The Captain`s Vengeance

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

Half a point more to windward, Jugg," Lewrie snapped, his eyes fixed upon the black-hulled schooner. As they neared her, she turned from a dark smear in the fog to a substantial and detailed fact. He could hear firing off the larboard bows, coming almost abeam now; distinguishable pops of single muskets, the sharper crack of his Marine's Pennsylvania rifles, now and then the collective Chuff! of a volley fired all at once. They were late, the wind was perverse and fickle, his landing party might be getting knackered, and his shalope was closing too slowly to overwhelm the pirate schooner. He had no need for a telescope to see her crew scurrying to prepare to fight. She had been bows-on when they could first make her out through a thin patch of fog but was now slowly swinging to bare her starboard side, her blood-red gunwale stripe oddly bright and ominous as they let out on her kedge cable and hauled in on the spring-line on her bow cable. Lewrie could see a flamboyantly garbed figure on her quarterdeck, waving his arms and shouting.

" 'At 'd be Jerome Lanxade, sor," Jugg grimly informed him, " 'at pea-cocky one, yonder. Alius woz a flash bugger."

Six gun-ports each side, my survivors said, Lewrie speculated; four-pounders or six-pounders, mixed perhaps. Our battery, God, what a joke! They had swivels and boat-guns, so short-ranged they couldn't use them 'til they were close-aboard, would have to eat one or two of Lanxade's broadsides before getting that close. He'd try to be stoic, in the best Royal Navy traditions, but the odds didn't look good!

Steer for her bows, lock bowsprits, and board her up forrud? he feverishly schemed; Haul off and cross her stern might work, too, if there 's depth enough. Mr. Pollock's borrowed shalope only drew eight feet, slightly less without a cargo. Yet if they ran aground short of the schooner, it would mean the death of them all; if they crossed her stern so slowly that they caromed off her kedge cable, they'd be just as helpless, could end up stranded close to the beach, drifting to ruin, whilst the schooner cut her cables and escaped!

And there was still no sign of Proteus!

"Ship burning beyond her, sir!" Midshipman Larkin cried.

"They did take a prize!" Lewrie exclaimed, finally reaching for his telescope. "Damme, they've fired her!"

"With all the silver aboard her, sir?" Young Mr. Larkin yelped.

"Sonsabitches," Lewrie gravelled, outraged that all this might be for nought, beyond justice, of course… and vengeance.

He lowered his telescope, lips gloomily pursed. That schooner beyond the black-hulled one was ablaze from end to end, wren- or mouse-sized flames scuttling along every inch of her standing or running rigging, and great clouds of smoke beginning to belch from open hatches.

"Mister Larkin," Lewrie stolidly ordered. "I'll have all the swivel-guns shifted to starboard, along with the grappling hooks and throwing lines. We'll board her starboard side to starboard side."

"Oye oye, s- Aye aye, sir, mean t'say," Mr. Larkin chirped. Whenever he was excited, which was rather often, the lad easily lapsed into a cottager's brogue.

"Mister Jugg," Lewrie said, rounding on him. "Pinch her up to weather, like we'd grapple to her bows. But at the last moment I want you to slew about and go alongside her near side. We'll give 'em grape and langridge, point-blank, then board her."

"Aye, sor," Jugg said with a firm nod of understanding.

"Ah, sah?" Andrews whispered, plucking his attention back. "I think she's openin' her ports, sah, ready t'fire."

"Nothing t'do but grin and bear it, hey?" Lewrie tried to jape.

"Good God A'mighty," Andrews whispered.

Lewrie turned his attention back to the pirate schooner, just as the first of her guns exploded in a gush of powder smoke, a sharpish slamming noise, with the scream of solid shot coming…! Passing! Warbling off easterly, a clean miss!

"Bear up… bear up!" Lewrie snapped, pointing to the north. "Duck out of their aim, Jugg… thus!"

