The Captain`s Vengeance

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

They're there, sir," Lt. Langlie told him once he'd gained the deck. "Two big schooners anchored off the tip of Grand Terre, on the West side of the channel. Mister Jugg recognised the black'un, that set him and our party on the Tortugas, but the other is even bigger, a tops'l schooner that we didn't recognise, sir."

Sop to his ego and career prospects, Lewrie told himself; The bold, unsupported probe, but not the lion 's share of any battle. Damn! They did take a prize. Just one, so it must be a rich'un. Talk about your silver fever! For I think I've caught it!

"How close did you get, sir?" Lewrie quickly asked, just about shaking himself to clear his mind of avaricious images. "Did you see any preparations dug? Batteries or watchtowers?"

"We grounded on the beach, sir," Lt. Langlie proudly announced, glorying in his small but risky part of the endeavour boldy done. "On those flat-topped Indian mounds, we could see a few sentries. We got within about half a cable, I'd reckon it, before we feared their firelight might expose us, sir. They're celebrating, sir! Three sheets to the wind, as drunk as lords… lots of caterwauling and fiddling, capering and dancing." Lt. Langlie snickered, his teeth shining in the darkness as he broadly grinned. "Long as we observed 'em, the sentries atop the earth mounds came and went, spent half their time jawing with their shipmates down below, and sneaking swigs from crocks or bottles when they thought no one was looking. No batteries, sir, no entrenchments that we could spy, though Mister Jugg thought he saw springs set on the black-hulled schooner's bower and kedge cables."

"So, an hour 'fore dawn, and they'll most-like be falling-down drunk and insensible," Lewrie surmised. "Better and better! A grand night's work, Mister Langlie. Damned fine!"

"Thank you, sir!" Langlie gladly replied. "And thank you for the opportunity, to-"

"No one saw you and your party, d'ye think?" Lewrie fretted of a sudden.

"Don't think so, sir, no." Lt. Langlie told him, pensive for a moment. "No hue and cry, that's for certain."

"Well, that's fine, then," Lewrie decided, letting out a much-relieved sigh. "And thank you, Mister Langlie, for an arduous task, nobly done."

"Er… aye, aye, sir."

"If you will, sir, I'd admire the shalope fetched alongside, so I may go aboard her," Lewrie ordered, turning stiffly formal. "I give you charge of Proteus 'til my return, or the completion of our little enterprise, sir. Get her as deep into the channel as you think practicable, Mister Langlie, and her guns well within range, even the carronades if that's possible."

"Directly, sir!" Langlie assured him.

"Damme, I like this frigate hellish-fine, Mister Langlie! Just as she is… paintwork included, hmm?" Lewrie declared, chuckling as he clapped his First Lieutenant on the shoulder.

"I'll take good care of her, sir. No worries."

"I have none, sir," Lewrie replied. "Especially knowing that any scrapes and such'd be your sad task to repair, once back in port!"

Boudreaux Balfa and his son, Fusilier, toiled away on the dark bay side of the captured Spanish schooner, shifting kegs from her entry-port to the sole of a dowdy, paint-peeling, and flat-bottomed lugger, a single-masted boat that could go almost anywhere up the bayous or the coulees that a pirogue could go… if one knew the maze of waterways like the palm of one's hand, as did Balfa, his son and several of his neighbours who'd come along on the raiding cruise. Kegs of silver were shifted from the lugger to their flat-bottomed boats and pirogues, their shares for participating… as well as "a little something extra" that Balfa and his neighbours would rather not have the others know a thing about.

Chere, mo lem-me toi, oui, mo lem-me toi,

avec tou mo coeur, mo lem-me toi, chere,

comme tit cochon lem-me la boul!

He sang softly, covertly, perhaps to hide the sly guffaw at the trick he was playing on all of them, else he would be roaring out loud.

Dear, I love you so, yes, I love you so.

With all my heart, I love you, dear,

like the little pig loves mud! Hee hee heel

"Papa, the others," Fusilier Balfa fretted in a whisper. "If we steal dem blind, dey come after us an' kill us!"

"Naw, Fusilier. Come dawn, ever'body gonna shinny up dere own side, I tell ya," Boudreaux softly snickered. "We just takin' our own shares a little early, is all. For safekeepin'. Comprends, mon fils?"

"I don' know," Fusilier timidly objected, counting off a new keg as it was manhandled across their lugger to a waiting pirogue; that would make twenty kegs so far, he reckoned. And more was coming.

