The Captain`s Vengeance

CHAPTER NINE

Lewrie wasn't sure exactly what he was expecting once Azucena del Oeste weathered the last bend of the Mississippi, abeam a Westerly wind, and began a long "reach" up the centre of the river's widening channel. To hear Mr. Pollock, Capt. Coffin, and his mates gush about New Orleans, it was a blend of Old Port Royal, Jamaica, the old pirate haven, London's East End docks for commerce, Lisbon for quaintness, and Macao in China for sin.

Lazing on the starboard foremast stays and ratlines just above the gangway bulwarks, using his telescope on things that caught his interest, he watched New Orleans loom up at last. Like most realities, though, the city proved a letdown, compared to the myth.

Near the city, the levees were higher and better-kept, on the east bank at least, with a road atop them bearing waggon traffic and light carts. The road sometimes crossed wooden bridges above sluice-gates and canal cuts that led to planters' fields. Even here, though, Spanish Louisiana still looked thinly populated. One would expect a modicum of commercial bustle so close to a seaport of New Orleans 's repute, but…

The river widened and ran arrow-straight, finally, and Lewrie could espy buildings and wharves, another vast, sloping levee in front of low but wide warehouses. Dead, bare "trees" turned out to be masts of a whole squadron of merchant ships tied up along the quays, along with a confusing tangle that looked like a gigantic log-jam. Nearer up, the log-jam turned out to be a fleet; hundreds of large log rafts or square-ended flatboats that had been floated, poled, or sailed to the docks from the settlements far upriver. Those would be sold off and broken up for their lumber once their voyages were done, Mr. Pollock had told him.

But for church spires and a few public buildings, nothing was taller than two stories, though. Within the last mile, Lewrie could estimate the city as only ten or twelve city blocks wide, and might straggle north towards Lake Pontchartrain another half-dozen blocks. Within throwing distance of the town, swamps, marshes, and forests took over, again; brooding, foetid, and primeval.

"That's it?" Lewrie grumbled in disbelief. "That's all there is to it? What a bloody gyp!"

The river wind brought the tang of "civilisation" from toilets and garbage middens, from horse, mule, donkey, oxen, and human "shite," from hen coops and pig sties; and the Mississippi wafted even more evidence- drowned rats, cats, and dogs; wilted vegetables and husks of fruit; butchers' offal; and turds. Evidently, not only was no one interred belowground in marshy Louisiana, but no drains or sewers could be dug, either! The river that close to town had gone from leaf-mould and silt tobacco-brown to a piss-yellow, shit-brindle colour.

"It ain't that bad, sir," Mr. Pollock said from below him on the gangway, having heard his disappointed muttering. " 'Tis a very wealthy town, for all that. A most pleasant and delightful one, too."

"Wealth? There in that… village?" Lewrie scoffed.

"Consider it a London, Bristol, or Liverpool in their youngest days," Pollock replied with faint amusement. "So recently settled a port city, much like a new-found Ostia serving an equally unimpressive Rome a generation or two after its founding. An Athens or Piraeus in the days of Demosthenes, a Genoa or Marseilles when the Gauls had 'em? Even in their heydays, the fabled ports of antiquity were nowhere near as impressive as present-day London or, say, Lisbon, Lewrie. Ancient Alexandria, Jerusalem in the times of the temple, fabled Babylon, or the hellish-rich Troy of Homer's myth weren't all that big, either. Nothing like Paris or London. Though I doubt the modern world has, or the ancient world had, New Orleans 's match when it comes to wealth and vital location."

"It looks no bigger than Kingston, English Harbour, or Sheerness," Lewrie said with a grunt as he jumped down to the deck.

"Think of Baltimore on the Chesapeake, sir," Pollock countered with a wry grin, " Philadelphia or Charleston. Neither are particularly impressive to look at, but rich? Oh, my my, ahem!" Pollock gushed, making another of his throat-clearing twitch-whinnies. " Port-au-Prince or that shabby hole, Cape Francois, on the north shore of Saint-Domingue. You've been to both, I'm told. Nothing to write home about, but consider the vast wealth that passes through those ports each year."

" Sodom and Gomorrah?" Lewrie queried with a smirk.

"Neither known for trading wealth," Mr. Pollock primly replied, " 'less you consider that their, ah… reputations drew hordes of rich visitors. As does New Orleans. The most, um… entertaining town within five hundred miles in any direction, ahem."

"Well, hmmm," Lewrie speculated. Though even at less than one mile's distance now, New Orleans still appeared small and sleepy, with no sign of anything wondrous, amusing, or sinful about it.

" 'Tis a mortal pity it's so hard to get at," Pollock said on, half wistful and half wolfish, "for its sacking by a British expedition would go a long way towards erasing the Crown's war debts."

