The Captain's Vengeance

by Dewey Lambdin

  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, Charité 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,” Charité 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.”

  Charité 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. “Charité 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 airchamber.

  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, Charité 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. Charité 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, Charité 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, Charité!” 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 êtes fumier!” she cried. “You have already hurt me to my very soul, you… ‘Bloody’!”

  Charité 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!

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  Ah-yee!” Fusilier Balfa cheered her accuracy, all but clapping his oarchafed, bleeding hands. “Vivat, mam’selle!”

  “Hell wit’ dat,” his father, Boudreaux, snarled, dragging them to sobriety. “Dat only slow ’em down for de little while, den dey really be mad wit’ us. Gotta get a lead on ’em. Row or die, chers.”

  And, for a few minutes, it seemed as if ‘Charité’s awesome shot had bought them a lead. The Anglais’ rowing boat had come to a stop, the pirogue, going alongside it, and both receded into the lingering bay mists. Balfa bade Charité to bear off Nor’westerly to throw them off, and reach the closest maze of marshes, cypress and mangrove swamp, not Lake Barataria, which lay due North.

  Both men were spent, though, the act of rowing a muscle-searing agony. Their breath roared like a forge bellows as they panted for air, and both were hang-dog, drooling with exhaustion.

  “Oh, mon Dieu.” Charité gasped as she fearfully looked over her shoulder and spotted the much faster pirogue off their starboard quarter, re-emerging from the haze. “They have found us, messieurs.” Sure enough, the paddles flashed more quickly, and the pirogue swung about to run parallel with their boat, just out of pistol-shot. The sailor in the middle of the pirogue held a musket at the ready.

  “Sorry, chérie,” Boudreaux Balfa wheezed, letting his oar slide aft. “Can’t do no more. We tried.” He pulled a pistol from his belt and let it lay in his lap, handing the other to his son.

  Charité abandoned her steering oar and test-cocked her weapon; a snap of the trigger only produced a faint hiss. Its unreliable buttstock flask was expended. In spite of that, she levered a ball into the breech and brought it to her shoulder, the pretence of a ready gun more of a final act of defiance. A way to die in battle.

  “Hoy!” the paddler and steersman seated in the stern of the pirogue shouted as he set aside his paddle and took up a musket as well. “Hoy, Boudreaux Balfa… ye auld cut-throat!” he added, sounding nigh cheerful, not threatening. “Ye auld mud-foot!”

  “Who dat?” Balfa warily called back, squinting in confusion.

  “An auld shipmate o’ your’n!” the man hooted. “One ye didn’t reco’nise when ye marooned ‘im on th’ Dry Tortugas … come t’take ye in, Boudreaux!”

  “An’ who be dat?” Balfa quickly asked, laying a cautioning hand on his son’s gun-arm to force it down. “Bide, cher … we ain’t taken yet,” he whispered with a disconcerting wink. “May not be.”

  “Ye knew me as Patrick Warder, Boudreaux! Though th’ Navy knows me as Toby Jugg! Throw yer weapons over-side and put up yer hands.”

  “Nom d’un chien!” Balfa exclaimed. “Ol’ Paddy Warder? Ah-yee, you little t’ief! Stole a hundred Anglais pounds offa me and run off. Damn if I don’t forgive you dat, long ago, and now you wanna arrest me and my son here, Fusilier, let de British courts hang us bot’ an’ end my patrie, by Gar? Dat he hard, Paddy… damn’ hard.”

  “Shoulda swung years ago, Boudreaux,” Toby Jugg called back. “I figger this’ll be delayed justice. Why I jumped ship an’ run, ‘coz I couldn’t hold with wot you let ‘at ol’ demon Lanxade git away with in th’ last war. Waddn’t privateerin’, but murd’rin’ piracy…”

  “An’ you steal my moneys. You a saint, Paddy? Swear, I didn’t know you, all dat fine beard ya got, cher,” Balfa cajoled, playing for time. “All dese years, too. By Gar, I know you, den, I’da let you go in a spare boat, wit’ no harm. Always liked you, Paddy, you know dat!”

  “Oh, aye!” Toby Jugg snickered. “Right! Give it up!”

  “My boy Fusilier be innocent, Paddy, dis his first trip, swear! Mort de ma vie!” Balfa wheedled, open-handed with his pistol below the boat’s side. “
Fine, you take me for hangin’, ‘cause I prob’ly done sin enough for it, some time in de past. Can’t recall, but… let Fusilier and dis sweet mam’selle go, Paddy. You want see a pretty jeune fille like her on de gibbet, kickin’ an’ stranglin’ in de noose, an’ no one t’pull her legs t’make it quick?”

  “She lowers ‘at damn’ rifle o’ hers or she dies right here an’ now,” Jugg gruffly promised. “She’s th’ Cap’m’s girl from New Orleans. One ‘at went a’piratin’ as a man. One ‘at killed him, too, an’ all’s a reason fer her t’do th’ ‘Newgate Horn-pipe,’ Boudreaux.”

