The Captain`s Vengeance

CHAPTER EIGHT

Crack!

"Shitten, goddamned son of a whore!"

Quickly followed mere seconds later by another faint crack!

"Take that, you son of a bitch!"

Crack!

"And that…" Crack! "And here's one for you, too, you!"

Phfft!

"Well, shit."

"Damn me eyes, sor… sorry," Ordinary Seaman Liam Desmond, in the stern of the ship's gig, congratulated in his own fashion. "That's five outta twelve, this time, an' on th' wing, too, sor!"

"Should've been six, but for this… thing," Capt. Alan Lewrie griped, holding the rifled musket out from him as if it were a stunned-rigid viper. "Well, let's round them up," he said with a sigh.

"Needs spaniels, we do," Landsman Furfy, Desmond's inseparable friend, commented in a throaty aside. "Warter spaniels, wot kin swim for 'em, right Liam?"

"Out oars… give way all," Toby Jugg ordered from the stern-sheets, waggling the tiller-bar a few times as if to scull the gig to faster motion, so the rudder would bite against the river current. It had been a wrench to Lewrie, but taking his longtime Cox'n, Andrews, to New Orleans would be a bad idea, Pollock had sternly advised. Cox'n Andrews was Black, a former house slave from Jamaica who'd run away to sea and freedom. Disguised as a civilian, though, his "protection" of being in the Royal Navy, and therefore untouchable by slavers, couldn't be of help to him if taken up by the Spanish authorities. Even a forged certificate of manumission would be of no avail, since it was issued by British authorities. So, volunteer to go despite the circumstances as Andrews had, as had several of the Black sailors who had "stolen themselves" from the late Ledyard Beauman's plantation on Portland Bight on Jamaica to sign aboard Proteus, Lewrie had reluctantly left Andrews and the others behind.

Lewrie, in the eyes of the bow with his rifled musket, levelled a chary gaze on Toby Jugg once again as he steered the gig towards the nearest slain duck, wondering still if the man was truly trustworthy, and dearly missing Cox'n Andrews, who'd been a strong right arm several times over. Now, though, he must place faith in the enigmatic Jugg, who had let his beard grow even longer, making him look even more piratical and outre!¹

"Ware oars, larboard," Jugg grunted, hauling off to starboard as a drifting log approached on their left, from upstream.

The Mississippi looked sluggish at first glance, its surface as smooth as a marble slab under a nearly cloudless sky, reflecting blueness and the sun like a lying masquerade. But beneath that mirror, it was an onrushing, hungry beast, roiled by deadly undercurrents and eddies; and it kept its secrets, evils, and perils in its silty, brown-red depths, mere inches below its opaque surface, where no eyes but those of the dead and river-drowned could ever probe.

Now and then would come a visible danger-trees or giant snags, some entangled into rafts as big as a house foundation ripped from the banks an hundred, a thousand miles upriver, surging along deceptively slowly, and it was the wise boatman who steered very wide of them. The banks were littered with tree limbs, whole forests of them, so convoluted that geese, ducks, snakes, turtles, and other local creatures made homes in them, next to the carcasses of unwary deer, elk, and cattle.

It took two of the gig's six oarsmen, by turns, to keep the boat abreast the current, and even with all six straining to put their backs into it, upriver progress was slow. Thankfully, the Mississippi wafted most of his kills down within reaching distance. Lewrie could even reach out from the tiny bow platform on his stomach to pluck one himself and drop the duck lolling-limp and dead into the boat, leaking blood and river water.

He could not swim, had never learned. And it was a rare sailor of any nation who could, excepting the Dutch, of course. Swimming, so the old salts said, just prolonged the inevitable and attracted some finned horror to come eat you alive. Deliberately drowning might be preferable!

With brisk oarswork and much "short-tacking" about, they recovered three of Lewrie's latest kills. The Mississippi took the other two, last seen bound downriver for the Southeast Pass and the sea at a rate of knots. To chase after them would have required a half-mile descent of the river and an hour of hard rowing to get back to where they'd started!

Fetching the last fat grey-and-white goose caused their gig to stray close to the southern bank, where the tangled, dead-grey trees and snags had piled up deepest and abounded with wildlife; this set his boat crew to goggling, oohing, and aahing over the creatures new to them. Since the crack of gunfire had died away, the beasts had reemerged and acted as if they'd never seen humans this close before.

