How Dark the Night

by William C. Hammond

  Richard stood up and to the side. “Firing!” he cried out, and jerked the gun’s firing lanyard.

  The gun carriage screeched inboard as a 6-pound ball exploded from the gun’s muzzle through a viper’s tongue of orange flame and white sparks. Richard was already at the mid-ship gun when the gun captain of the first gun reported a miss.

  “Firing!” Richard shouted again, and the process was repeated, and then once again at the aft gun.

  He snatched a long glass and surveyed the arena of battle. Nothing of significance caught his eye. The sloop’s flying jib had a hole torn through it, but apparently the shot had not struck the mast behind it. The mast did not wobble and the sloop did not lose speed. White foam continued to cream off both sides of her cutwater.

  Richard understood the futility of his position. Because the sloop had not presented her broadside to return fire, and had instead kept coming straight at them, the advantages he had hoped to gain from superior gunnery and seamanship were gone. The sloop was only fifty yards downwind. Were Dove to show her heels now, the race would soon be over and the victor declared.

  “Strike our colors and heave to,” he called to Frank Bennett standing by the helm.

  “Captain?”

  “You heard me,” Richard said hoarsely. “Heave to. That’s an order!” Despite himself, he could not keep outrage and disgust from his voice. He had gambled and lost, and now he had put his wife and nephew in danger. Whoever these pirates turned out to be, he suspected they would be none too pleased to have been fired upon.

  “Aye, Captain,” Bennett said reluctantly. He ordered Dove’s sails set to counteract each other, and in short order the clipper was hove to and bobbing up and down on the sea in a lazy drift. The sloop, meanwhile, had tacked across the clipper’s stern and had come up parallel on her windward side, the maws of her six larboard guns trained point-blank on Dove’s hull. The sloop’s spokesman, standing amidships, wasted no time getting down to business.

  “American vaisseau,” he shouted through a speaking trumpet, “I am sending over a boat with a pilote and four men. These men are armed. You will send me, in return, your capitaine and four of your sailors. Comprenez-vous?”

  “Je comprends très bien,” Richard muttered. He looked at Bennett. “So be it,” he said. “I’ll go.” But when he made to answer through his own speaking trumpet, Bennett clamped a hand on Richard’s arm and forced the trumpet down.

  “By your leave, Captain Cutler,” he said. He held out his hand, and Richard slowly surrendered the trumpet.

  Bennett raised the trumpet to his lips. “I am the captain of this vessel,” he shouted back. “I understand your message. Four of my crew and I shall come on board as you requested. May I assume that my vessel is then to follow yours?”

  “Oui,” was the curt response.

  “Thank you, Frank,” Richard said as he watched a boat being lowered away beside the sloop. Seven men jumped nimbly down into it. “You didn’t have to do that.”

  “With respect, Captain, I did,” Bennett responded. “I will not see you separated from Mrs. Cutler. Besides,” he added with a sketchy grin, “I am the master of this vessel.”

  The exchange was made and soon both vessels were sailing north on a broad reach, the still unidentified sloop in the lead. Not only did she show no flag, Richard noted, she bore no name.

  “I’m sorry I got you into this,” he said to his wife, who, with Joseph, had joined him on deck at the first exchange of words between the sloop and cutter.

  Katherine brushed away his remark with a flick of her hand. “Nonsense, my dear. Neither you nor anyone else is to blame for getting us into whatever ‘this’ turns out to be. I am curious, though: what do you think they intend to do with us?”

  “Your guess is as good as mine,” Richard said. “If it’s our cargo they’re after, they will be sorely disappointed. Our hold carries only ballast.”

  “But they didn’t even look below,” she pointed out, “to see what cargo we might be carrying. Why wouldn’t they at least do that?”

  “It’s a mystery,” Richard agreed. In the back of his mind, however, a notion was festering that this was no mystery at all. But he dared not share that notion with his wife.

  As the two ships cruised northward, Richard had plenty of time to take stock of their situation. The four French sailors—if indeed they were sailors—stood in pairs at each end of the cutter, each with a cutlass and pistol held at the ready or tucked into the waistband of his trousers. The pilot, dressed like his comrades in homespun cloth, manned the helm. To Richard’s surprise, however, they seemed quite relaxed, as though intercepting an American merchant vessel was nothing out of the ordinary for them.