The schooner blotted herself out of existence as four more guns fired, making a dense, drifting wall of yellow-grey powder smoke along her engaged starboard side, sulfurous and reeking. Shot howled harpy-like, and a cannon ball nipped at their shalope's larboard stern quarters, another slammed into her midships larboard bulwarks but caromed off after wrenching a large bite of timber from her with the parrot-screech of shattered wood. One screamed low over the deck, its unseen passage trailed by a tunnel of tortured air that shimmered like the uprush from a red-hot forge. The last was another clean miss!

As the spent powder smoke drifted southward, the schooner's bow swam out of the newest mist; jib-boom and bowsprit, figurehead, beak, rails, and nettings…

"Helm hard up, now!" Lewrie rasped, coughing on the guns' lees.

Jugg put the tiller as far over to starboard as it would swing, his weight, and Dempsey's weight, pressing on the bar, and the shalope began to turn.

"Stand by grapnels, Mister Larkin… stand by swivel-guns, at close range," Lewrie called out. "Christ!"

There the schooner was, her upper railings just a foot higher than the shalope's deck, her glossy black hull shining like a fresh-groomed stallion, so close Lewrie could almost call it spitting distance. Their shalope's thrusting jib-boom looked like it would jam right into the schooner's main-mast shrouds and pin her there helplessly, but after a long, pent breath, the jib-boom slid past by a cat's whisker, and they were sidling up to her at an angle.

"Boat-guns, swivels, and muskets… fire as you bear!" Lewrie cried, drawing his hanger and a double-barrelled Manton pistol. His men opened fire, the light 2-pounders barking lap-dog sharp, chewing chunks from the schooner's side without doing much real damage. The swivels, though, atop the cap-rail stanchions, spewed loads of musket and pistol balls nearly straight across her decks, reaping things… and people!

"Grapnels!" he snapped as their boat's single mast came level with the schooner's midships. The hooks flew, scraped, and found purchase, and muscle power on the heaving lines hauled their lighter vessel alongside, checking her way in a groaning instant. Their bow met the schooner, bumping and rasping, the stern began to swing in snugly, and there were more bumps and thuds.

All the while, Lewrie, with nothing physical to do, stared with dread at those gaping gun-ports, just waiting for them to be filled by reloaded cannon, for them to spew grape and langridge and murder every man in his crew, yet…

"Boarders! "he, almost screamed at last! "Away, boarders!" Up atop his own bulwarks, a long stride across to theirs, and he was hopping down to the schooner's deck, flooding with tittery, joyous relief to see that no more than one or two pirates had tended each cannon, that most of her crew had been ashore. He dashed aft, bumped and shouldered by his own hands, to claim her quarterdeck.

"Vous!" the gaudily dressed captain said, a tall and lean man with a wide but slim set of mustachios… and a sword in his hand.

"Strike, ye thievin' cut-throat!" Lewrie roared back. A burly pirate with a cutlass leaped between, shoved forward by Lanxade. The cutlass and Lewrie's hanger rang together once, twice, the pirate two-handing his sword. Lewrie binded him, brought up his Manton with his left hand, and gave him both barrels in his lower chest with the muzzles against his skin, and the man shrieked and lurched backwards like a pole-axed steer, his shirt on fire.

"Strike, damn you!" Lewrie roared again, tossing away his spent pistol, cutting the air with his sword.

"Va te faire foutre, vous sanglant cochon!"'Lanxade spat, whipping his long, old-style rapier through the air as well.

"Fuck yourself." Lewrie retorted as Lanxade sprang at him with a distracting foot-stamp and an inarticulate screech of battle rage. Their blades met, parted slithering and chiming, met edge to edge with the next slashes, both men iron-wristed, iron-willed.

"Comin', sir!" he heard his Cox'n Andrews vow.

"Hell ye will, he's mine!" Lewrie shouted.

"Son!" Boudreaux Balfa shouted in immense relief when he recognised one of the weary swimmers in the water and quickly sculled over to pick him up. Mademoiselle Charite was there, too, with Jean, that little La Fitte brute. Fusilier clambered in first, then aided the girl. Balfa considered leaving Jean, not trusting him one inch, but Fusilier reached for him and hauled him in, while the mademoiselle knelt on the soleboards, coughing up water, as drenched as any wharf rat. Balfa spun his boat about, got Fusilier and Jean to seize hold of two oars, and started north, up the bay,

for escape.