"Ooh, 'ey's another possum!" Ordinary Seaman Mannix exclaimed in wonder, "carryin' 'er babbies hangin' off 'er tail, kin ye 'magine?"

"Snowy egrets!" said burly Seaman Dempsey. "Dere's plenty o' profit dere, lads. Quality's mad f'r egret plumes, d'we shoot some."

"Cottonmouth snake," Toby Jugg laconically commented, spitting over the side. "Get ye 'fore ye get th' plumes, ya daft bastard."

"Baby raccoons, yonder!" a teenaged Irish topman named Clancey breathed in amusement. "Wee li'l highwaymen, masks an' all? Loik wee bears! Wonder do they make good pets? They do, Oi'd wish me one!"

"No, ya wouldn't," Jugg spoke up again. "They get t'be grown, they turn mean an' snappish, no matter how ya treats 'em. 01' cap'm had one… 'til it bit 'im, that is." Jugg grinned in sweet reverie.

"Warshin' their food, ain't that a wonder, though?" Clancey insisted.

He, Furfy, the plume hunter, even Desmond, looked forward, each with a silent plea in his eyes, like children at a parish fair, as if begging their captain to shoot, trap, or fetch them something, to order the boat put in so they could scrounge about among the "rarees"… to pet or adopt some adorable but be-fanged "something."

A splash and a crackling racket among the dead branches whipped their attention shoreward once more. The cottonmouth snake had nabbed one of the baby raccoons, and the rest were scurrying for their lives.

"Eyes in th' boat, then, an' mind yer stroke," Jugg commanded, as if bored with the ancient struggle of survival.

"This thing's had it," Lewrie said of his improvised "fowling" piece. "Back to the ship, if you please, Jugg. And three of our fat ducks'll be your supper tonight, lads."

That promise perked them up considerably, and, turning athwart the stream, they made the gig fairly fly across the river towards the northern bank, where Mr. Pollock's broad-beamed and shallow-draughted trading brig, the Azucena del Oeste, was anchored. Jugg kept the gig aimed a bit wide of her jib-boom, so they fetched up close-aboard and just a bit to the right of the starboard entry-port and the main-mast chain platform.

It wasn't an officer's place to do such, but Lewrie reached out with the boat-hook to play the role of bow man, snagged the fore-most dead-eyes and stays, then passed the gaff to the larboard bow oarsman as he swept the gig's painter round the after-most and tied it off; a perfect arrival, all in all.

He should have been cheered by their prowess at small-boat work, by his recall of rusty skills; there were a round dozen ducks or geese heaped on the mid-ships sole of the gig, confirming his reputation as a keen shot, yet… it went without saying that cheered he was not. The how of being here, the fact of being halfway up the lower Mississippi and not on his own quarterdeck, still rankled. He was, in fact, still irked-pissed!-might even attain to "mad as the very Devil!" if he stewed on his situation for a bit.

It did not help his sullen mood that no courtesy due a captain could be shown by the trading brig's crew, either. The Second Mate on her quarterdeck leaned out and peered over the bulwarks for a second, then disappeared, leaving Lewrie and his hands to scramble up the man-ropes and battens with only casual notice taken. As a Post-Captain, he was of course first out of the boat and aboard, yet… without all the usual twittering naval ado he'd come to take for granted.

After years of traditional welcomes-aboard, Lewrie was reduced to the status of "live lumber," a mere… passenger!

Jugg, as senior hand, and Liam Desmond were allowed to paw over his string of kills to select two ducks and one of the wild geese for the hands' mess, whilst the brig's typical one-eyed and peg-leg ship's cook and his helper came to take the others for gutting, stanching in boiling water, plucking, and roasting.

It appeared that tonight would be a game-feast, for, whilst he and his Navy sailors had been birding, others from the brig's wardroom had been hunting ashore in the forbiddingly dark woods on the northern bank. Two daintily lean yearling doe deer hung over wooden buckets on the larboard gangway stanchions. They had already been gutted, washed out with river water, hooves and scent glands axed off so their meat wasn't tainted, and their throats cut to drain into the buckets so the cook could try his hand at making blood sausages. Mr. Caldecott, the brig's hearty First Mate, was just beginning to skin and butcher them, surrounded by a clutch of hecklers and bemused "advisors."

