The Emerald Storm

Chapter 24

What do we do?” The speed with which the monster swam was unnerving. It made straight at us as if we were reeling it on a string.

“Stand and shout,” Jubal instructed.

“But the French!”

“Exactly.”

We sprang up in the shallows, water only to our calves. “Does this scare caimans off?”

“It draws fire! Here! Over here!” He waved.

The beast’s body was flexing like the arms of a blacksmith and reminding me of extremely unhappy experiences with a Nile crocodile. But when we stood the moonlight silhouetted us. A great shout went up and muskets fired, bullets peppering the water. A small cannon banged. With a scream a five-pound ball struck the water and skipped like a stone before bounding up the beach.

“This is your strategy?”

“Look.” Jubal pointed. The startled alligator had turned and was retreating for the swamp. “Now run, on the sand!”

I glanced a last time at the harbor. The longboat was still clearly visible, pulling for a ship, and I thought-or did I imagine? — Astiza half standing, trying to discern what the soldiers were shooting at in the night. Then we were dashing away upriver, my feet bare, the sand hard-packed, men following on the opposite bank and shooting from two hundred yards away. We were dim shadows against the jungle swamp. I squeezed in on myself as lead sizzled by us.

“There, a fisherman’s boat,” Jubal pointed. A dugout canoe, again looking like a log, was pulled into marsh grass.

“How do you tell boat from beast in this cursed country?”

“If it bites.” He dragged the canoe and we jumped aboard, craft rocking, and seized the paddles. “Like those.” Suddenly other “logs” slid into the water. The river was thick with alligators, roused from sleep by our sound and sweat. I heard them plop, and then a snap of exercising jaws.

“Paddle fast,” Jubal said.

I needed no encouragement, making a fair imitation of Fulton’s suggested steamboats. The caimans followed, each sending out an ominous delta of intersecting waves. It was like being escorted to a dinner, with us the main course.

We stroked upriver, still hard to pick out against the jungle. One musket ball thunked into the wood of our canoe, but otherwise the balls buzzed by like pesky hornets. A tide had turned the sluggish current in our direction. Dark reptilian shapes followed like escorting frigates, their prehistoric eyes gauging our pace and their primitive brains calculating what we might taste like when we spilled. On the opposite shore, horses galloped and dogs loped.

The city gave way to the avenue of shorn palms and then the French camps and outposts. Orders were shouted, torches lit, soldiers roused. Rochambeau was not going to let me slip by if he would help it.

“This was a foolish way to escape, but after a mile the river bends away from their lines,” Jubal said.

“Thank goodness. I did some canoeing in Canada but haven’t stayed in shape. I didn’t think it necessary for retirement.”

“You should exercise, because trouble seems to follow you, friend. My plan was to walk quietly out of town, but with your plan, we have to fight through their entire army. This is your pattern, is it not?”

“I wouldn’t call it a plan, exactly. More like an unfortunate tendency. I’m just in love.”

“Then keep a better hold on your wife than you do.”

I began to believe we were past the worst of it. Guns flashed, but the aim was almost random. Cavalry jingled but had no way to get to us. Dogs howled, but it was the howl of frustration. The alligators almost began to seem like a benign train, and a few slipped away as if bored.

Then we neared a bright cluster of flames on the army’s riverbank, and my confidence faltered again. Artillerymen were building bonfires to cast light on the river, and an entire battery of field guns had been drawn up, pointing across the water. We had to paddle right past them.

“Should we flee into the swamp?”

“We’d be gator meat and snake chew.”

“The French will blow us to kindling.”

“Yes. So when I say, flip the canoe.”

“Into the reptiles?”

“We have no choice, lover Ethan. Come up under our vessel to breathe. The tide will help. Kick with your feet, and if you feel caiman teeth, try to hit them on the nose. But speed first, fast as we can.”

We bent to it in our canoe, setting up a little bow wave and a respectable bubbling wake, me gasping from exertion. Yet we were simply hurrying into firelight. We could hear shouted commands and count the ominous row of cannon muzzles: seven, each one aimed at my right ear. The cavalry had pulled up to watch our extinction. So had the anxious dogs. They growled and whined. With that kind of audience we seemed to crawl across their field of fire.

“Look to your guns!” The words floated across the water.

Firelight danced on the water. Alligators formed a little school.

“Aim…”

I felt as picked out as a fly on a wedding cake.

“Now,” said Jubal. “Keep your paddle.” He jerked sideways, I followed suit, and with a splash we flipped over. As we went in I heard the final word.

“Fire!”

The water was pitch, and only by keeping my hand on the rim of the canoe did I remain oriented. I shoved my head up into its overturned wooden hull. As Jubal had promised, there was a pocket of air there. I couldn’t see him in the dark, but I could hear him blowing and breathing as he kicked.

Something scaly bumped my leg, and I jerked.

Then the world erupted. A projectile clipped our dugout, and it boomed like a drum. Other cannonballs plowed into the river all around us, smacking like beaver tails. I couldn’t see the splashes, but I could feel their concussion. There was the muffled screech of balls sailing by where we’d been sitting seconds before and thudding into the muddy riverbank beyond.

“That will keep Monsieur Caiman away, I hope,” Jubal said.

And indeed, the alligators had the good sense to flee.

I heard cheering through the wooden hull. Did the French think their barrage had overturned us? It must look so, and that we’d drowned or been eaten, since we didn’t reappear. The canoe would be very low in the dark. Jubal was swimming awkwardly, holding his paddle and the boat. I did my best to assist, as we slowly drifted east past the bonfires.

“I think we’re running out of air,” I said.

“Wait, like patient mice.”

“What if the caimans come back?”

“Then we feed them you so we don’t feed them me.”

“Merci, Jubal.”

“You’re the one who wanted to go to the harbor.”

What followed was a little eternity of darkness, gasps in the stuffy air of the overturned canoe, occasional shots that I hoped were blind, and the queasy feeling of waiting for teeth to test my leg. I’d no idea if we were even going in the right direction, and the certainty that I’d once more lost wife and son made me almost not care. What a bloody fiasco.

I was wheezing. “Jubal, I need to go out for a breath.”

“A minute more.”

Then there was the drumlike thud of something striking our overturned canoe. We stopped abruptly. Had the French launched boats to pursue us? I could swim for the swamps to be shot or eaten, or surrender to be hung or burned.

Too tired to flee anymore, I decided.

“Surface,” Jubal said.

“To give up?”

“To be saved.”

I came up next to our craft. There was a great bright gouge in its top where a ball had hit, but otherwise it was remarkably intact; the hollowed log must be iron-hard. I blinked away water, seeing the white cross bands of uniforms in the dark, and opened my mouth, coughing, readying an apology for throwing a cleaver at the French commander.

But then I realized the faces looking down were all dark, and arms were reaching for us from a plank fishing boat.

“You’re rebels?”

Strong hands seized me. “Liberators.”

“It’s about time,” Jubal said.

“Maybe it’s you who are late,” the soldier replied. “Or maybe General Jean-Jacques Dessalines is angry that you went the opposite way of what he ordered.”

I sighed. “I’m afraid our route was my idea.”

“My companion is an idiot, Antoine,” Jubal said from the water beside me. “But perhaps a useful idiot.”

They hauled me aboard. “He don’t look useful,” a man with sergeant stripes said. “He looks drowned.” They laughed. Jubal flopped in next to me. The French bonfires had receded, the night protective.

“I have an urgent message for General Dessalines,” I said.

Antoine leaned close. “Then you can deliver it while he decides whether to kill you or cook you, white man.”

They laughed again, and I silently prayed the hilarity wouldn’t draw gunfire.