Just in case a Spanish guarda costa or one of those perfidious British men-o'-war ran across them before they'd reached the safety of Barataria Bay, over eight hundred kegs had been put aboard Le Revenant, so if one ship was taken, the cruise wouldn't be a total loss for the survivors. Fusilier's papa had told him on the sly that the take was nowhere near what their buccaneers expected, but that he was to shut his mouth about that until the whole cargo was broken out and the truth revealed… in the morning, when their crew would be groggy and hungover, perhaps gullible enough to settle for what was in hand.

There was enough rum and arrack, enough barricos of rough Mexican wine, to keep the men pliable and "hot" enough to work the ships back to Grand Terre, but not sober enough to wonder where the rest of the money was. Dread of being taken by a passing warship had sped their labours in shifting some of the cargo, then breaking off suddenly and setting sail homeward, with the rest soon to be "discovered."

Balfa and Lanxade would declare that they would take less than their customary shares, so the men would not be cheated. Just as soon as the de Guilleris and their arrogant compatriots were accused of supplying them with false information, a nebulous (but hopefully believable!) plot would emerge with the banker Maurepas, to skim off some of the silver as soon as it landed in New Orleans… Jerome Lanxade would even suggest that Maurepas, Bistineau, and the de Guilleris might have conspired to steal some of the silver from the prize during the night!

Which would conveniently explain why Boudreaux Balfa was taking some tonight, and wouldn't Jerome be surprised! Balfa gleefully thought as he shouldered another heavy keg from one of his cousins aboard the prize and carefully set it by the others in the lugger's amidships. He reckoned that he might be able to make off with about 40,000 silver dollars, which he might split with Jerome… or he might not. Maybe even 50,000, if the water in the creeks, coulees, sloughs, and bayous was up, and they could float that much away.

Did he take a reduced share of the loot in the morning, not the 200,000 he was due but only 50,000, say, the Balfas would be rich for life, rich beyond imagining, when he combined his public share with a little, trifling, miniscule private one, even if he had to give half to Lanxade to mollify him once he found that his imaginative fabulation was true, hee hee!

And just to be on the safe side, he had a second lugger for a quick departure, once the share-out was done, before anyone with quick wits could suspect him. After all, come dawn those witless play-acting bebes would be feeding the crabs; the prize schooner would be emptied, stripped, and burned; and Le Revenant awarded to the strongest, loudest-voiced, and quickest-witted pirate who wanted to stay in business.

"Vite, vite, mes chers, " Balfa stealthily urged. " Un autre … beaucoup d'autres! Another… a lot o' others!"

"It's so pagan!" Charite tittered as she sat cross-legged on a blanket atop one of the ancient Indian earth mounds where she and her brothers and kin had, by right as "leaders," put up a trio of lean-to shelters for the night. "Like something out of an old book."

Firelight flickered high and heathen from several bonfires on the beach, from cooking fires where cauldrons simmered and black-iron pans sizzled up savoury things. The flickering yellow and orange glow from so many fires lent an unreal aura to the shoreline for over fifty yards from end to end, from the beach line to the scrubby bushes above the beach, where the wood had been gathered, and illuminated the tall trees that shrouded their secret lair ^and the betraying sight of the ships' masts from view from any passing searchers. The light was reflected back onto the rough buccaneer camp by the bleached-bone whiteness of other, lower mounds of oyster, mussel, and clam shells that had been heaped up first by aboriginal Indians, then added to by White fishermen, wanderers, and outlaws. They were not as tall or as deep as the roughly flat-topped earth mounds, but they snaked along like a miniature mountain chain, slumped into each other a bit inshore.

The camp could boast a few rare tents, but most huts were of fresh-cut saplings and thin limbs, over which scrap canvas or blankets had been draped… more lean-tos, hastily thrown up by their sailors or built for them by the many wild rovers who made a precarious life along the bay and the inland lake. Wild, eerie, and isolated as these remote isles were, some few people did reside there and even more camped temporarily. And Barataria had been a pirates' lair and "hurricane hole" for ages. And where there were pirates and bold buccaneers, there would be the chance for quick profits off their witless free-spending.