The Azucena del Oeste had become becalmed the afternoon before and had been forced to come to anchor for the night. Dawn had brought a contrary light wind, with fitful zephyrs from out of the East-Northeast, which in this stretch of river just below the English Turn, made for a "dead muzzier" right down her throat, against which the brig had no chance to make a foot of headway, unless back-breakingly rowed with long galley sweeps. Not being Navy, and in no particular hurry to get hernias, Pollock and his ship's Master, a Mr. Coffin, had decided that they'd take a "Make and Mend" day of ease, secured with both her best and second bower anchors, with the river chuckling about her hull and frothing from her anchor cables, as if she still was making three or four knots.

Once secured about two long musket shots from the north shore, they had tried their hand at fishing. Last night's supper had been a "mess" of catfish; big ones, Lewrie had been enthusiastically informed. The catfish had resembled be-whiskered, shiny-hided sharks, scaleless, and as big-about and long as a stout man's thigh, and just about that meaty. Pollock had said they were reckoned a fine treat, after being breaded with crumbled ship's biscuit and powdered day-old toast, fried in deep iron skillets and lard. "Just be wary of the bones!" Pollock had warned.

'Least I'm eatin' well, Lewrie could conjure to himself in consolation. He had also thought that, for a rare once aboard a ship, he could sleep in as late as his idle nature desired. But one night out to sea and the sounds of the brig making a goodly way, the sounds from the watchstanders changing at four in the morning, had roused him, and that had been the last night he'd enjoyed a lubberly "All-Night-In." A half of his life spent at sea had engrained wary and wakeful habits in him, and it was a rare morning when he could roll back over and "caulk" even for a slothful extra hour! Even if the brig belonged to Mr. Pollock and his company, even if she had a most competent Master in Mr. Coffin, with a full complement of tarry-handed Mates, he still haunted her deck in fretful and enforced impotence, like a coachman who was forced to ride inside for once, far from his familiar reins.

"Well, how was the air-rifle, sir?" Pollock enquired, coming up as cordial as anything in hopes perhaps that Lewrie's approval (as if that held sway with Admiralty!) might result in a profitable contract.

"Fine, does it work, sir," Lewrie replied as he unslung the gun from his shoulder. "When it doesn't, it might serve as an oar, a club, or a punt pole."

"Yet you bagged a dozen, I see… ahem." Pollock twitch-whinnied and beamed like a horse dealer trying to palm off a half-dead sway-back for a thoroughbred, did he wink and smile often enough.

"Ah, but the ones lost to misfires," Lewrie told him as he held the air-rifle 'twixt thumb and two fingers, as if the firearm was that aforementioned dangerous asp.

"About what the Austrians said, too," Pollock said with a disappointed sigh. "Still, there's hopes the Yankee long-hunters, the local swamp-runners and Indians find them knacky. So quiet-like, fast-firing? Tell you what, sir. I'll make you a present of it, e'en so."

Lewrie was tempted to tell Pollock where he could shove such a handsome offer, that he wouldn't take it on a penny wager, but suspected that Mr. Pollock might think repacking it more trouble than it was worth. After all, he still had eight dozen of the Girandoni air-rifles crated up, a dozen to the crate, and stowed below.

Back in England, the Girandoni might have a curiosity value to someone, did Lewrie hold onto it long enough. Surely there would be a collector so eager he'd trample small children to lay hands on one, to say he had it, if nothing else.

There were other air-powered sporting arms made in Europe, but usually only to single custom orders, whereas the Girandoni rifle was the only one mass-produced for military service.

In 1780 the Austrians had ordered nearly two thousand of them from Bartolomeo Girandoni for sharpshooting skirmishers from several regiments' light companies. It fired a lighter.51 calibre ball, one even lighter than Lewrie's prized Ferguson breech-loading musket that he'd picked up during the Revolution, or the fusil-musket he'd gotten as a grim souvenir after his disastrous Florida expedition in 1783.