"Capitaine Balfa!" Charite finally found strength to say. "You must go back! Those cowards took all the boats. My brothers!"

A mere hundred yards off the beach, Balfa could hear the firing and the clash of blades, the desperation of French-speaking or Spanish pirates… and the encouraged battle cries in English.

"Naw, cherie," Balfa sadly said, "dere nothin' t'be done. Best we can hope is we get away. De game's done did."

Charite knew it in her heart, too, as she crept aft near Balfa to cling to the boat's gunnl's and peer at the battle on the mounds.

"Helio!" she yelled, sitting up on her knees and waving as her elder brother appeared at the back of their mound's flat top, pistols in both hands, looking seaward, looking at her. He shouted something, waved as if to drag back the only boat still in sight.

Two horrid red splotches suddenly blossomed on his white shirt, the fine linen and lace punctured through-and-through with.75 calibre musket balls! Helio stumbled forward, dropping his guns, and almost knelt as if to recoup his strength… then pitched, tumbling and sliding down the back slope of the mound like a bundle of cast-off clothes from a rag-picker's barrow.

"Nooo!" Charite screamed, grief, protest, and horror together.

"Gotta go, chers," Balfa urged. "Vite, vite!"

Topman Willy Toffett scrambled up the slope of an earth mound, gasping, almost clawing with his free hand for purchase, grasping his heavy Brown Bess Sea Pattern musket in his right. He had been scared at first, but seeing so many pirates-some he even recognised from his ordeal in their grasp, their marooning on the Dry Tortugas -on the run, or dying, had perked up his courage considerably. A Marine ahead of him, Private Doyle, a fair-decent bastard for a Lobsterback, was kicking muck in his eyes as he scrambled, howling eagerness, his musket held in both hands. "Hah… hah!" Doyle cried as he engaged a pirate who rose up atop the lip of the mound, bringing his bayonet-fitted musket level, thrusting at the sword-armed foeman's belly, but the pirate whipped up a pistol and shot him in the chest.

One of 'em! Toffett thought, panicked again as Doyle fell back the slope, head-down and instantly killed. He was one of 'em aboard that schooner, the one who killed Midshipman Burns, all those slaves in the water! Toffett howled inarticulately as he reached the top and swung his musket like a quarterstaff at the man's legs, knocking him off his feet long enough for Toffett to take proper hold and get into the drill he'd been taught four times a week since "volunteering" into Proteus. Thrust!-partially parried by the bastard's sword. Recover. Thrust again, step forward inside guard. Butt-strike, up from below-right to level, the heavy brass-footed stock smashing into the bastard's mouth with a toothy Crunch! to send him sprawling on his back! Plant left foot forward! Thrust! Toffett screamed just as loud as the pirate as he sank six inches of triangular steel into the foe's belly, folding him up like a jackknife! Twist, stamp, and Recover! "Yew murd'rin' son'fabitch!" Stamp! Thrust, into the enemy's unguarded throat! Lean on the musket like shoving a capstan bar, and twist and grind, saw back and forth! "Yew filthy goddamn whoreson! That fer Mister Burns! That, fer them Cuffies! That, fer ol' Doyle!"

"Don't make a meal of 'im, lad!" Marine Sergeant Skipwith said almost in his ear, beaming with delight. "Six inch o' bayonet's good as a yard fer his sort!"

And Don Rubio Monaster, whose aristocratic ancestors had been hidalgo since the Reconquista of Spain, and charged into battle with El Cid against the Moors, died with the taste of blood and cold metal in his mouth, and his elegant breeches full of shit.