  Late the next afternoon, lookouts aloft raised tufts of land on the horizon. Except for the uncertainty about what awaited them at the conclusion, Dove’s voyage through the Gulf of Mexico had been rather a pleasant interlude for the Cutlers. Although the four French guards had done little to help sail the vessel, in truth there had been little for them to do. The southeasterly breezes held steady, and without the need to adjust the sails, Robert Jordan saw fit to divide the five remaining American sailors into two six-hour watches of three men, with himself serving as the sixth sailor. The French pilot had even allowed Richard—to his knowledge merely a passenger—to take a turn at the wheel, but only under the scrutiny of a French guard. Not one of the five Frenchmen offered a clue about why Dove had been detained, where they were going, or what they might expect when they arrived there, despite Richard’s frequent attempts to ferret out bits of information. But they had behaved pleasantly enough. They had even joked around with Joseph and applauded his attempts to test his command of French on them.

  “Mais ne vous inquiétez pas,” one of them said to Katherine on one occasion. “Aucun mal ne vous viendrá.” The Frenchman’s assertion that no harm would come to any of them eased their anxiety at the same time it piqued their curiosity.

  ALTHOUGH NO American in Dove, including Richard Cutler, had ever set foot on the Louisiana coast, its reputation as a hotbed for pirates, smugglers, slave traders, gold hunters, gold diggers, and other social misfits was by now well established. American justice—any sort of justice—was far from being established in the nation’s newest territory. As Dove glided between the first frail outer islands scattered along the seacoast, it was easy to understand why. As far as the eye could see, the place was a confused morass of interlocking lakes, swamps, mangroves, bays, and bayous that served as a lush breeding ground for alligators, mosquitoes, yellow fever, malaria, smallpox, and miscreants seeking to escape the long arm of the law. For decades, ownership of Louisiana had teetered back and forth between France and Spain until Napoléon sold it to the United States. Based on what he had seen so far, Richard wondered out loud why on earth Jefferson had sent Governor James Monroe of Virginia, erstwhile U.S. minister to France, to Paris with diplomat Robert Livingston to negotiate the deal.

  “Louisiana is said to be a vast territory,” Katherine said idly as she too took in the eerily fascinating scenery of muddy water, tangled undergrowth, and moss-hung cypress trees. Eager to escape the heat and humidity belowdecks, which had intensified now that the cutter had sailed within the lee of the outer islands, she had come topside to join Richard and Joseph. Even with her hair gathered into a knot at the back of her neck, beads of sweat formed anew on her forehead moments after she blotted it with a handkerchief. “It stretches clear up to Canada. Surely this must be the worst of it.”

  “One can only hope,” Richard replied, mopping his own brow.

  Ahead, the Bermuda sloop, sailing under a double-reefed mainsail and narrow jib, slipped between two substantial islands and rounded eastward into what appeared to be a sizable bay. Here and there Richard spotted armed men sitting in canoe-like boats partially hidden in the pungent-smelling reeds and marsh grass. Most of them wore an air of grim duty; aside from a red bandana covering the top of their heads, they were dressed in the sa
me homespun cloth as the Frenchmen in Dove. Richard glanced down at the chart he held flat on the cutter’s starboard railing. Although neither of the two islands was named on the chart, the large body of water they had entered was labeled Barataria Bay, and it stretched well beyond the eastern tip of the island off to starboard that apparently was their destination.

  Robert Jordan ordered his crew to round Dove into the wind and drop anchor in a wide-mouthed cove, following the evolutions of the Bermuda sloop. Richard noted that the water was deep here, as measured by the length of anchor line paying out, and that the complex of islands surrounding them would offer safe harbor even to a large naval vessel. But shelter was about all it could offer. A square-rigged frigate such as Portsmouth would be sorely confined whatever the direction of the wind. It would be nigh impossible to bring her guns to bear against a force of the smaller, well-armed, fore-and-aft-rigged vessels that pirates favored. Portsmouth would be chewed to pieces in this bay, whatever her advantage in firepower. An image came to his mind of a stricken shark, its tailfin shorn, being ripped to shreds by a school of dagger-toothed barracudas.