The Girandoni looked more like a sporting arm; the fore-stock was half the length of a typical three-banded musket, ending about one foot ahead of the trigger guard. The fire-lock mechanism looked much the same as a flintlock, but it lacked the dog's-jaws, the flint, and the raspy frizzen to strike the flint, as well as the powder pan that ignited a powder charge. Its buttstock was detachable, made of iron, and formed the pressurised air flask-it came with three.

What was most promising about the Girandoni air-rifle was that a skilled user could get off twelve shots in about thirty seconds and never have to ram a ball down the muzzle! Twelve lead balls could be loaded down a tube in the fore-stock, all at once.

Pull back the brass lever along the bottom of the fore-stock and a ball would pop into the opened breech from below; return the lever to its slot and the breech was sealed; cock the lock, take aim, and squeeze the trigger, and a complicated clock-work spring valve opened from the buttstock, and there would come a faint, barely perceptible, crack! as the ball was propelled at 700- 800 feet per second!

It was said (by Pollock, who was hot to flog them off on somebody!) that it was accurate on man-sized targets beyond one hundred yards, not the fifty or so of a smoothbore musket. Nowhere near as good as the two hundred yards of a European Jaeger or Pennsylvania rifle, but they were very slow to load and needed a greased patch to grip the rifling. Perhaps this time, quantity could make up for quality and incredible accuracy.

The main drawback was that the user might as well hire a clock-maker to go along and keep the Girandoni working properly, and the oil-soaked leather seals on the air flasks leaked like an entire litter of puppies, as Lewrie's last shot at ducks could attest. There had been a serpentine hiss, then aphfft! of low-pressure air and sealing oils, which put Lewrie in mind of a sailor betrayed by his bean soup. And to pump the flasks back to full pressure, propping the detachable rod against a tree or wall (in his case, the ship's main-mast) for the last, hardest strokes looked like slow, strenuous buggery.

"Well," Lewrie responded, shamming real gratitude, "it does have its curiosity value. Thankee, sir. Most kind of you."

Even if his round-dozen waterfowl had used up all three flasks and four dozen lead balls, and he was a better wing-shot than that!

"We'll be under way by dawn," Pollock informed him, turning his face northward, going gloomy again. "The wind will come Westerly or Sou'westerly, in my experience. Enough for us to weather the English Turn and Fort Saint Leon. Another stretch of river, one more big bend, and after that 'tis an arrow-shot, the last twenty-odd miles, to New Orleans." He sounded loath to arrive.

"Then we'll be about our business… whatever it is," Lewrie rejoined. It had not been a joyful "yachting" voyage; Pollock was in a permanent fret of exposure, of letting his firm down, ruing the day he'd made Peel's acquaintance, and had begun to nibble round the edges of espionage, as the Frogs called it. He had never before been asked to do anything quite so overt and was definitely "off his feed" with qualms. Ruing the night he'd dined with the forceful, brook-me-no-arguments Capt. Nicely, too, Lewrie shouldn't wonder. On Peel and Nicely at least, he and Pollock saw eye to eye, if on little else.

"God help us," Pollock said, all but chewing on a thumbnail.

"Might get lucky," Lewrie japed. "Murder those two whose names we know straightaway, and put the wind up the others, hey?"

Pollock shuddered, glared at him, then toddled off without one more word to share, muttering a fair slew of imprecations, though.

Lewrie leaned on the bulwarks and plucked at his "costume" cotton shirt, most slack and lubberly fashion. Pollock had advised that he and his small band of Navy men dress as anything but sailors. They had been forced to don thigh-long hunting shirts over rough trousers, older, battered tricornes or low-crowned farmers' hats. Ruing costs like the meanest skinflint, Pollock had issued them all powder horns and deerskin cartridge pouches, long hunting knives to hang on their hips to make them appear more like huntsmen or a pack of bully-bucks he'd hired on to escort his goods into the hinterlands… or protect his new-landed assets in his New Orleans warehouses and store. All of which-the clothing, arms and accoutrements, "surplus to requirements" infantry hangers and such-had been produced from Pollock's warehouses in Kingston and sold at a so-called discounted price to Capt. Nicely. Lewrie could sourly suspect that he and his handful of disciplined sailors had been charged passengers' fare just to come along, as well!

