by Hunter, Seth
“How, if the Rigolets is closed to us?”
Imlay leant forward over the map. “There is a small bayou called the Chef Menteur, here, to the south of Coquilles Island. It is little used but it joins Lake Pontchartrain here, near Point Herbes. Much closer to New Orleans. I could take the guides and be in New Orleans in two days.”
“You?”
“I speak French and Spanish—and several of the local dialects. I am familiar with the terrain. That is why I am here with you.”
This was true. “But what will you do when you reach New Orleans?”
“I will tell them of the attack on the fort and warn them to look to their defences. They might even be able to send help to Carondelet, if it is not too late.”
“Why did he not do that?” Nathan nodded towards Escavar.
“You want me to ask him?”
“That might he helpful.”
Another lengthy exchange.
“He says he could not escape inland because that is where the French have posted most of their force. He had to go towards the sea. Besides, the Governor feared that a force sent out from New Orleans would be ambushed—and only weaken its own defences.”
“You sound sceptical.”
“I am.” Imlay smiled. “I think it is possible he may have felt that the Havana was a more attractive proposition for him personally than New Orleans at the moment.”
Nathan shook his head and returned to his study of the map. He could just make out the bayou that Imlay had indicated: a thin blue line among many, meandering through that impossible land-and-seascape.
“Menteur,” he repeated. “French for liar.”
“Chef Menteur. The Big Liar.” Another smile. “That is what the Indians call the Mississippi because of the way it twists and turns and is full of tricks. The French gave the same name to the bayou because of its similar nature.”
“But you think you can find your way through it.”
Imlay nodded. “I can try. I did once before. And I will have the guides.”
He did once before? When? And in what circumstances? But he did not ask. “The Indians. You speak their tongue?”
“No. But one of them speaks Spanish—and French.” He saw the sudden dismay in Imlay’s eyes as if he had said the wrong thing.
“He speaks French?”
“Creole French. Patois. Pretty nigh impenetrable.”
“Let us have him down here.”
Gabriel brought both guides down to the cabin and lingered at the door, his eyes making a swift inventory of whatever objects he had left on display to attract their venal attentions. As a former highwayman he entertained a poor opinion of human nature and their appearance was unlikely to encourage a more tolerant view. They were dressed in animal skins: breechclout, leggings and a form of waistcoat tied loosely with leather thongs. Their hair hung long and lank to their shoulders and appeared to be heavily oiled. One of them had a cloth tied around his forehead, perhaps to keep the sweat out of his eyes for it was not decorative. Both wore rings in their ears and one a necklace made from the teeth of some animal. They carried knives at their belts but no other weapons that Nathan could see. He stood to greet them.
“Thank you, Gabriel, perhaps you would contrive some refreshment for our guests.” Then, addressing the latter in French with a polite bow: “My name is Peake and I am the captain of this vessel.”
One of them stared back at him without expression. The other bowed in return.
“Your servant, Jean Desmarais,” he said.
John Who-Lives-in-the-Marshes. A not very original choice. He could have lived nowhere else in this part of the world. But he seemed remarkably composed—and well-mannered—for a creature of the swamps. Far more so, indeed, than those natives of the English Fens that Nathan had encountered.
Desmarais indicated his companion. “This is my brother, Joseph Bonnet, and we are in the service of the Spanish Governor. I am afraid we smell somewhat of the Bog. And a grease we have used to deter the flies and other insects.”
“Not at all.” Nathan was vaguely embarrassed. Would he have apologised if he felt in need of a wash—as his mother frequently assured him he did, even at twenty-six? He thought not. He complimented the man on his French for here was none of Imlay’s “impenetrable patois.”
“Thank you,” replied this prodigy with another small bow. “I was educated by the Franciscan brothers in New Orleans.”
Nathan wondered if Brother Ignatius had been one of them and John Who-Lives-in-the-Marshes was one of his sources of information. He invited them both to sit at the table.
The Spanish officer looked perplexed and said something to Imlay in Spanish. Imlay’s reply was brief.
The two guides took not the slightest notice of either Imlay or the Spanish officer. They were studying the map with interest. Nathan drew his finger along the blue line indicated by Imlay. “I believe this is known as the Chef Menteur. Are you familiar with it?”
