The Captain`s Vengeance

PROLOGUE

Gonzalo: Now would I give a thousand furlongs

Of sea for an acre of barren ground-long heath,

Brown furze, anything. The wills above be done

But I would fain die a dry death.

– The Tempest, Act I, Scene 1

William Shakespeare

The Dry Tortugas 24°37'N, 82°45' W

Two ships tossed, rocked, and heaved on a fretful sea, fetched-to and immobile, within easy rowing distance of the dry, low-lying, rocky islet-too small to be called an island, too large to be termed a cay. Bastard, barren places were these islets, neither Caribbean soft and beguiling nor American mainland coastal-marshily bleak. These islets did not belong to the Caribbean, but to the Gulf of Mexico, and lay far west of southernmost Spanish Florida, an afterthought of a distracted Creator, who had flung them like excess ochre droplets off a cosmic putty knife, once the last of the Florida Keys had been shaped.

Except for a small sand beach on the north side, off which the two ships lay, the islet's shore was rocky, gravelled and steep-to, with waves breaking vertically, strewn with broken shells, fragments of driftwood, bird skeletons, and russet humps of pine needles and palm furze.

The seas were lively and heaved four or five feet or more in a confused chop; deep-ocean blue-grey, changing to teal, aqua, or lapis near the shore-all under an achingly empty cerulean blue sky that was brushed by mares' tails, with only the rare stiff-winged albatross, frigate bird, or gull to show a single sign of life.

The two ships fetched-to off the northern beach were clattered, clanged, and slatted by those confused seas, rising and dropping, pitching at bows and sterns, and rocking in uneven, unpredictable fits and jerks. One of the fetched-to vessels was a typical bluff-bowed, three-masted merchantman, a tad high at poop and forecastle, wide and beamy and deeply laded. She gleamed with linseed oil 'twixt her black-tarred gunwale and her jaunty blue upper-works and bulwarks, with a hint of a wealthy trader's gilt round her bulging quarter-galleries, entry ports, and figurehead. Her motion, because of her greater tonnage and weight of cargo, was a bit easier and more predictable than the other ship's. A Tricolour flag of Republican France flew from the leach of her large spanker, which was still sheeted in to keep drive on her, and her bows pinched up to the winds, while her courses and topgallants were bag-reefed, her tops'ls flatted aback, and her jibs knife-edged full of wind. That Unseeded gleaming wood was as pretty as a spanking-new, beeswaxed tabletop.

The second fetched-to vessel rode much more lively, for she was a schooner, much narrower in beam. Gaff-hung sails on her foremast and main fought a losing fight to drive her forward, whilst her two standing jibs, hauled taut on the opposing tack, kept her motionless-in respect to the islet, at least. Riding her decks, keeping one's feet as she slatted, was a feat worthy of gainful employment with a touring Gypsy circus. Her hired captain, and her crewmembers, were managing it well. So were their employers.

The schooner showed the world a lovely face, too; black-hulled with a dockyard-fresh coat of the glossiest paint, not tar. That hull, so long, lean, and so sweetly sheer-lined, was boot-topped on the waterline and striped along the upperwork bulwarks with wide bands of a deep scarlet. Her masts, gaffs, and booms, jib boom and bowsprit, her coachtop 'tween foremast and mainmast, and her two small upper yards, were painted a hazy light blue-grey, and her sails… instead of new-from-the-chandlery ecru, or well-worn and used parchment-like tan, had been dyed horizon-grey, as well.

La Reunion , she was called, as so she was named in the scroll-board on her stern and in her ship's papers that declared her a yacht, a nautical plaything for her idle-rich planter owners, and, registered as she was as homeported in a Spanish possession, she usually sported a gilt-tan flag with the two horizontal red stripes equidistant from top and bottom of a Spanish merchantman or private vessel.

For this occasion, though, in keeping with her secret name and her other papers, the purchased Letter of Marque and Reprisal declaring her to be a French privateer by name of Le Revenant-that is to say, "The Ghost"-that despised shit-brintle "rag" had been hanked on below a French Tricolour atop her mains'l's leach, a flag brighter and larger, as if she were the prize, lot the three-master.