Hippolyte de Guilleri could only hear a whistling noise in his ears as he scampered to the back of the mound, terror making an empty, cold pit in his middle, and his bowels watery. Time and motion slowed to a crawl as he saw Rubio get spitted, as he took hopeless guard with his sword to oppose the sailors and soldiers running at him, him alone as the last defender, all by himself, and it was so unfair, he didn't mean to kill all those people, and he pleaded with God that he was now sorry to have taken such perverse pleasure from killing, but hadn't it been in a righteous cause, for Louisiana, for France, so…!

Hippolyte stamped his foot and slashed with his sword, howling at the hard-faced men who swarmed at him from every corner, trembling inside despite his wish to be brave, go game.

Maman, don't let it hurt! he wailed to himself as his blade was easily knocked aside, and he saw the flicker of a heavy cutlass coming at him sideways. It cleaved like an axe into the side of his neck… and it did hurt, very much, a white-hot agony in his head, his throat, and a second was rammed into his groin with so much force that he was lifted up on tiptoes. It redoubled the agony, brought forth a scream through the bubbling blood he was drowning in, his last breath.

And then there was an officer in a blue coat standing over him as he sank to his knees struggling for air; raising a pistol in his face, inches from his eyes, and the bore was as wide as a cannon, and then there was a hot, reeking, scalding wind on his face, bright amber light like the fires of Hades then… rien. Nothing.

He ain 't a hop master! Lewrie wearily thought as he caught his enemy's blade on his, twisted his wrist so it slid off his own, jabbed under to force him back, then swept his hanger up to high-left to stop another slash, counter-sweeping under at his belly, again, missing…

Elegant as Lanxade dressed, he wasn't the product of some languid fencing-master's salle d'armes. He was skilled, quick, and steel-wristed, and fought with the desperate savagery of a back-alley brawler, the cut-and-thrust he'd learned at sea in close-quarter murder.

They swirled about each other, leaping, stamping, and clashing. All the other pirates were down, the schooner was theirs, and his hands stood watching their captain's fight. If he stumbled or fell, looked about to lose, Lewrie was sure that a dozen muskets or pistols would take Lanxade down the next instant. Surely, Lewrie thought, Lanxade knew he was a dead man even if he won, and, tiring as Lewrie was, the issue was in doubt! Swordplay was the most strenuous and enervating way to fight, and his one-on-one "duel" with Lanxade felt like it had been going on for half an hour, not one or two minutes!

Lanxade clashed, drew him wide left, then whipped under, thrust with a mighty shout and stamp, but Lewrie met it, whipped off a flying cut-over, forcing Lanxade's longer rapier low and left, wide-open…!

Lanxade, panting and gasping as loud as Lewrie, instinctively cut right, was left high and wide, vulnerable for once, backed against the schooner's taff-rails, and Lewrie put all he had into a slash that would gut the bastard from his left hip to his right breast!

Lanxade bellowed rage and defiance, even as Lewrie's hanger cut his clothing open like a berserk tailor's razor. Blood sprang from a slash on Lanxade's left thigh, another gout from his right shoulder. Something went Twang-twang-twang! and Lanxade fell back with his sword hand on the taff-rail to recover, his stomach and belly swelling like he'd suddenly become pregnant, and Lewrie was stunned motionless for a second or two.

"Bloody Hell." Lewrie gawped.

"Merde alors!" Lanxade snarled back, using that second granted him to glance down and see his waist-coat and shirt slashed open, and the severed laces of his whale-bone corset standing out like hedgehog quills! " Sale chien!'"Lanxade screamed, shoving off the railing, and brought his rapier up in a wild slash at Lewrie's head, which he ducked, tried to slash back downwards in the blink of an eye, but that was blocked by Lewrie's right shoulder against his forearm, and Lewrie rammed the point of his hanger deep into Lanxade's stomach, no longer protected by canvas, whale-bone, or lacings, right through the gap he'd made with his slash; deep as he could, the whole length of the honed back-blade savagely twisted to ease its withdrawal. Lanxade tried to bring his own rapier back far enough to stab, but Lewrie took hold of his wrist, feeling the man's oar-stout strength going.