Lewrie heaved a befuddled sigh and contemplated once again just how he had been finagled into this dubious adventure. Capt. Nicely had proved to be much cleverer than Lewrie would have credited him. And not half so nice as he appeared.

Not a day after their shore supper, Capt. Nicely and Mr. Peel had been rowed out to Proteus at her anchorage and had come aboard in stately manner, with a strange young Lieutenant and Midshipman in tow.

With Nicely wearing a gruff but-me-no-buts expression on his face, and Jemmy Peel cocked-browed with a sardonic you-poor-dense-bastard look, Nicely had introduced the young Lieutenant as one Thaddeus Darling, the Midshipman as one Mr. the Honourable Darcy Gamble.

Since Proteus had lost the unfortunate (and regrettable) young Mr. Burns, Admiral Sir Hyde Parker had decided to appoint the much tarrier and more promising Mr. Gamble into the frigate. He came off the flagship, and such an appointment usually was a signal honour for the recipient captain. The lad was upwards of his majority, eighteen or so, and while attired in a well-to-do lad's best uniform and kit of the finest quality, right down to his ivory-and-gilt trimmed dirk, he was touted as a bright lad who'd been properly seasoned at sea duties since his eleventh birthday; a welcome prize, indeed!

"You're short a Midshipman, Captain Lewrie," Nicely had almost gushed in seeming sincerity, "and I prevailed upon Sir Hyde to assign you his very best… and one close to his heart," Nicely had added in a confidential whisper, with an encouraging wink, "in reward for your previous good service to the Crown."

"Honoured, indeed, to welcome him aboard, Captain Nicely, sir," Lewrie had bowed back, temporarily disarmed, though still a dab leery.

"If you do not mind, then, sir, I will read myself in, and put up my broad pendant, according to Sir Hyde's orders?" Nicely had said further, whipping an official document from his coat's breast pocket.

"Beg pardon?" Lewrie had gawped, all aback. "Say uh?"

Lieutenant Darling produced a paper-wrapped packet containing a red pendant, much shorter and wider than the coach-whip commissioning pendant that forever flew from Proteus's main-mast. He handed it off to Midshipman Grace and bade him hoist it aloft. And to Lewrie's chagrin, the red broad pendant bore a white ball, indicating that Capt. Nicely would have no flag-captain below him!

There was much too much blood thundering in Lewrie's ears for a clear hearing of Capt. Nicely's bellowing recital of Navy officialese, but the sense of it was that Sir Hyde had temporarily appointed him as a petit Commodore without the actual rank, privileges, or emoluments of a permanent promotion.

"… and take upon yourself accordingly the duties of regulating the details of your squadron, in making the necessary distribution of men, stores, provisions, and in such other duties as you shall think fit to direct!" Nicely had thundered, casting a baleful eye at his "flagship's" goggling captain. Lewrie had whirled to seek confirmation or aid from Peel, but Peel could do nothing but offer him a side-cocked head and a helpless shrug. That "distribution… as you shall think fit to direct" sounded hellish-ominous!

To make matters even worse, Proteus'?, crew thought they had been done a great honour in recognition of their prowess, and they had actually cheered Nicely's pronouncement. And his decision to "splice the main-brace" and trot out the rum keg for a drink free of personal debts, the "sippers" or "gulpers" owed among them, had raised an even heartier second! Fickle bloody ingrates! Lewrie had fumed.

"Ah, sir, um…" Lewrie attempted once Nicely had turned to face him. "You speak highly of your First Officer, Mister Langlie," Nicely had said sweetly, "nearly ready for a command of his own, as I recall you praising, so… perhaps a spell of actual command, with me as his advisor, as it were, will properly season him for better things in the near future, hey? No fear, Captain, your Order Book shall not be supplanted or amended while I'm aboard as, ah… 'super-cargo' or acting Commodore. I shall not interfere in your officers' habitual direction of your ship. Though I did bring along Lieutenant Darling to stand as a temporary Third Lieutenant, I assure you that he shall strictly adhere to your way of doing things and will be subordinate to Lieutenant Langlie, not me."

"What squadron?" Lewrie had baldly asked, after jerking his chin upwards to indicate the broad pendant.

"We, ah… stand upon it," Nicely had had the gall to confess, with what seemed a dab of chagrin to "press-gang" him out of his command, so he'd be available to fulfill the rest of his scheme.