"That rich?" Lewrie gawped, turning to regard the approaching town more closely, seeing it in a much better light, of a sudden.

At least I see what makes him happy, Lewrie thought, comparing Pollock's relaxed stance and evident appreciation of New Orleans to his earlier sullenness on the voyage.

"All the wealth of the West pours down here to New Orleans," Mr. Pollock nigh dreamily praised, eyes alight with Pound Sterling symbols, "from the joining of the Ohio and Missouri Rivers. Spanish Louisiana extends to the Great Lakes, and our Hudson 's Bay Company's territory, then far west across the great unknown to Spanish California."

"There for the taking," Lewrie speculated, idly fantasising if anyone would miss a wee chunk of it, the size of Scotland or Ireland, say… and dare he call it "Lewriana"?

"For the settling, eventually," Pollock mused on most happily, for once. "There's very little there now, but for Indians and game. A few wretched settlements like Saint Louis… crossroad or river hamlets. But someday… as the Americans spread out, as we spread west from Canada, the wealth flowing down to New Orleans is certain to be tremendous."

"Of course, Panton, Leslie Company already trades with the isolated rustics and tribes up yonder?" Lewrie asked smirkily.

"We, ah… and the Hudson 's Bay Company, ahem!… are laying the foundations for a British presence, should the Crown desire such, sir," Pollock assured him with a soft voice.

"Hemming the Americans in," Lewrie decided. "Even if they get to the east bank of the Mississippi, and south from Tennessee to the Gulf, in Spanish Florida. Hmmph!. Take 'em a century t'eat that!"

"More than enough room for them. Let us reclaim a bit of Spanish West Florida, as far east as Mobile, say, and we will have an unassailable buffer against any American expedition against the meat of the matter… New Orleans," Pollock speculated, fiddling at his open shirt collars and throat.

Capt. Coffin ordered the brig's hands aloft to reduce sail now that New Orleans had finally been fetched. Her helm, though, was put up, not down, to steer away from the quays, levee, and other shipping, pointing the brig towards the opposite bank.

"We never go to the town docks first," Pollock told Lewrie in answer to his puzzled look. "We go alongside our hulk, yonder, to unload the lighter goods, the, ah… most desirable luxury items."

"Why not use the piers, sir?" Lewrie wondered aloud.

"Land cargo direct to the warehouses, Captain Lewrie, and the Spanish customs officials must levy their duties," Pollock said with a wry smirk, "and not get tuppence in bribes. A portion of our goods are always part-owned by 'em, on the sly! Bulk cargo is charged duty, which keeps their superiors in Havana and Madrid happy, and what sells on this side of the river is pure profit to the Dons in the Cabildo."

"So, you sell directly from these decks, I take it?" Lewrie asked.

"Oh, no! We transfer the goods aboard our store ship, heh heh… ahem. That hulk I spoke of, yonder," Pollock told him, pointing towards the south shore. "Damn my eyes, those bloody Yankees… they've a new store ship ahead of ours, the conniving…"

In actuality, there were four hulks opposite the city, all half sunk or permanently mired in the mud and silt of the south bank; all cut down to a gant-line, with masts above their top platforms removed, and cargo-handling booms rigged below their main-tops in lieu of course sail yards, just above their waists and main cargo hatches.

The one that Pollock had indicated, the second-most downriver, had once been a three-masted ship of about four or five hundred tons, he judged. She was very old, with a steeply steeved jib boom and bowsprit still jutting upwards from her wide, bluff bows. She had, like an aged whore, though, been tarted up to the point of gaudiness.

Her wide and deep gunwale was painted a bright but chalking and peeling red, her upperworks and bulwarks canary yellow. Remarkably, a permanent shed had been built over her long quarterdeck, making an open and airy peaked-roof awning. A second construction had been erected over her forecastle, from figurehead to the stump of her foremast, with the once-open "heads" and roundhouse toilets fully enclosed, all scaly with shingle siding and roof.

She now sported two entry-ports leading to her starboard upperdeck gangway, each with two pair of stairs and landings of sturdy wood planking and timbers permanently attached; each beginning at the waterline atop a pair of floating platforms to accommodate patrons' sailing or rowing boats, where even now a clutch of boats and some extremely long, lean, and narrow, and very low-sided strange craft were tied up.

Even more oddly, a wide entryway had been cut into her side, as wide as double doors, down level with her lower deck where a 3rd Rate warship's heaviest guns would be housed. Instead of stairs, though, a wide, long ramp led up to that entryway from another timber-and-log landing stage; and all were so arranged that the stairs and the ramp would float up or down with the tide.

