Manly Wade Wellman - Novel 1955

by Flag on the Levee (v1. 1)

  “Dive, Casimir! ” he shouted into the night after his friend, as yet another fusillade rang out.

  He turned and snatched the candle from under the chair. He took hold of the end of the fuse, peered quickly to see that it was properly primed with black powder, then held the flame to it.

  For a moment he thought it would not ignite. Then it caught. As he let it go, there was a commotion at the cabin door, and it flew open.

  “Ben!” Casimir fairly screamed at him. “They left the key in the lock—come, come!”

  Ben ran out on deck. Behind him he heard the fuse begin to sputter viciously. He gained the railing at a bound. Casimir was before him, throwing a leg over.

  Then a shot rang close at hand, and Casimir gave a startled gasp and went plunging limply down into the water. Ben saw Banton charging through the dim light, hatless, a musket in his hands.

  He barely dodged a murderous sweep of the weapon’s stock. For an instant he and Banton grappled and shoved at each other, breast to breast. Then Ben struck with the heavy candle sconce, which he still held. It thumped solidly home in Banton’s face, and Banton went floundering down on his hands and knees. Clear of his enemy’s clutch, Ben flung himself head first over the rail into the water and came up within arm’s length of Casimir.

  “My shoulder,” Casimir moaned. “My left arm—I cannot move it—”

  “Take hold of my shirt,” panted Ben, and as Casimir’s fingers fastened on him he struck out, just as Casimir had taught him.

  Like an otter, Ben churned madly away, dragging the slack weight of his friend. He heard Banton roar out some sort of warning, and muskets spoke from the ketch. A bullet splashed near, like a strangely vicious frog.

  “Fill them full of lead, they’re getting away!” he could hear Banton yelling furiously.

  But then there was a flash of red radiance and a sudden deafening boom of sound. A churning impact of water from behind hurled both Ben and Casimir forward and upward, half into the open air. Even as they hung there a second, louder explosion sounded, as if the whole world were coming to a violent end.

  Ben felt himself whirled around, like a top whipped by a string5 then he sprawled in water churned to foam. Somehow he seized Casimir’s wet curls and dove deep, through agitated dark floods, while above and around them he heard the raining wallop and smack of heavy falling objects.

  Bobbing into the air again, Ben swam on with one arm while he towed Casimir with the other. The surface of the water was littered with clumsy trash in large pieces and small, wreckage from the ketch. Up ahead of him, Ben heard excited voices babbling both French and English in the dark. Toward those voices he dragged Casimir, with the last of his failing strength. His mouth opened, water splashed in, and he made a loud strangling noise.

  “Somebody swims! ” he heard a man call. “A survivor down there. Hold up a lantern, one of you, and Pll stand by to shoot if it is some trick.”

  “No trick,” Ben gasped. “I just—want to get out of here—”

  “I know who speaks! ” cried the man, and Ben, in turn, felt that he recognized the voice from somewhere in the dim past. “Enfin, you in the water, you live?”

  “Barely,” was all Ben could say. He had ceased to swim, and strove only to keep himself and Casimir from going down.

  “Lower the boat! Vite! Here, I myself will get in. En route, mes gargons! Oars, oars!”

  Something dark skimmed over the water toward Ben. He choked over another splash into his open mouth, felt sick and faint and utterly exhausted. But a hand from somewhere closed upon his arm, another grasped his soaked shirt. He and Casimir were being dragged over the thwart of an open boat.

  “Nous les tenons ” grunted someone. “We have them.”

  “Who are they?” asked another. “Monsieur Parker, young Beaumont! Nobody else can have survived.”

  “En avantl Aboard with them!”

  Dreamily, Ben was aware that he was being lifted and helped. “Have you got Casimir safe?” he mumbled weakly.

  “Mats out! And you are safe, too.”

  The speaker supported him with a strong arm around his shoulders. Ben looked and saw the face of Dominique You, blurred and distorted as though behind clouded glass. Above him a lantern shone, and its bearer was Jean Laffite.

