to tears! Lewrie thought sympathetically.

"Do you personally wish to scout the city, though, sir, posing as an American," Lewrie japed the so pleasant and good-humoured Captain Nicely, "I'd strongly advise you to learn how to chew a quid of tobacco and how to spit. 'Tis hardly a skill one quickly learns. And, I'm told that neatness counts, sir, hah hah!"

"Ah ha!" Nicely rejoined, though not looking quite so amused by his joshing as Lewrie would have imagined. "Lewrie's first command was a captured French corvette, I'm told, Mister Pollock," he added as he turned to face that worthy. "Admiral Hood renamed her HMS Jester. Given Captain Lewrie's wit, one does not wonder why, hmm? He's such a droll' young wag." Nicely's smile was feral, an I'11-get-you-for-that.

Why ain 't he laughin '? Lewrie had to wonder; Did I put him in a pet? Fact is, he couldn 't pass for American in India!

"Excuse me, sir," Nicely's longtime Cox'n, now the majordomo of his unwelcome shore establishment, interrupted as he slid back the pocket doors to the parlour. "Your other visitor, a Mister Peel, is arrived, sir."

Peel.' Lewrie gasped to himself, feeling his supper and two bowls of "chocolate pudding pie" turn to liquid in his bowels; Shit, and God help me! Is he apart o' this, whatever it is?

And whatever it was that Capt. Nicely was so sphinx-faced about Lewrie feared that it would not be a duty quite so straightforward as hunting down pirates.