“It is a name the French use,” said Desmarais. “But it is a very little stream and a poor deceiver of men. We call it the Little Snake. Who drew this map?”
“A man called Des Barres,” Nathan told him.
“A Frenchman?”
“Swiss, I believe. From Switzerland.”
“Switzerland?” repeated Desmarais wonderingly.
“A land in Europe. Of many mountains.”
“Ah.” He said something to his companion and they both laughed.
“So,” Nathan attempted to bring them back to the subject of the Big Liar, or the Little Snake as it had now become. “Would you be confident of finding your way by this route to New Orleans?”
Desmarais looked at him with a frown as if this were a trick question. “Is there a reason why I should not?”
“I wished only for your assurance.”
“ Why yes, if I wished to do so.”
“And how long would it take?”
“By canoe, two days perhaps.”
“And if we did not go so far? If we went only so far as Coquilles Island?”
Desmarais raised his eyes from the map and studied him thoughtfully. “Nine, ten hours perhaps.”
“Why should we want to do that?” Imlay demanded rudely.
Nathan ignored him. “And it would be possible to reach the fort from there?” he asked Desmarais.
“But yes. Of course. That is the way we came here. With this one.” He indicated the Spanish officer, sulking at the far end of the table.
“And we could travel, at least part of the way, by night?”
“By night it is more difficult but yes, with one who knows the way.”
“And how big a boat could you take there?”
“Not as big as this,” said Desmarais.
“But the ship’s boats that we are towing astern?”
“That is possible.”
“What are you proposing?” demanded Imlay in English.
“I am proposing,” said Nathan, “to save you a trip.”
CHAPTER 10
Into the Swamp
THE SWAMP HAD ITS OWN kind of mist. A grey-green fungus that clung to the surface of the water, rolling away from them in every direction as far as the eye could see. The boats moved through this vapour almost silently, the oars rising and falling like the wings of some clumsy, amphibious bird that could not gain enough momentum to take off. Looking up, Nathan could see stars and a full moon but there was so much moisture in the air, he had the impression he was looking down on them like shells and tiny stones at the bottom of a rock pool, dimly reflecting the light of the sun.
There were five boats in the expedition, each with its complement of marines and seamen, each joined to its neighbour by a long length of rope in case they lost sight of each other. They were crossing a lake—Lake Borgne, the French called it, according to their guide. In fact it was not really a lake at all but a lagoon, separated from the sea by a chain of sandbanks and small islands, more pieces in the Devil’s Jigsaw.
Nathan shifte
d slightly in his seat, moving the sword at his hip to make himself a little more comfortable. The air was oppressively humid and he was soaked in sweat already, though he had none of the rowing to do. Despite the protests of Lieutenant Pym, he had insisted on leading the expedition himself, arguing that he must take the responsibility if it all went wrong. In truth, he could not have borne to have stayed behind on the Unicorn while Pym led half his crew into the swamp. Besides, he knew he was better at this kind of thing than Pym, better than he was at commanding a ship, perhaps.
At Nathan’s request, Escavar had drawn a rough map showing the fort occupying a narrow promontory on the northern tip of the island overlooking the Rigolets where the channel merged into Lake Pontchartrain. It looked impressive on paper. A timber stockade with blockhouses at each corner surrounded by earthworks in the shape of a five-pointed star—and inside each of the points two 6-pounder cannon firing through embrasures. The garrison was normally about eighty men but there had been fifty more in the Governor-General’s party. The main problem for the garrison was the quality of their powder—much of it was damp and unusable.
The rebels had come up through the Rigolets. Several hundred of them in a fleet of pirogues and flatboats, landing on the neck of the peninsular with their artillery—six 12-pounders and four large mortars, according to Escavar, that they had been given by the French.
Nathan wondered if the Virginie had depleted her own broadside to supply them. It might make a difference if and when they encountered her.
Escavar was still rattling on in Spanish.
“The bulk of the force is concentrated on the right flank,” Imlay translated after a while. “On a long stretch of beach, just out of sight and range of the cannon in the fort. But they have pushed their own cannon forward behind barricades of timber, back-filled with earth, so they can bombard the fort from three positions.”