No matter how desolate or bleak the islet, La Reunion 's owners were in

happy takings, eyes alight with the novelty of it all, sipping champagne and snickering as they watched the crew aboard the merchantman struggle to sway out and lower her largest launch. The sailors manning the check or snub lines were having a rough go of it as the prize ship juddered about.

"I thought you said Capitaine Balfa was a salty man," one young man demanded, "a bold, experienced freebooter! But he goes about that like a clumsy, drunken… Bayou Barataria coon-ass, ha ha!"

The hired captain of La Reunion (or Le Revenant), standing aloof of them, clamped his lips together to bite off what harsh response that petulant plaint merited, eyes slit in frustration. Jerome Lanxade and Boudreaux Balfa went back a long time together, and a slur on Boudreaux might as well have been a slur on his own competence.

Dammit to hell, neither he nor Balfa owned this lithe schooner, only shares in the "enterprise"! It wasn't like the old days, back in the last war, when they'd commanded five ships at once, when the names Jerome Lanxade- Le Feroce, for he had been called "The Ferocious"-and Boudreaux Balfa- L'Affame, or "The Hungry"-had commanded respect and awe in every Caribbean or Gulf port. Then they could recruit an entire crew overnight at the snap of their fingers and fill every man's pockets with prize money or plunder. Under the old white-and-gold fleur de lis of Royal France, the heraldic red-gold of Spain… even the dreaded Jolly Roger or Black Flag, a time or two… their orders or slightest whims could have made fish bait of callow, capering lubbers like them!

Jerome Lanxade turned to face his employers, hands clasped in the small of his back, a black-visaged glower of warning on his dark-tanned face. Just for a moment, he fantasised, again, of murdering every last one of them, of just taking this splendid little ship for his own and continuing the business for his own profit. Kill all the young men, not the girl, though. Oh no, not for a long time…

He let his face soften and crease into a knowing smile.

"The seas are up, the prize ship's motion," Lanxade told them with what might have seemed to be infinite patience. "Nothing goes as quickly or smoothly as you wish aboard ship, messieurs, mademoiselle."

Poseurs! he silently accused, though the girl was most fetching-even if she was the most bloody-minded of the entire bunch!

His employers dressed the part: jackboots and baggy sailors' slop trousers, colourful shirts under long-tailed and gaudy old-style waist-coats that they wore open; waist sashes crammed with pistols or daggers under the waist-coats; broad satin or velvet baldrics bearing costly short swords or swept-hilt rapiers; wide-brimmed hats adrip with egret plumes… As if they'd tricked themselves out in fanciful garb and beauty spots and face powders for a pre-Revolution costume ball!

"One would wish, though, M'sieur le Capitaine Lanxade, that it goes competently, n'est-ce pas?" the young woman sweet-archly replied with an elegant lift of one brow, a leering smile at one corner of her sweetly kissable mouth, and a mocking salute with her wineglass.

Arrogant, wanton slut! Lanxade thought, unable to keep his eyes from caressing her curves, her slim legs on display for all the world to see in over-snug breeches and silk knee stockings, her decolletage made prominent by a tight and waist-hugging buttoned waist-coat, just long enough to flare over the tops of her hips like a corset. Worst-named cunt in all Creation… Charite… Angelette… de Guilleri!

Mile Charite de Guilleri lowered her lashes and smirked over the rim of her crystal champagne glass, secretly delighted by their hired man's not-so-secret lust, and her heady power to deny.

"I still say we should just shoot them, make them to 'walk the plank,' or something," her cousin, Jean-Marie Rancour, spat.

"Oui, Jean… dead men tell no tales, after all," another of their party said. Unlike the rest, he was dark-haired and brown-eyed, was Don Rubio Monaster, while Charite, her brothers Hippolyte and Helio, and their cousin were the typical long-settled Creoles, with chesnut hair and blue eyes. "Just kill them and be done," Don Rubio asserted with what he was certain was an aggressive, decisive, and manly lift of his chin… for Charite's benefit and, hopefully, at some future time of bliss with her, his own.

"We've done that," the eldest brother, Helio de Guillieri, responded in a lazy drawl. "That Havana slaver's crew, remember, Rubio? We made them walk the plank, Jean."

"But we haven't done marooning yet," middle brother Hippolyte snickered. "Just about the only thing we haven't done."