Almost as soon as their mast heads had been spotted, red-sailed luggers had veered down to them, and somehow the word had spread, drawing rowing boats, swamp craft, and pirogues full of hopeful entrepreneurs. Cooks had built lean-tos and fires, shrimpers and crabbers had turned up with their catches, farmers had arrived with bushel baskets filled with pod peas and corn for boiling or "roasting ears." Fruit, backcountry wines, pigs, chickens, and goats, carefully hoarded bottles of costly cognac or apple brandy from dearest la belle France, turned up for sale. Flounder, mullet, and mullet roe, even humble meat like muskrat, 'possum, rabbit, and raccoon sizzled on little spits and peeled twigs, their aromas blending with that of fresh corn-breads.

There were half-naked Spaniards and Canary Islanders, very poor Acadians, and even a few French Creoles who'd fallen on hard times; some light-skinned Free Blacks, swarthier negres who just might be Maroons escaped from their masters' plantations and eking out a meagre existence as honest runaways, or even a few sly-eyed ex-slaves now in a predatory armed marauder gang like that of the devilish Saint John, whose murderous horde were known to lurk along the west shore of the bay.

There were cooks, there were gamblers, and there were putains, too, of all nations and races. Some of those women danced singly as the drunken sailors danced to the music of the itinerant musicians. Some, nude and glistening, put on a show to music to lure tossed coins, then the "socket-fee from the pirate who was the most enflamed. They flung themselves down under a lean-to and grunted in time with whoever had found them fetching, then sponged off in the salt water of the bay, standing knee-deep between the many grounded boats before going back to look for a fresh customer.

"Capitaine Lanxade said they only think they know how to celebrate," Helio ventured to say, now that Charite seemed to be her old self again, after her hysterical tirade of a day or two before. "This is nothing to the old days, he said. These modern buccaneers of ours can't hold a candle to the wild men he knew in his youth."

"And we've only seen three fights," Don Rubio added with a disappointed sniff. "And none of them to the death." Warily, Don Rubio still distanced himself from Charite's side. For if she could forgive her brothers and her cousin, even speak civilly to them again, yet she still gathered her brows together and scowled at him whenever it was necessary for them to converse, her voice distant and cold.

"The night is still young," Jean-Marie Rancour commented with a hopeful chuckle and shrug. "One never knows…"

"Hmmph!" Charite said, turning to look at Helio and Hippolyte. "Even if this is only a dim shadow of an old-time pirate gathering, it is still a wondrous show. Tortuga and Topsail Island… Port Royal, before the earthquake destroyed it. Nassau, on New Providence, before Capitaine Woodes Rogers cleaned it out. And him an old pirate, too!"

"No honour among thieves, the saying goes, cherie," Helio cited.

"The firelight, the Blacks," she rhapsodised in spite of him, quite romantically taken by the scenes, the smells. "So much nudity on display! Why, one could almost imagine us transported among those savage corsairs of High Barbary… in Algiers, where the sultans buy beautiful virgin girls for their hareems!"

"Christ!" Hippolyte sneered with a disparaging groan. "Novels! Romances written mostly by eunuchs in a Parisian garret! There's not a single thing worth a sou in fiction books!"

"Most written by Anglais eunuchs!" Jean-Marie guffawed. "French writers at least have the 'necessities' to write romances. From experience, not their imagination."

Charite frowned over that comment, her lips pursed in an argumentative moue as she thought of telling them a thing or two about how equipped with the "necessities" some Englishmen were, but didn't.

What was done was done, she told herself, and she'd never see her Englishman again. There was tonight, though, this heady and rapturous pagan display to savour. Tonight, she was not a patriotic revolutionary, she was… Mary Read or Anne Bonny, notorious girl pirates of ancient fame!

She sat cross-legged on the ground in breeches and boots, with a sheathed dagger in her sash, a blade up her sleeve, pistols at her hips, and her trusty sword standing close at hand. In her lap there was a coin-silver charger for her supper plate, looted from a Spanish captain's quarters, and she used heavy, ornate silver utensils from a dead man's sideboard.

She dined on roast goat and pork, like the bold Caribbean boucaniers had, on peeled shrimp and rice, corn on the cob, peas, and cornbread. By her right knee stood a large silver tankard, the piratical rogue's sort with a clear glass bottom, so big it could hold a whole pint of beer, half a bottle of wine, or an entire flask of brandy or rum. This night, it was strong, heady, amber rum.

Dining alfresco but hearty, swigging rum in a savage firelight, witnessing a bawdy, raucous carnival to celebrate a victory, a grand coup, a magnificent adventure. Oh, it was simply wondrous!

The bonfire smoke and cook-fire smoke wreathed and melded with a rising mist to encapsulate the scene, as if Nature made for them a ghostly theatre. She would remember this all the rest of her life!