"Christ on a…" Lewrie had spluttered, close to babbling. "We may add two cutters later on, once you've reported…" "Mine arse on a…" Lewrie had fumed, nigh to mutiny. "So, you're free, d'ye see, Captain Lewrie. Needs must-" "Black!" Lewrie had squawked, shaking his head in ashen awe at how deftly he'd been made "available"; he hadn't seen this coming!

"Sir Hyde and Lord Balcarres insisted, d'ye see," Nicely hurriedly added, "once I'd laid our enterprise's sketch before 'em, so you must adopt the old Navy adage, 'growl ye may, but go ye must.' "

"Mine… Arr!" Lewrie tongue-tangled. "Gahh!"

"So glad you understand," Nicely had cajoled. "Well, I'm dry as dust, and I fetched off a half-dozen of my best claret. Shall we go aft and toast the success of our venture, sirs?"

And, damned if, after the wine had been opened and Lewrie had sloshed down two impatient glasses, his cats hadn't come out of hiding and had made an instant head-rubbing, twining fuss over Captain Nicely, as if they'd been just waiting for his arrival their whole little lives!

Damned traitors/ Lewrie could but accuse in rebellious silence. And Nicely had been so maddeningly, bloody nice that he'd cooed, "mewed," and conversed with Toulon and Chalky, to their evident delight, even suffering Chalky to clamber up his breeches, roll about in his lap to bare his belly for "wubbies," and scale Nicely's heavily gilt-trimmed lapels to play with his epaulet tassels, touch noses with him, shiver his tail to mark him, and grope behind his neck with a paw at his ribbon-bound queue.

Christ, what a … He sighed to himself, sagging weary on the bulwarks, on his elbows and crossed forearms. What an eerie place this is!

He'd been up the Hooghly to Calcutta and had thought that lush and exotic; he'd been to Canton in trading season 'tween the wars and had goggled at the many sights of the inaptly named Pearl River below Jack-Ass Point. Both had been Asian, crowded, teeming with noise, and anthill busy with seeming millions of strange people intent on their labours. Louisiana, though…

First had come the barren shoals, bars, and mud flats of the Mississippi River delta, so far out at sea, the silted-up banks on either hand of the pass and the lower-most channels' desolate ribbons of barrier islands, with the Gulf of Mexico stretching to horizons when seen from the main-top platform, just a few miles beyond them. Skeins made from dead trees, silent and uninhabited, only heightened the sense of utter desolation.

Once past the Head of the Passes, the land spread out east and west to gobble up the seas, the salt marshes and "quaking prairies" impossibly green and glittering, framed by far-distant hints of woods; yet still devoid of humankind, and abandoned.

Now, here almost within two hours' sail of the English Turn and Fort Saint Leon, the river was darkly, gloomily shadowed by too many trees, all wind-sculpted into eldritch shapes, adrape with the Spanish moss that could look like the last rotting shreds of ancient winding sheets or burial shrouds after the ghosts of the dead had clawed their way from their lost-forgotten graves to the sunlight once again. The cypresses standing in green-scummed, death-still ponds, the hammocks of higher land furry with scrub pines, bearing fringes of saw-grasses like bayonets planted to slice foolish intruders…

Oh, here and there were tall levees heaped up to protect fields and pastureland, rough entrenchments of earth that put him in uneasy mind of Yorktown during the Franco-American siege, raised as if to hide whatever lurked behind them from an interloper's view. There might be a gap in the levees where someone had a seasonal sluice-gate to flood and replenish his secret acres. There might be the tiniest peek of a farmhouse's roof and chimneys, faint wisps of cook-fire smoke at times; the larger pall of bittersweet white smoke as a field was burned off for a fresh seeding with sugarcane or cotton.

But, all in all, it seemed such a thinly settled place, a spookily off-putting land so daunting that only the desperate, the forlorn, would dare attempt to tame it or wrest from it a farthing's profit, or sustenance.

There came a promising little zephyr of wind from the West at last, a welcome bit of coolness after the sullen, damp-washcloth heat of even a winter's day in Louisiana. Lewrie's flesh beneath the stifling closeness of his clothing goose-pimpled to that zephyr. As if to a forewarning, but of what?