Lewrie looked into his eyes, glaring utter hatred, getting the same hatred back. "Fuck with my sailors, will you? My prize you took… my men you almost murdered! My Midshipman you gut-shot and left to die, you… miserable… bastard!" Lewrie raged, almost in his ear. "Now die, and roast in the fires of Hell!"

Lewrie stood back, jerked Lanxade back on his feet as he tugged his bloody hanger free, then jammed it up under Lanxade's jaw, through soft tissue and tongue, into his brain!

Lanxade jerked and jiggled like a dancing marionette at a Punch Judy show, his rapier clanging on the deck as it dropped from nerveless fingers, then he was falling backwards over the taff-rails, arms, legs, and coat jerkily windmilling as Lewrie shoved him over-side, to create a cannonball's splash as he plunged deep under. Lewrie peered down over the schooner's transom to see Lanxade surface once, strangling but incapable of movement, before he went under again, to sink slowly, lifeless eyes almost yearning for air, and the light.

Drowned, a last thought in the final dark: I died rich, hein? Lewrie spun about, sagged against the taff-rails, and peered up at the French Tricolour which still flew aloft. "Get that damned rag down, someone," he croaked, dry-mouthed and desperately weary. Cox'n Andrews came to his side with a leather bottle of brandy, and a suck or two at that helped. He was leery of the round-eyed awe his sailors showed him, but hoped that awe cancelled out his previous lost respect ashore.

"Been below, sor," Toby Jugg reported. "They's kegged silver in th' hold, not too much, though. Pris'ners say th' bulk o' h'it woz on their prize, still."

They looked West. The pirate's prize was now a half-sunk hulk, a bowl of sullen flames beneath a monstrous volcano's pillar of smoke, adrift and almost beached. Even as they watched, the fire reached the unpillaged powder magazines, its kegs and sewn cartridges at last. She exploded with a dull roar, a staggering series of blasts that shot flaming debris and fingery smoke trails up and outwards, each bigger than the rest. And with each explosion came a glittering in the sky like the coloured embers of a fireworks display; tiny, silvery bits that glinted as they spiralled out over a half-mile radius, all new-minted and mirror-like in the rising sun.

"Oh!" Lewrie lamented. "Ooh!" went his sailors. "Aw, shit!"

"Boy, you get in your brother's boat," Balfa ordered after they met up with the grim-faced Pierre in a small gig by himself. "You an' him row like Hell one way, we go dat way, dey don't cotch us all in de one bite, hein?" Balfa still had two loaded pistols in his belt, but Pierre only had one, and all the rest had been soaked useless in their swim. Bad as things looked, hard as it was to see old Jerome meet a hard end as they rowed past to the west of the fight, his neighbours still had his hillock of silver, and the fewer greedy survivors of this day, the better; especially those quick-witted La Fitte brothers.

"Row where?" Pierre snarled. "We don't know the way through…"

"Away from dis\" Balfa mirthlessly hooted. "Due north, get in Lake Barataria, skirt de shore, de bayou take you free, you stay wit' de wide channel. Get t'New Orleans, den it up to you, dat."

"We have no money, we've lost it all," Pierre carped.

"Oh, here," Balfa grudgingly said, pulling out his coin-purse and tossing the bulging sack over, pretending generosity. "Dat get ya new kits, passage outta Looziann'. Don' worry 'bout payin' me back, chers. De least a capitaine can do for good hands, hein? Go on, now. Hug de right bank, t'rough dat op'nin' dere, see it? Right bank, all de way, an' don't go wand'rin' off in a coulee. Dey be 'Cadiens live 'long dere, dey steer ya right, feed ya an' put ya up 'til ya get back t'New Orleans, an' bonne chance, chers! Maybe we go sea-rovin' again, together. Never can tell!"

Pierre weighed the bag in his hand, couldn't see that Boudreaux Balfa had another on him, and decided to make the best of what little was left him. He motioned his younger brother, Jean, to join him in his boat, and they set off. Balfa bade the morose Mademoiselle Charite take the steering oar, and he sat beside his son on a rough thwart, an oar in his hoary hands. "Let's row hard, now, Fusilier. All de way home, and say a strong prayer we get away wit' our lives, by Gar!"