Bold white lettering on the red gunwale stated that she was the Panton, Leslie Co. Store, with further information in smaller letters announcing her days and hours of operation and touting the significant range of goods readily available. Along the gunwale, near the tops of the stairs and ramp, were giltwork frames tacked on about white bare spaces, which were daubed and littered with both new and old printed broadsheets regarding newly arrived goods for sale.

The hulk flew a company commissioning pendant, and the red-gold-red crowned merchant flag of Spain, as did their trading brig. Lewrie thought that it would hardly be possible to fly a British flag in this port, not without instant seizure by the Dons… or boarding and burning by the sullen French Creoles, yet, it was another outre wrench to his already-wary sense of vulnerability. So far from British aid!

"Told you she's a store ship, not a stores-ship, ahem." Mr. Pollock hooted. "Below-decks, we've goods counters, storage shelvings, and glass display cases, good as any emporium in London. Aisles wide enough for the most fashionable ladies' skirts, too."

"You need to repaint," Lewrie said with a droll grin, pointing at the new-come American hulk that sported red-white-blue on gunwales, lower hull, and bulwarks, and huge white stars on the blue; giant American "grid-iron" flags flew from every mast stump. Astern of Pollock's hulk was a small, dowdy store ship flying a French flag; the American was just upriver of Pollock's, and a fourth that flew a Spanish flag lay beyond.

"Damn those interlopers to Hell and gone, Lewrie, damn 'em all!" Pollock fumed. "Do I show half the usual profit this time, I will be flat amazed. You, sir! They won't know you, you could go aboard her and see how fine their goods, how low their prices, browse about!"

Spy? Lewrie drolly thought; Me? He was just about to say it when Jugg ambled up, wringing his wide-brim farmer's hat in his hands, as if loath to intrude, and clearing his throat for attention.

"Beg pardon, sir, but… 'at th' head o' th' line?" Jugg said. "Can't rightly say from here, sir, but damned if she don't look peculiar like our missing prize. D'ye not think so, Cap'm?"

Lewrie looked nonplussed for a second, wondering if the task of finding her could possibly be this easy, then spun as quickly as decorum allowed to eye her with his telescope.

The Azucena del Oeste was edging in nearly alongside her store ship's landing stage, making the viewing angle acute, so he couldn't make out all her details… perhaps half her stern gallery and transom, but a slice of her starboard side, yet… she seemed at least a tad familiar, a ship he'd seen before.

"Know her, Mister Pollock?" Lewrie asked, his gaze intent upon the strange ship.

"Never clapped eyes on her before, sir," Pollock glumly stated.

Lewrie could make out royal blue upperworks and bulwarks; that tweaked his memory. She bore ornate carvings about her stern gallery and sash windows, her arched taff-rail and lanthorn posts, and quarter-galleries; mermaids, cherubs, seahorses, and dolphins, all the work of decent carpenters, and painted in white, pink, and pale blue, decorated with gilt filigrees, and they twanged his chords of memory, too, that last sight he'd seen of her in daylight after her midnight taking as she sailed off for Dominica.

Her name-boards did not match, though; nothing decorative, but merely rectangular planks that didn't equal the size or shape of those that might have once adorned her, leaving faint bands of pale timbers not darkened by sea, sun, linseed oil, or tar. At his acute angle, he could barely make out a crudely painted-on name, not carved intaglio: Fleur de Sud. That name most definitely did not match his dimmed recollection!

Her lower hull, her quickwork! His last sight of her, she'd been heeled over heavily, exposing a badly maintained hull below the waterline, and before he'd turned away to deal with Proteus's demands, he could recall thinking that she might not fetch the highest price at auction, for she hadn't been completely coppered against barnacles and ship-killing teredo worms. Along her waterline and for about two or three feet below it, she'd been coated with linseed-soaked felt, tar-paper, and stark white-lead paint, before the proper bronze-greened chequerboard of copper sheets began.

Penny-pinching ship's husbands, a miserly master, or a dearth of sheet-copper in the French Antilles, where she'd departed after her last slap-dash beaching to burn off seaweed and chip away barnacles… forced to make do with all the copper that could be had outside a European port, tacked on down where it mattered most, on the hope that if she got weeded, it might be where it could be gotten at by her sailors when still under way, heeled well over to leeward as her people hung in bosun's chairs on her windward side?

"Damn my eyes," Lewrie exclaimed at last, taking his telescope from his eye. "I do b'lieve you're right, Mister Jugg. That's her, to the life. Damme, we found her, right off? Why, this all could turn out simpler than we first thought!"

Uh-oh! Lewrie thought a second later; Fate, forget I said it! Saying such hopeful things, he had learned from hard experience, was about as bad as whistling on deck, a dare to Dame Fortune to come boot him up the arse… as she usually did… again!