  A dreamlike feeling possessed Ben once more. He did not know whether he was carried or whether he walked, but he moved somewhere. At last his head cleared, and he found that he lay on a bench under a low ceiling. Apparently this was a cabin of sorts, beneath a partial decking of a vessel smaller than Banton’s ketch. It was lighted by a lamp hung to a pulley, and Ben could see, on a bunk opposite him, the sprawled form of Casimir. Dominique You bent over Casimir, busy with strips of white cloth.

  “The bullet pierced only the flesh of the arm,” Dominique reported. “He has lost some blood, but he will recover.”

  “Bien ” approved Jean Laffite, and stepped into range of Ben’s vision. He was still dressed in the exquisite garments he had worn in his cafe, but they were disarranged as though by recent violent exertions.

  “And you, young Ben Parker,” went on Laffite, “I know not whether to congratulate you or to predict that your next adventure will be your last. After tonight, you live on time borrowed at usurious interest.”

  “Horner Banton’s ship—” Ben started to say.

  “Destroyed, blown to pieces—pouf!” Laffite swept his arms wide, to signify complete destruction. “And so Banton was the mind back of all this plotting? Par bleu, he was the last man I would have suspected.”

  “We felt the same,” said Casimir from his bunk.

  “How was it managed?” asked Dominique.

  “First tell me, how came you here?” demanded Ben on his own part.

  Laffite grinned under his neat mustache, and his drooping eyelid descended in a wink. “You gave me a message, to forward to the Governor. But I did not wait after I had sent it, not I. You two, I made sure, might find more on your hands than you could dispose of; and so Dominique and I, and half a dozen lads we trust, followed in time to see them drive off with you. When they set sail we searched out this smack of ours, swift and sure for bayou waters, and followed again.”

  “Yet these young men cared handsomely for their own end of the business,” interjected Dominique. “A swallow of wine for Monsieur Parker, and let him tell the story in full.”

  Ben did so, and both his listeners waited for the end, in utterly fascinated silence. When he had done, Casimir raised his voice.

  “He neglects to say everything, messieurs. He forced me out of that cabin, intending to remain and be blown up with the ketch when he lighted the fuse. Only the mercy of heaven showed me how to find the door, with the key still in the lock, and so rescue him.”

  “Had you not done so he’d be in particles now, as Banton and those other scoundrels are at this moment,” observed Dominique, wagging his massive head.

  “My friend Ben is brave, but without sensibility,” Casimir half complained.

  “Au contraire,” said Laffite, “I find him to be of a magnificent sensibility. He was ready to die so as to bring Banton’s plot to nothing.”

  “Is that so strange?” Ben challenged him.

  “You do not find it strange to offer your life for what you love, and neither do I.” Laffite gazed thoughtfully down at Ben. “I think you and I can well understand each other. Well, we go back to New Orleans. We will find a way to take you quietly to your home. Rest well until tomorrow, then report secretly to Governor Claiborne. Tell him everything, and omit only my name and the names of my comrades.”

  Ben sat up. “But you were hurrying to stop Banton,” he protested. “The Governor will wish to know that.”

  “Will he so?” asked Dominique You, with a fierce grin.

  “I continue to think,” said Laffite, shrugging, “that I had best wait until a happier time for the Governor’s applause.” Ben rose, though his legs still trembled. “Once before you made me promise to ke
ep your name secret,” he said. “But this time, the occasions are different.”

  “I protest they are much the same.” Laffite turned toward Casimir’s bunk. “How goes it with your wound? Do you attend what I say?”

  “Mats out” said Casimir.

  “Good. I must ask your indulgence, both of you, while I make something like a speech.”

  Laffite took two steps, turned again, and clasped his hands behind him. The light fell strongly upon his serious face.

  “First, let us understand each other like practical men,” he began. “My reputation, on the books of Claiborne’s government in this region, has not been of the most savory. I bring to mind our first meeting, Monsieur Parker, and how at that time I reminded you that I am called outlaw and pirate, and that I felt that more merciful expressions might well be used.

  Your Governor and his officers have never thought of me other than as a criminal and an enemy. With frankness, now, is that not the truth?”

  “I fear that it is,” Ben felt forced to admit.