"Sir! Sir!" Midshipman Larkin cried, hopping from one foot to another in excitement. "There's a rowing boat out there, sir, off the larboard bows. They're not our people, sir!"

The damnable fog had not quite dissipated, but it had thinned considerably, now more a haze that hid the horizons. Lewrie put his telescope to his eye and swept the nearer waters. There were a lot of boats, most nigh-lost in the northern haze, some to the west… ah! That'un! Two men rowing, a lad and a gammer, one man with his hair bound back in a horse-tail steering with a sweep-oar… about two miles off and going strong.

Up to the Nor'east, Lewrie could almost make out a second boat with two men in it. "Mister Jugg?" he called. "Use my glass and tell me if you recognise anyone in these two boats nearest us."

Jugg trotted up from his task of helping secure their prize and took a long gander with Lewrie's telescope. " 'At 'un up in th' Nor'east, sor… don't think I know them fellers," he said after a long moment. "Left-hand'un, though… 'at's Boudreaux Balfa at 'er starboard oar, as big as life, sor! We goin' after 'em, Cap'm?" he eagerly asked.

Lewrie took his telescope back, extended the tubes to full magnification, and eyed the closest of his known foes. "Damme!"

He grunted as if punched in the stomach as he recognised another person in Balfa's boat: Charite! She'd turned to peer astern anxiously and he spotted her long mane of chestnut hair, her soggy shirt plastered to womanly breasts. "The murderin' bitch. Do we have a boat handy?" he loudly demanded, rounding to peer about the schooner's deck. "We're off after 'em, if we have t'paddle logs!"

"Two, sir," Midshipman Larkin responded. "Our shalope's jolly boat, and… that," he said, pointing over-side at a scrufulous pirogue tied up alongside their captured schooner's larboard chains.

"Cox'n Andrews! You, me, and four hands in the jolly boat, men who can row like Blazes!" Lewrie quickly decided. "All to have muskets and cutlasses." With the shore fight seemingly done, and Capt. Nicely in charge of that, there was nothing to deter him from wrapping things up, nabbing Balfa… and getting a personal matter finished. "Mister Adair… take charge here 'til I get back. Send word ashore if you're able, and tell Captain Nicely where I've gone."

"Aye, sir," Lieutenant Adair crisply replied.

"Hands for the pirogue," Lewrie bade to his crewmen. "Any volunteers to…

"Me, sor," Toby Jugg quickly spoke up. "Sorta personal, like." Lewrie looked him in the eyes for a moment, then nodded assent. Just 'cause he once knew the bastard…! Lewrie thought with a mental shrug as he headed for entry-port; no reason not to trust him. Jugg and his two almost inseparable mates, his fellow Irishmen Mannix and Dempsey, followed Jugg into the pirogue as Lewrie took charge of the tiller of his own rowboat. "Shove off, out oars… and let's be after the bastard!" Lewrie urged his hands.

As their boats began to surge in pursuit, he did take a moment, though, to wonder if he could shoot a woman if he caught up with Charite.

"Dey gainin' on us," Balfa muttered, arm muscles bulging as he dug deep with his oar, laying out almost prone at each stroke to sweep their boat faster; almost ruing that he'd rid himself of the La Fittes, now that they needed fresh, strong backs. "Gonna cotch us… I think. Dat pirogue… she be… faster, her," he grunted 'tween hard strokes. His tongue was about lolling out, and Fusilier's youthful power was nearly played out, too. The girl could steer adequately, but she'd not last five minutes on an oar. "Mam'selle … dat rifle o' yours… you can use it, hein? You good shot?"

Helio had showed her how to use the air-rifle, though she didn't consider herself a crack shot. Charite had opened the magazine tube as they'd rowed past Le Revenant, when the La Fittes were still aboard, to count remaining rounds. There were only seven. Helio and Hippolyte had bragged how far it could shoot… She angrily swiped the sleeve of her shirt over her eyes to blot the fresh tears that the thought of them evoked. They were prisoners of the hated Anglais, now, on their way to a British noose, cruelly wounded, or… dead and gone!