"Kill or maroon?" Helio, as "leader," posed. "The old buccaneers practiced egalite and fraternite, they voted on things. Let's vote."

"Shoot!" Don Rubio Monaster quickly replied, but he was shouted down by those in favour of marooning their captives. Only Jean sided with him, and that not with a whole heart.

Mon Dieu, what a pack of… Capt. Lanxade thought. "Marooned men tell no tales. No one ever comes here. They give these isles a wide berth for fear of shoals and reefs. Only piles of bleached bones will be found… if ever," he gruffly told them.

"I cannot shoot even one?" Don Rubio plaintively asked.

"Rubio, don't be greedy," Mile Charite coaxed, sashaying to his side to drape an arm round his shoulders and lay her head next to his, as if cajoling her papa for a new gown. "We have seen how well you shoot. Those runaway slaves…pim-pim-pim, and all your doing, n'est-ce pas? If we run across another prize on the way home, we will leave things to you… won't we, Helio… Hippolyte?"

The other stalwart young fellows had no problem with that.

"If not, quel dommage," Charite continued, "and you must quell your eagerness 'til the next voyage. Remember, Rubio, hastening the day of rejoining La Belle France, and throwing off the Spanish tyrrany, comes first, last, and always. Before our petty amusements."

She blew teasingly at his ear, swept off his overly ornate hat, and tousled his romantically long, dark locks, then gave the embarrassed young fellow a quick and "sisterly" peck on the cheek… with a tiny flick of her tongue tip to tantalise before almost skipping away from him. "Ah, regardez… the boat, at last!"

Don Rubio Monaster bashfully grinned, though following her every movement with downcast but lustful eyes; unsure, again, whether he'd been gulled by her… or slyly encouraged.

But for their mutual scheme, Don Rubio might have been shunned by her family. His father had been a grandee Spaniard sent to administrate the territory. Though a true Castilian of noble hidalgo blood never tainted by Moor or Marrano, whose sires had held titles since the Reconquista in the 1400s, his father had been so impoverished that a wilderness post's salary had been welcomed. Spanish overlord or not, his father had managed to wed a proud and exalted French Creole lady, heir to vast acreages upriver from the city, and had seen to it that the old French deeds of her family, the Bergrands, had become legitimate Spanish land grants.

Not so smart, though, to avoid taking the field against a Chickasaw uprising up near Natchez, where his noble father had been slain. Since then, the Bergrands had moulded him into more of a Creole than a Don, more a Jacobin than a Royalist after the French Revolution, too.

Spain was old, tired, and bankrupt, with nothing to offer but a corrupt and neglectful governance. The new United States encroaching on their borders were even worse, just too common, venal, grasping, and backwoods crude! Without a powerful protector, they would be swamped in buckskin, awash in the vile juices of "chaw-baccy"! Non, only a rising of their own- and a remonstrance of their fait accompli to the Republican Directory in Paris could save them. Everyone was so sure of that, but so few really ever did anything about it, other than talk and talk in the cabarets! Only Hippolyte and Helio seemed capable of action, and he'd gladly become a part of their scheme. For the future, for…!

Bewitching Charite's costly Parisian scent lingered on Rubio's shirt collar, and he took a cautious sniff, even as he stood to watch the launch from the prize ship finally be rowed over to the schooner; feet wide-spread to balance, spring-kneed to ride the pitching of the deck as masterfully as he rode the most spirited stallion, with hands in the small of his back in unconscious imitation of their hired man, the daunting, dashing Capt. Lanxade. Chin up and alert, firm-jawed in spite of the swooping jerks and snubs, he would be dizzy and sick if he let himself. He would not be sick… he would be dashing.

Though Maman was delighted that her son had entree with a family as distinguished and rich as the de Guilleris, one even richer and of longer habitation than her own, though he was coyly urged to lay suit to one of the older sisters, Iphegenie or Marguerite… though he was sure that either would be a pleasingly suitable and presentable match, and either would be amenable, yet… there was Charite, that coquette!

Oh, if only he could tell her what agony, and what ecstacy, her too-brief caress and kiss could cause him! How like the Golden Fleece he thought her long chestnut hair, how lambent he deemed her turquoise eyes, how generous her lips and mouth, how bountiful her breasts!