  After both vessels were secured at anchor, a rowboat conveyed two individuals, whose attire and mannerisms marked them as men of influence, to the sloop. Richard watched them climb on board and then turned his attention back to the cove and the shore.

  He counted eight vessels of various lengths and rigs anchored nearby. All except one, a brig, were relatively small single- or double-masted affairs, and all appeared to carry guns on their weather deck. He could see few buildings on the island. A warehouse-style structure located near the waterfront dominated the few smaller buildings around it. It was long and narrow and constructed mostly of stone; overlapping sheets of thin, rusted metal covered the steeply pitched wooden roof. To the right, at the western tip of the island, stood a modest but seemingly sturdy fort constructed of red brick. Black barrels of sizable cannon stuck out through embrasures on the single circular gun tier that covered all approaches to the fort, including those by land.

  “Quel est le nom de cette île?” Richard asked the French pilot.

  “Grand Terre,” the pilot replied tersely.

  At length, the boat that had been rowed out to the sloop was rowed over to the cutter. The same two men Richard had observed earlier came on board. First on deck was the leader of the fortress-like complex, at least judging by the quality of his colorful silk garments and stylish felt hat; indeed, he looked more like a French chevalier than a local magnate. He was tall, matching Richard’s six feet, and his pale skin contrasted sharply with his shoulder-length curly black hair. A long and well-groomed mustache in the shape of an inverted V fell to a finely chiseled jaw. Those were Richard’s immediate impressions of the man, although he quickly detected a depth and intelligence that went beyond shallow pretenses or false pride. He was a handsome man, extraordinarily so—the sort of man that enflamed women’s fantasies. No doubt many people were drawn to him for that reason alone. But Richard was far more impressed by the easy and cocky manner in which the man boarded Dove and took charge simply by his presence, without having to utter a word. It was as though he were a medieval lord and this his fiefdom, loyal vassals expected to obey his every command. As the Frenchman continued to take careful note of every aspect of the cutter, Richard wondered how many honest men he had seduced into corruption—and how many chaste women into his bed.

  His inspection finished, the man stopped a few feet short of Richard and placed his hands on his hips. “You are the captain of this vessel?” he asked in nearly perfect English, with just a trace of a French accent. “I sense there is some confusion here.”

  “My family owns this vessel,” Richard informed him. “Captain Bennett, whom you are holding captive over there”—he jabbed his finger toward the sloop—“is her master.”

  The man ignored that. “So you are this vessel’s owner, Monsieur Cutler? Tant mieux. But you too hold the rank of captain, oui?”

  “I hold the rank of captain in the United States Navy.”

  “Bien, c’est vrai,” the man said delightedly. “Monsieur Bennett speaks true. La Marine des États-Ûnis! Mon Dieux. Je suis impressionné, monsieur!” He glanced at his companion, who rolled his eyes and chuckled, for what reason Richard failed to grasp.

  “And who are these two?” the man asked, pointing at Katherine and Joseph standing behind Richard by the mainmast. He studied them more thoroughly. “Cette femme, elle est très belle, je crois.”

  Richard did not appreciate the man’s tone. “Cette femme,” he snapped, “is my wife. The young man is my nephew. We were bound for Boston from Barbados when your sloop intercepted us and forced us here. You are aware, monsieur, that you have committed a blatant act of piracy.”

  The man advanced one step, his brown eyes boring into Richard’s blue ones. “Be very careful, mon ami,” he said, his voice turning low and dangerous. “Be very, very careful. You are sailing, as they say, in shallow waters, and there is no safe harbor for you or any of your passengers and crew without my permission. You may have authority in your Navy ship, capitaine, but you have no authority here. None. Zéro.”

  Richard merely stared at him.

  “Bien,” the man snapped. “You will wait here until I send for you. We have a matter to discuss, you and I.”

  “You know my name, monsieur,” Richard said to the Frenchman as he climbed adroitly down into the boat. “May I know yours?”

  The man stepped over a thwart and sat down in the stern sheets. As the oarsmen pushed off and the coxswain steered for shore, the man glanced up. “My name is Jean Lafitte,” he said.