Everything was lost! Ships, crew, the silver, and when news got to the Spanish, the surviving de Guilleris would face arrest and trial and the garotte in the Place d'Armes. All they owned would be forfeit, even if her parents and sisters had had no knowledge or part in their planned revolution.

Her own fate was the bitterest of all to savour; she would die not as a martyr for France, but as a fool, an utter failure who'd gotten her brothers killed, a lunatic with a demented dream! And Creoles, even those who might have taken up arms with them, would be cowed into silence and ineffectiveness! Louisiana and New Orleans would stay part of Spain!

Better to die now, Charite bleakly thought, fantasising a tale told of a brave but foolish girl who'd slain her heartless, pursuing Englishmen and died in battle, than to be abased in a court like Joan of Arc, then strangled in the public square.

"Mam'selle?" Balfa prompted.

"I can use it, Capitaine," Charite grimly promised. "When the time comes, I will. I'll not be taken, non."

But oh, it would be hard to die, when she'd only had nineteen sunny years. Couldn't there have been many more, in a Louisiana that was free and French again, her holy duty done?

"Hoy, the boat!" an Anglais shouted from a boat on their starboard quarter. "Lay on your oars and surrender, in the King's name!"

"Shit on your king!" Boudreaux Balfa hooted back, "an' kiss my rosy 'Cadien ass!" In a mutter, he added, "De time be come, mam'selle. Try your eye, an' I'll be ready wit' my pistols for when dey gets real close."

Charite abandoned the sweep-oar, pulled the air-rifle up off the boat's sole, and cranked the stiff loading lever to chamber a ball, then turned on her thwart to take aim, frightened to death but determined to take at least one despicable Anglais with her before she fell.

"We know who you are, Boudreaux Balfa!" the Anglais bellowed in a quarterdeck voice, shambling half bent over to stand in the bows of his boat. "Charite de Guilleri! Surrender, and no harm will come to you!"

She started with alarm, chilled that the British knew her by name! Over the sights of her rifle, she peered at the officer in the bows, a "Bloody" cochon in a gilt-laced coat, face shaded by a large cocked hat, hands cupped to his mouth. He would be her target. She cocked the valve mechanism to the air-chamber.

The officer lowered his hands, took off his hat as his boat got within sixty yards, and a long musket shot… Him?Mon Dieu, Alain?

A spy, a glib liar, an arch foe of all she held dear! Crack!

Her first round was short and to the right, but Alain's oarsmen faltered, and she'd forced him to duck, rocking his boat alarmingly. Cold-bloodedly now, Charite reloaded and recocked her air-rifle, then brought the rifle's stock back to her shoulder, her fluttery fear now departed, her hands and body no longer shivering. Charite de Guilleri was filled by a calmly righteous and vengeful anger.

"Pirogue's gettin' close, aussi, mam'selle," Balfa cautioned.

As if she was still Papa's little prodigy hunting quail in a cut-over cane field, Charite swivelled to face dead aft and put a well-placed ball square in the pirogue's bows, forcing all three men in it to lay flat and fall back as they abandoned their paddling.

"Give it up, Charite!" Willoughby-whatever the lying bastard called himself-shouted over. "We won't hurt you… swear it!"

Vous! she thought, utterly revulsed that she'd let him even put his hands

on her, that she'd given him her body, her affection, and her foolish trust, her… love! Her skin crawled at the recollections of how they'd, how he'd…! "Vous etes fumier!" she cried. "You have already hurt me to my very soul, you… 'Bloody'!"

Charite dashed her sleeve over her eyes again, blinked her vision clear of tears, took a breath and let it out slowly, found the instant of perfect stillness, and fired.

Phfft-tack!

The ball hit him square in the chest, just under his heart, and the force of it punched the air from his lungs, slugged him backwards to splay over the forward-most thwart with his head on the jolly boat's damp soleboards.

Merciful God! Lewrie frantically thought as agony engulfed him, unable to draw breath, vision darkening; I'm killed!