God above, not lambent! Don Rubio chid himself. He'd sound lame and prissy as a dancing master! No true gentleman wasted time on such limp tripe!. Like a born Creole grandee, he had no time for poetry or books, though girls did put a deal of stock in such-

A series of thuds alongside brought Rubio back from his fancies as the launch butted the schooner's hull below the entry-port and was hooked onto the chains. A moment later, Capitaine Boudreaux Balfa was clambering up the battens on his large and gnarly bare feet.

L 'Affame… more hungry for hog meat than booty/ Rubio thought.

Boudreaux Balfa was typical of the shoddy, run-of-the-mill Louisiana Acadian, dressed in a homegrown rough cotton ecru shirt, homemade and indigo-dyed knee breeches of the same cotonnade material. Shoes, or stockings, well… if nagged, rustics such as Balfa might don cowhide moccasins to attend church, knee-high moccasins to wade after his lost pigs in the swamps. Shoes and stockings Balfa might possess, for weddings or funerals… if at all! And, like most Acadians, the man was so abstemious that he wore his clothes

until they were halfway between mauvaises and usees; meaning "tattered" or "threadbare." Atop his crown, Balfa wore a plaited palmetto-frond tricorne hat so old its wide brims sagged down nearly to horizontal… and looked as if rats had been at it.

"Ohe, Lanxade," Balfa gravelled in glum greeting to his old-time partner, sweeping off that shabby tricorne to bare a fierce and wiry thicket of unruly iron-grey hair, and studiously ignoring his employers. "See dat sky, dis choppy water? Feel dat wind? It'll be a good half a gale by sundown, by Gar. Let's get dis over wit', cher."

In his younger years, Capitaine Boudreaux Balfa had been a doughty figure of a buccaneer and privateersman, but time and shore living on a hard-scrabble plot of land had not been kind. He had thickened and grown a trencherman's gut, a shad belly, though not an ounce of him was yet soft. Balfa was as thick as a fierce boar hog.

"Ah oui, Boudreaux mon cher," Lanxade agreed. "We don't make a ceremony out of it, we can be fifteen lieues alee by sundown. In deep water, and scudding Large. Bosun, fetch them up!"

He took Balfa by the arm and together they walked back to the rails, away from the swaggering, tipsy revellers. Time had been somewhat kinder to Lanxade; he was still tall, lean, and flat-bellied, unbowed after the toils of peaceful employment on trading company shalopes upriver to Manchac, Natchez, St. Louis, and the old Illinois settlements, and back. But Boudreaux did imagine he heard a suspicious creak from somewhere near Lanxade's middle, which put him in mind of a well-hidden corset. And Balfa allowed himself a secret smile to note that his old compatriot's grey roots were showing, along with the telltale splotch of greenish walnut-husk oil on his ears that betrayed his use of hair dye to remain so dark and virile-looking!

Sure enough, a playful poke at Lanxade's boudins met well-stayed canvas and whalebone resistance. "Hawn hawn hawn!" He softly, nasally chortled at such vanity.

"Oh, shut up, you old bougre," Lanxade hissed back, stiffening to maintain his dignity. And his secrets.

"So, we kill dem, or we maroon dem?" Balfa asked off-handedly.

"Maroon," Lanxade told him, "for the novelty of it."

"Dem babies not tired o' killin' yet?" Balfa wondered aloud.

"Bored with it, more likely," Lanxade said in a harsh mutter. "I could say queasy of the consequences, but with this lot, I wouldn't count on it. Sated for now, but a few weeks ashore, and they'll wish to be back at it. Piracy's addictive… as we both know, cher. Pissing God and the Devil in the eye."

"By damn, dey wanna see real piracy, Jerome, what say we jus' take dis damn' goelette for our own?" Balfa softly cackled. "Mak dem walk de plank, jus' like de ol' days, maroon dem, 'long wit' dem poor salauds down below, hein?"

"They're too rich and important to go missing, Boudreaux, and we'd swing for it," Lanxade countered, though not without a long pause to ponder it.