  THE SUMMONS came two hours later as dark clouds gathered and rain threatened, intensifying the already insufferable humidity. It was now Richard’s turn to climb down into the boat sent out for him.

  “Be careful, Richard,” Katherine pleaded, adding, more as an admonishment, “and whatever you do, don’t antagonize him. Diplomacy is what is called for, not your foul temper. We have no friends here, and don’t forget we have Joseph in our charge.”

  “I won’t forget,” Richard promised.

  He was met on the beach by two armed guards who escorted him into the warehouse. Just inside the entrance Richard noted four desks on which papers were neatly arranged next to quills and ink bowls and other accoutrements of business administration such as one might find in his own family’s countinghouse on Long Wharf. One guard ordered him to wait and stayed with him while the other walked toward a private office off to the side. As he waited under the watchful eye of his guard, Richard studied the interior of the warehouse. There was not much to see. A wooden wall with double doors at its center separated the administrative area from the much larger back area, which Richard assumed was used for storage. When someone opened one of the doors and stepped through it, he managed to catch a glimpse inside. Stacks of hogsheads and barrels and burlap sacks flashed into view before the door clicked shut.

  The second guard returned and motioned Richard into the private office. Richard’s gaze swept the room as he entered. It was richly appointed in a fashion that even Jack Endicott in Boston would have found appealing. His gaze settled on Jean Lafitte seated casually behind a deep red mahogany desk of intricate design. On the other side of the desk, facing the Frenchman, were three upholstered chairs. A peal of thunder echoed through the office, followed by the not unpleasant sound of rain pattering on the metal roof above.

  Lafitte made a show of checking his waistcoat watch. “Comme d’habitude,” he said, shaking his head in theatrical disbelief. “You can set your watch by the rain storms each day.” He grinned at Richard. “May I offer you a drink, capitaine? As you can see”—he gestured toward the decorative sideboard behind him, on top of which was set an array of fine crystal decanters, each containing a spirit of a different color—“I am well stocked.” He raised a glass for Richard’s inspection. “I am having a glass of bourbon whiskey, the best that the great state of Kentucky has to offe
r. It was a gift from the Williams family, who distill the best bourbon in the entire state.” He took a sip, smacked his lips, then: “Did you know that this spirit is named in honor of a French royal family? Ah, oui. The House of Bourbon. So it is approprié for the occasion.” When Richard remained stone-faced, Lafitte again raised his glass. “Indulge me?”

  “Thank you, no.”

  “Vraiment?” Lafitte shrugged. “Encore, since you choose not to be friendly, be seated and we shall discuss our business matter.” Lafitte waved his hand at the three chairs facing him.

  “I prefer to stand, monsieur, if you have no objection.”

  Lafitte squinted at Richard while tapping the fingers of his right hand on the table. Then: “Allez-y. Suit yourself,” he translated in a less than cordial voice. He picked up his glass and swirled its contents. “I am curious to know,” he said reflectively, “if you have heard of me.”

  “No. Should I have?”

  Lafitte made a dismissive gesture. “Peu d’importance. Since that is the case, however, perhaps you should know a little about me. I would not want you to misunderstand my character.” Lafitte spoke to the glass, not to Richard. “I was born in France but lived much of my boyhood on Saint-Domingue—the land we now call Haiti. I learned very little in the few years of schooling that my family could afford. A little English, but even that I had to teach myself. I did, pourtant, manage to learn much about the lessons of life. I am referring to the harsh lessons of life, monsieur, the ones that teachers do not teach and that men born to privilege”—he nodded sardonically toward Richard—“rarely understand.” He downed a shot of whiskey and poured out another. “Since that time,” he went on in the same tone, “I have made good use of what I learned. I was not yet twenty when my older brother, Pierre, and I started a business. We are equal partners in this business, and we each have an important role. He procures the goods, and I store them on Grande Terre. From here I ship them to merchants in New Orleans and to merchants . . . bien, let us just say to merchants who may live quite far away. Of course, the best of these items I keep for Pierre and myself to sell in our store in New Orleans, on Royal Street. I receive quite a nice price for them.”