  “We agree so far. Had you named me last fall as the source of your warning about the assassins, you would have been disbelieved. All would have thought, until too late, that a warning from Jean Laffite was but a mockery. In addition, I chose to remain out of any reckoning of Banton; and so I was able to rescue you tonight. Otherwise, I might never have survived to be your helper. Is that not logic as well?”

  “It is,” Ben agreed again.

  “Therefore continue to keep me unknown in this matter. Let neither the defenders nor the enemies of Orleans Territory know that Jean Laffite has cast his lot in the battle to come—for it will come, as sure as we speak here together. We have prevented an outrage, but we have not prevented war. It is inevitable.

  “Banton said war was coming,” said Ben. “I agree with him, and you too.”

  “And I agree also,” said Casimir from where he lay.

  “I come now to the matter that I count on you to understand,” said Laffite, “because you yourself were so ready to die unrewarded in your country’s service. I am distrusted and disavowed by my adopted nation, the United States. Yet I will never let slip any occasion of serving that same nation. Perhaps you suspect that I will seek to play both sides, and to wait safely until I can join the assured winner. But think again of all I have said and done; and you will know that I am with you, with the Americans, and that at the last my services will not be inconsiderable.”

  “C’est juste,” rumbled Dominique You, deep in his brawny chest.

  “Governor Claiborne has clung to the narrow path of duty, and he thinks that his duty includes a bleak attitude toward me. But when the war begins, and before it ends, this territory and its city will be the objective and the prize of an attack by invaders. Then, Ben Parker, and you, Casimir Beaumont, you will find that your Governor and your garrison must have any and all who will help them fight.”

  Laffite flung out both his arms, as though toward the trees that rimmed the waters around the little vessel.

  “In these vastnesses,” he said ringingly, “live many men who are also called pirates and thieves and outlaws. Yet, like me, they are loyal to the American flag under which they live. Like me, they are trained and stubborn fighting men. And they will follow me, in this matter as in many others. At the proper time they will enlist with Claiborne, with the President of the United States, with young patriots like you, against the enemies of America.”

  “Monsieur, I believe you with all my heart,” cried out Casimir impulsively, and Laffite bowed as though in gratitude.

  “Then say nothing about who it was who dragged you out of the water when Banton and his ship blew to pieces,” he said. “Leave that news for another hour, when the need is more desperate, when there will be no doubt that we will be welcomed and trusted. And in that hour you will find us ready to stand and fight where we are needed.”

  “I ask the same favor,” added Dominique You.

  “We will do what you say,” Ben promised.

  “Bieny” said Laffite, bowing again. “And now rest, both of you, while we make our way back to New Orleans.”

  XVII. “Union Is in Itself a Host”

  July 5 was hot, bright, and dusty in the place d’armes. High on its staff fluttered the gridiron flag of the United States, dominating the levee, the water front, and the Voltigeurs drawn up in close order to hear Governor Claiborne speak.

  They were a full regiment now. Events of the spring and early summer had brought a rush of eager young candidates for enlistment, and Colonel O’Rourke had sought and received permission to enlarge his command from battalion size and form. Nine companies strong, the Voltigeurs stood as three sides of a square, each company composed of two platoons marshaled in front and rear ranks.

  In the file closers of Company D, behind the first platoon, stood First Lieutenant Benjamin Franklin Parker. He sweltered in his tight, heavily braided uniform. His sword belt braced him stuffily; the epaulets on his shoulders seemed to weigh pounds. But he held a stiffly military pose and forbore to wipe away the sweat that trickled down his jaws upon his high collar. He stood between two sergeants. Off to his right, similarly sergeant-flanked behind the company’s second platoon, stood Second Lieutenant Casimir Beaumont.

  Very few of the citizens of New Orleans had heard of Horner Banton’s powder ship and the combination of luck, enterprise, and daring that had destroyed it before it could start a war with Spain; but Governor Claiborne knew, and General Wilkinson, lately arrived to organize the town’s defenses, had been told. It was their double recommendation that had promoted Ben and Casimir to command platoons in the augmented Voltigeurs.