  “He is surely dead?” Charité interrupted, aiming at the sailor amidships of the pirogue, but her gaze darting to Jugg.

  “Looked hellish like it ‘fore we paddled after ye, miss, aye.”

  “Bon,” Charité cold-bloodedly stated. “Good.”

  “Guess ya got us, den, Paddy,” Balfa said with a weary sigh of surrender. “An’ dis was my last trip, too. Be damn’ hard, though, to get cotched an’ die wit’out a chance t’spend dat Spanish silver we got away wit’. Hope mes amis an’ neighbours have joy of it. Ah-yee.”

  “What silver?” Dempsey, the armed sailor, demanded.

  “You t’ink I plan t’quit de old trade, I don’t fiddle my ol’ ami Jérôme Lanxade?” Balfa chuckled. “How much silver you find, ‘board dat Spaniard, hah? Eight hundred t’ousand or so, was all, when we’d took two million! Oh, dey be a pile left on Le Revenant, but… you ask Paddy, dere. We promise de crew six millions, but de Spanish send it in three boats, an’ dis mornin’ was gonna be grim when dey find out we don’t have it.”

  “Ye cheated yer auld mate, Jérôme, did ye, Boudreaux? I allus knew ye were a greedy auld shark, by God!” Toby Jugg mirthfully mused.

  “Where is it, then?” Dempsey snapped.

  “Mes amis, ‘Cadien friends o’ mine, take it away las’ night,” Boudreaux Balfa explained, shrugging. “Don’ even tell me where it be, ’til I gets back home on de bayou, Paddy. I don’ go back, dey’d split it… leave my poor ‘Vangeline a bitty share. I do get back, I’d get all my share. Won’ tell you where it be buried, by Gar, ‘cause you’re outsiders, an’ Anglais to boot. Same th’ same sort who kick us outta Canadian Acadia, hein? Go huntin’ it, dey most-like kill you an’ feed you to de pig an’ ‘gator, dem,” Balfa slyly, “sorrowfully” told them.

  “Ah… how much ye git away with, then?” asked Mannix, the sailor in the bow of the pirogue, his mouth agape in greed.

  “Couple hundred t’ousand, wasn’t it, Fusilier? You counted dem kegs,” Balfa asked his son.

  “More dan dat, Papa,” Fusilier chimed in, cleverly catching his father’s drift, and marvelling at the old man’s craftiness.

  “You let us go, we could go shares,” Balfa hesitantly pretended to hint. “Ah, but you go back to your Navy, dere’s no way you’d trust moi t’get de moneys to you, ah-yee. So I guess we all gotta go broke.”

  “Fack th’ Navy.” Dempsey snickered, lowering the muzzle of his musket a trifle. “Wot kinda share we talkin’ of, mister?”

  “Here, now, Dempsey!” Jugg warned him. “He’s a sweet-tongued auld imp o’ Hell, he is, an’ most-like ain’t got tuppence left. Cap’m Lewrie trusted—”

  “Cap’m’s dead as mutton, Toby,” Mannix sourly pointed out. “I ‘llow ye, Cap’m Lewrie woz a decent sort, but now he’s gone, who’s to take charge o’ Proteus … one more o’ them top-lofty, floggin’ shites… a piss-proud, Irish-hatin’ English officer-bastard? No thankee!”

  “We’re way out here,” Dempsey seconded. “Outta sight o’ anybody. Who’s t’say we didn’t get kilt by th’ pirates we woz chasin’? We don’ go back, nobody’ll come lookin’ after us. Rest o’ th’ ship’s off ‘cers ain’t like Cap’m Lewrie, Toby… no skin off their arses if they come up a few Irish hands short. Not with all th’ silver still aboard ‘at prize schooner t’caper over.”

  “An’ didn’t we allus plan t’take ‘leg-bail’ o’ th’ Navy, iff’n a prime chance turned up?” Mannix eagerly seconded. “Think, man! We get listed ‘Discharged, Dead,’ ‘stead o’ ‘Run,’ an’ no one’ll ever be seekin’ us! Free an’ clear, an’ in money, t’boot! How much in pounds is yer silver, then, mister?” he greedily asked Balfa.

  A keg apiece, Balfa alluringly told them. A thousand dollars in silver was 250 English pounds, a lifetime’s earnings to the average tar, and that set them to gabbling again. Balfa hid his smile; all the rest would be “negotiations.” They’d already become a pack of putains … now they were haggling over their bed price!

  “Capitaine!” Charité desperately interrupted, aghast that he’d betray her, too; her heart broken anew over the loss of her last illusion. “If you and your friends keep all our money, you lavish it on Anglais! … there’s nothing left for our revolution! Would you have my brothers die for nothing? Don’t you want to be French again?”