"But we won't for dat Dago guarda costa lugger? Merde!" The Spanish government lugger, outbound from Havana, returning rebel slaves for execution at Mobile-along with a profitable load of other negres and smuggled goods that her unscrupulous captain had meant to land on the sly-was their latest capture. The small crew of Spaniards had gone overside, as had the convicted rebels, though they'd kept the untainted negres for sale to the caboteurs, the itinerant backcountry slave dealers. After the Pointe Coupee slave insurrection four years earlier, though, even a blind planter would have spurned such lash- or manacle-scarred slaves as cutthroat troublemakers, not with brigands such as St. John or St. Malo leading vengeful runaway slave bands in the swamps of Louisiana.

Those captives had held no value, except for sport. With their hands free, but with leg shackles linked and weighted with shot, their struggle to stay afloat had been tres drole, the strong futilely trying to buoy up the weaker after they'd been forced over the side, once the lugger had been stripped of everything useful, then sunk. The Spaniards had had it kinder; they'd walked the plank with only their arms roped, free to kick-swim to stay afloat, and alive, 'til the game had palled, and the youngsters had honed their marksmanship skills on them. Now, there would be more fun.

Hoots and curses erupted from the schooner's crew, more wine was poured by their youthful employers, as the six remaining prisoners off the prize ship were fetched up the narrow and steep companionway ladder from the schooner's foetid orlop. Stumbling and sickly reeling, their eyes blindfolded and their arms bound, they were unable to help themselves.

"Time to die, bastards!" Helio de Guilleri taunted in English, though his intent was spoiled by tittering at his own wit and putting stress on the second syllable of "bastards."

"Go game, lads! Go game!" one of the older captives urged his mates. "They're nought but prinkin' Frogs an' Dons! Buck up, young sir!" he added as the youngest began to mewl and gasp in dread.

"Fack th' bloody lot o' ye!" another doughtier prisoner cried, head swivelling as if trying to see. "And th' Shee's undyin' cess be on yair black damn' souls."

"The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not… Britons never never never shall be…!" others wavered.

"Shut the Devil… up\" Capitaine Lanxade bellowed, drawing a long-barrelled pistol from his waistband and firing into the air. "Christ, you damned noisy sons of dogs! Once we leave, you can scream all you wish. Stuff your faces with bird shit, drink your own piss… drink the sea and go even madder, for all we care. Loose their hands, men."

"But, Capitaine," one of the de Guilleris objected.

"They cannot climb down into the boat, else," Lanxade snapped back. "Their blindfolds, aussi… take them off. Let them see what a fine estate we give them, ha ha!"

A mutual gasp of bleak realisation wheezed from the doomed men as they beheld the islet, providing even more amusement for the captors.

And with much eager poking, prodding, and shoving, the prisoners were forced to the entry-port, to lower themselves into the centre of the launch, where extra hands with pistols and daggers waited to receive them. Balfa and his oarsmen got down into the boat with them and steered towards the shore.

"Stroke, stroke," Balfa chearily directed, tapping the time on the tiller-bar. "A little song, mes enfants!" he urged.

"Ah! Suzette, Suzette, to veux pas chere?

"Ah, Suzette, Chere amie, to pas Vaimin moin.

M'alle dans montagne, zamie,

M'alle coupe canne, chere amie,

M'alle fait l'argent, mo tresor,

Pour porter donne toi!"

"Bastards!" the oldest prisoner spat back. "Kindest to kill us now and have done, ye gotch-gut shit!"

"Dat can be arranged, cher," Balfa chuckled back.

"Don't!" the youngest pleaded, so agitated he looked as if he would fling himself over the side from fretting, with tears of relief in his eyes that their death was not to be immediate. "Like our vicar always said, Hope springs eternal, and-"

"Hope?" Balfa scoffed. "Dis de Dry Tortugas. Comprendre dry? Never know… might catch turtle. He blood you drink, he meat, and eggs you eat. Kill seabirds, aussi… same. Ah! Up oars! Bow men!"

The launch staggered through the last froth of surf and ground her bows into the raspy, pebbled grit of the beach. Bow men sprang to either side, thigh-deep in white-water spume, to steady the bows as a fresh wave lifted the boat a foot more ashore.