  Standing and waiting, Ben relaxed enough to glance from side to side and glimpse what he could of the gathered crowd. On the edges of the Place d’Armes, clear of the formation of the Voltigeurs, milling throngs refreshed themselves with food and drink from the stocks of peddlers. But to the front, on benches flanking the speaker’s platform, sat distinguished guests—Julien Poydras, the first president of the senate of the new state of Louisiana; Allen B. Magruder and Jean Noel Destrehan, United States senators; the Supreme Court judges, Hall, Matthews, and Derbigny; glittering officers, splendidly dressed ladies with parasols raised against the sun.

  On the platform rose Governor Claiborne himself, governor now by vote of the state, as earlier he had been governor by appointment of the President. Whatever disagreements had been voiced in other years by the citizens, they had cast an overwhelming vote for Claiborne when elections had been held on June 29, a scant month after the coming of official word that Orleans Territory had become the state of Louisiana.

  Claiborne wore a blue military coat, white breeches and high, shiny boots. His fine face looked tired but eager. He laid his hands on the speaker’s stand, and silence fell all around him.

  “Whatever I had meant to say in compliment and thanks to these gentlemen of the Regiment of Voltigeurs,” he began clearly, “must be set aside for the moment. For advices have come from Washington, to say that a state of war exists between the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland and dependencies, and the United States of America.”

  He paused. Nobody who heard him could be more than mildly amazed at the news. The war had been predicted and expected. All he told them was merely assurance that it was a fact.

  “War,” went on Claiborne, “is not the greatest of evils. Base submission would be a greater curse. The independence of America was the fruit of eight years of toil and danger, and we now fight to maintain this inestimable advantage.”

  Ben, looking through the ranks in front of him, saw the stiff-braced backs of Colonel O’Rourke, and of the lieutenant colonel and the major of the Voltigeurs. Beyond them, the people on the benches sat motionless, and more distantly the press of standing listeners was as silent as a host of statues. Claiborne continued:

  “Let it be recollected, that every sacrifice we make is offered on the altar of our country—a consideration that w
ill reconcile a faithful people to every privation. The President of the United States calculates on every aid that is in the power of Louisiana to give—”

  Applause, a hubbub of cheers, instantaneous and deafening. Cries rang in French as in English. All New Orleans voiced its eagerness to prove itself in battle. Claiborne waited for the noise to subside.

  “In so reasonable a request,” he urged, “let not our chief be disappointed. For years he labored to arrest the storm, and now that it rages in all its fury, let us endeavor to carry him and our country safely through it.” He leaned forward. “Union is in itself a host,” he shouted. “It is numbers, strength, and security!”

  Another gale of shouts and hand clappings.

  “In such a contest,” Claiborne’s voice dominated the din, “the issue cannot be doubtful. Our young men, here before us, tender their services to their native land, to be in readiness to march at a moment’s warning to the point of attack. Nor will our oldest men prove less brave, less faithful. Ours is a just cause, and it shall triumph.”

  He moved back from the stand and waited as before for the applause to subside. Then he gestured to where, beside him on the platform, sat a figure resplendent in a blue uniform, gorgeous epaulets, rows of medals, with a heavy face flanked by gray side whiskers.

  “With me today is General James Wilkinson,” Claiborne introduced his companion, “but recently arrived to assume military command at this point j for we cannot doubt, as we must not dread, that a serious battle may be fought and won at New Orleans before this war is over. I have persuaded him to speak to the gentlemen of the Voltigeurs and to the citizens of New Orleans.”

  Claiborne sat down, and Wilkinson rose. He cleared his throat with a loud rasp, that in itself sounded military.

  “The eloquence of the brief remarks just concluded by His Excellency, your Governor,” he growled out, “reminds me the more forcibly that I am no orator. I am but a soldier, more accustomed by taste and training to the tented field than to the rostrum. Yet it is my desire to welcome these gentlemen volunteers, officers and soldiers of a splendid citizen regiment, as earnest of the spirit and courage of Louisiana’s people. Elsewhere in your state, other brave men are springing to arms and training themselves to fight in case of need. You are a strong and happy addition to our forces here, and I, too, will make no secret of my belief that you will find yourselves needed before any great time has passed.”