  “Moonshine from de start, girl,” Balfa snarled, snatching that rifle from her numb hands. “Money’s always what matter! Dis toy gun outta air, mes amis, don’ worry ‘bout her! Your mates go along, so what you say, Paddy, mon vieux?” He hated to do it to her, but…

  “I’ve a wife an’ two babes on Barbados, Boudreaux,” Jugg morosely said, sighing. “A bitty plot o’ cane, bought clean, but we’ve worked damn’ hard an’ honest t’git it, keep it. I’d lose it all, if…”

  “Send for ’em,” Balfa breezily suggested. “How big your place?”

  “Five acres.”

  “By damn, Paddy!” Balfa laughed. “Land in de piney-wood, north o’ New Orleans… back o’ Baton Rouge?… go for penny an acre, not a arpent! Keg o’ silver buy you a plantation, big house, fine coach, an’ a regiment o’ slaves! Be set for life, you.”

  Toby Jugg—Patrick Warder or Tobias Hosier, and an host of aliases he’d given ship captains over the years—looked at Mannix and Dempsey’s childlike, prompting expressions, knowing that if he didn’t agree, they’d mostlike shoot him down, so eager they were to desert. Without Capt. Lewrie, what would he be? A new captain would bring a “pet” to supplant him as Quartermaster’s Mate, reduce him to being an Able Seaman again. But, if he was “dead,” his name cut from ship’s books and Admiralty registers … and with a pile of money…!

  “Ye’re still a thief, Boudreaux,” Toby Jugg allowed at last. “One keg, me arse! Five keg a man, an’ no debt o’ auld I owe ye, for ye said ye forgive it long afore.”

  “Ah-yee!” Balfa cried, all but tearing his bushy grey hair out at the roots. “You starve my famille, starve my chickens! Five kegs, mon cul! Two, an’ be damn to ya. You live good on two kegs, that’s five hundred pounds! North Loosiann’ be fulla heretic Protestants an’ I hope dey burn ya! Fulla ‘Mericains an’ skinflint Yankees who take de coin off your dead mother’s eyes. You deserve t’live dere, Paddy!”

  “Four kegs, Boudreaux,” Jugg countered. “After all, wot’s your life worth, you an’ yer son’s?”

  “Mist be burnin’ off,” Boudreaux pointed out suddenly. “We’d better get along, chers. Your men row dis boat, ‘cause we played out, but we can still paddle a pirogue …”

  “Not without a firm price an’ yer Bible oath on it, Boudreaux,” Jugg insisted. “They spot us, we’ll remember we’re ‘True Blue Hearts O’ Oak’ an’ haveta settle fer our share o’ th’ prize money. Let’s say three kegs an’ have done.”

  “Mon Dieu, merde alors!” Balfa surrendered, knowing that his old shipmate Toby Jugg was right. “T’ree keg each, my word on it,” he said, crossing himself.

  “Mannix, you get in their boat. Boy, you come into ours, and I’ll thankee for yer ‘barker,’” Jugg ordained. “We’ll tow you on a short painter ’til we strike th’ far shore. Fire off a shot ever’ now an’ then… your pistols first, o’course, t’keep ’em guessing back down South. Miss? Ye want t’play a man, well… take up ‘atoar an’ help Mannix row ’til auld Boudreaux’s got his wind back. No harm will come to ye, me own oath on’t. Jus’ sing small an’ be
thankful ye still got breath in yer body, for ye slew a decent man… foran officer … an’ he did right by me, I tell ye.”

  Charité slumped down on the sternsheet thwarts, knees drawn up, and her arms hugging her breasts. Everything she’d had in life was lost and gone, even her last, leery trust in “dear old” cheerful Capitaine Balfa, who had just sold her out! She would live, the Anglais sailor swore; she’d return home… but to what?

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  Oh, God,” Capt. Alan Lewrie weakly whimpered, his hands shakily feeling over his chest. His head lay cradled in Cox’n Andrews’s lap, and Andrews was gently undoing his waist-coat and shirt buttons. Air! Pain! He could barely draw breath, and his heart thudded so strongly and quickly, it felt like a kettledrum at a bloody concert. Hot pain thrummed knot-like ’twixt his stomach and sternum.

  “Be easy, sah!” Andrews commiserated.

  “Easy! I’m bloody dyin’ and… ow! Damme, but that hurts!”

  Hold, a tick! Lewrie puzzled; Heart’s bangin’ like a racehorse! Hurts, but… what the bloody Hell?

  “Ya ain’t killed, sah!” Cox’n Andrews wondrously exclaimed. “Ya ain’t even bad shot, praise de Lord!”

  Lewrie fumbled at his bared chest, coughing and still gasping for breath, each one searing pain through him. His fingers came away smeared with blood! “What d’ye call this, then, damn my eyes!” he querously quibbled.

  “Faith, sor,” Liam Desmond, one of his oarsmen, cried, holding a silvery .51 calibre rifle ball ’twixt thumb and forefinger. “Found it on th’ soleboards, sor! Must o’ bounced right off ya, sure. Shot went pish! ‘stead o’ crack! Like that duck ya shot comin’ upriver, sor … when th’ air-flask was spent? Mother Mary, but you’re th’ lucky’un an’ there’s a tale for th’ tellin’, Cap’m, sor!”