"Go over de bow, don't even get your feet wet, you. Out, vite! Hope… you like you' new home!" Balfa snickered as his oarsmen laid their blades in the bilges and waved their weapons at the captors to speed their departure. "You damn' Anglais! Dis pay you back for all I suffer. Prisoner, me. Kidnap, me, on your ships! Round us all up an' take us away from Acadia, an' don' let us take nozzing wit' us! Gaol us in England, firs'. We don' starve quick enough, us, don' get sick an' die, you damn Anglais ship us to Maryland! See how you like it dis time, by Gar! Damn' English!"

The prisoners were goaded at gun- or swordpoint at least twenty yards inland, past the overwash barrow full of wiregrass and deep, loose sand littered with feathers and shells.

"Oim Oirish!" one of the captives plaintively declared.

"All same, aussi," Balfa told him with almost a sympathetic air. "Dem bebes on de schooner, dey'd leave you nozzing, dem, 'cause dey all jus' crazy mean, but me, Boudreaux Balfa, I a sailor like you, I never let it be said I'm heartless, comprendre? So I give you a slim chance, me. Fetch it out de boat, men. You live, you remember, hein?"

Two crewmen trundled up a ten-gallon wooden barrico. Another slung a worn leather bag across the sand to land at their feet.

"Bonne chance, chers!" Balfa wished them all with a wide smile and a hearty laugh. "You stand where you are, now, 'til we get beyond de surf," he cautioned, wagging a finger in warning, "or we jus' have t'shoot, us. Adieu. Allez vite!"

As the pirates scrambled to shove off and leap into their boat, one of the captives dared kneel by the leather sack and peer inside it. He wonderingly drew out a rusting old kitchen knife, paper, and…

"Crikey, 'tis a quizzin' glass, and a tinder-box, too. We can light a fire, does a ship ever pass!" he whispered in surprise.

"Sweet merciful Jaysus in Heaven!" the Irish captive cried in sudden glee as he swiped his fingers over a damp spot on the barrico and sniffed at it. " 'Tis rum, by God! Ten bloody gallon o' rum!"

"What the Devil?" the oldest sailor puzzled, scratching at his grizzled scalp. He almost felt a twinge of hope, of gratitude to that…

The shot was inaudible over the loud swashing and raling of the surf, the wind that flapped their clothing, and the mewing cries of the seabirds that nested on the islet, flushed a'wing by their presence.

"Oh," the youngest lad said, as if he'd pricked his finger on a thorn, and clapped a hand to the inside of his right thigh. "Oh!" he reiterated, as if a wasp or bee had stung him, as he looked down at the blood on his white breeches. "Ah. Oh Lord!" as realisation came, as he fell to his knees and went as pale as the wave spume.

The other captives could see the tiniest wisp of spent powder smoke that blew westward from the schooner's small quarterdeck, ragging past the taffrails like the spirit of a hag that had ridden her mortal too long and must flee the coming of dawn.

"Oh, you bloody bastards! You goddamn' Frog sonsabitches!" the doughty older captive howled, shaking both fists at their tormentors. "We'll get ye, yet! We'll find ye, and cut yer damn' balls off, hear me? Ye'll all dance th' Tyburn Hornpipe 'fore we're done wi' ye!"

"Oh, poo," Don Rubio groaned, grimacing at his poor aim with a slim and expensive Jaeger rifle. "This boat's pitching, though." His compatriots cheered his expertise, even though he hadn't struck his mark in mid-chest.

"You said you wished to shoot just one, Rubio!" Hippolyte said in commiseration. "He'll die of that, right below his organes! What a bother he'll be for them, before he does. Ha ha!"

"Perhaps they'll eat him!" Helio quipped, eyes merrily alight.

De tit zozos-ye te assis,

De tit zozos si la barrier,

De tit zozos qui zabotte,

Qui ca ye di mo pas conne!

They sang as well, hooting and capering, even assaying a nautical, buccaneer's hornpipe, though they hadn't heard a word that their captives had yelled from shore.

Monzeur-poulet vini simin,

Croupe si ye et croque ye,

Personn pli tend ye zabotte,

De tit zozos si la barrier!

A Creole song, a slave song, one they'd all learned as children.

Two little birds were sitting,

Two little birds were sitting on the fence,

Two little birds were chattering,

What they were saying I do not know.

A chicken hawk came along the road,

Pounced on them and ate them up.

No one hears the chattering anymore,

The two little birds on the fence!