It was the mortars that were causing the greatest problem for the defenders, for it enabled the rebels to lob shells over the earthworks into the stockade itself. Also, they had cannon and mortars mounted on chalands-a-boeuf—large flatboats driven by long sweeps and normally used to carry cattle on the Mississippi—which they moved in close by night. Escavar estimated the total number of attackers at between five or six hundred.
Nathan had just sixty seamen and the same number of marines under Whiteley and McGregor but he was counting on the element of surprise and on attacking from the one direction the attackers had not covered.
Which rather depended on John Who-Lives-in-the-Marshes.
The guide had embellished upon Escavar’s account of the siege by explaining that the promontory on which the fort was built was composed of sand and silt washed up by the Rigolets. It was the only solid piece of land on the whole island. The rest was swamp, riddled with bayous. For this reason the French thought they were safe from attack in the rear and had posted only a few sentries. But Desmarais was confident of finding his way through the bayous and landing them on more or less solid ground within a few hundred yards of the French lines.
He was up in the bows of Nathan’s barge now with Joseph Bonnet, peering across the rolling bank of mist.
Nathan could not have explained, even to himself, why he was prepared to put his faith in an unknown Indian guide when he could not bring himself to trust Pym, or Imlay—or even the ship’s master Mr. Baker. If he had been asked, he would probably have said it was no different from taking a pilot on board to guide them in or out of harbour. But he knew it was something more than that. He trusted Desmarais partly because of something about him, some indefinable quality that gave him confidence. It had been the same when he had first met Tully. Perhaps he was drawn to rogues and outlaws—the sense of independence they had and the pride of the outsider who has no-one to rely upon but himself. But he could not have said for sure what it was. Perhaps it was his own lack of confidence.
“What is the name of your people?” he had asked Desmarais when they were still on the Unicorn.
“In our own tongue we are the Taneks-hava, the first people,” he said with a glint of amusement in his eye.
“And do you have a name, in your own tongue?”
“My family name is Itaanyadi.”
“Do you still have a family?”
“No. They were killed by the French. And I was taken to the mission in New Orleans.”
Did the fact that his family had been killed by the French make it more likely he would help the British—or the Spaniards? Possibly. It was useless to speculate. And too late.
They were approaching what appeared to be the mainland but was probably another island: a dense, seemingly impenetrable barrier of small trees or shrubs rising out of the mist but as they came closer a gap appeared, or rather the mist seemed to flow into a narrow channel between the foliage like a carpet unrolling before them, inviting them to enter. Desmarais seemed perfectly satisfied with this arrangement. And so on they went, into the swamp.
Nathan was no naturalist but it seemed likely from the salinity of the water that this was a mangrove swamp and if his previous experience was anything to go by it would be thick with mosquitoes and other stinging insects. Dr. McLeish had provided them with a concoction of rum and catnip to rub into their faces and other exposed areas as a repellent and Nathan had furtively added a sprinkling of vinegar and oregano which he privately believed would protect him from the miasma, a notorious breeding ground of disease. Otherwise there was only prayer.
The creek twisted and turned among the trees—was this the Little Snake, as Desmarais called it? From time to time it forked left or right and the Indian would issue a command in French which Nathan translated for his coxswain. He was reminded of his journey through the catacombs of Paris with another guide, the man known as Jack the Mule. Imlay had been with him then, too, and the adventure had ended badly, he recalled.
The insects had found them—they could hear them buzzing about their ears—but if they were biting, the men were remarkably stoical about it. On his previous visit to the tropics, Nathan had not been troubled by mosquitoes. He thought they did not like the taste of him—something in his blood, the French perhaps. Bats flitted in the air between the trees and from time to time they heard the cry of a bird or a large splash and once a grunting cough betraying the presence of larger creatures that remained invisible, at least to their human eyes.
They rowed for above an hour until the creek opened out into another lake, ringed in by distant islands. Desmarais came aft through the ranks of oarsmen and Nathan made room for him on the stern seat.
“The island is over there.” He pointed to the left but it could have been any of them, they all looked the same to Nathan. “If we wait here one hour we will reach the fort just before the sun rises.”
“Very well.”
And so they waited with the men resting up on their oars and the insects in a dense cloud about them, biting now. There were muttered oaths, a slapping of necks and the backs of hands and frequent commands for quiet from the petty officers.
Nathan had not calculated for this delay. And the attentions of the insects, though they might be considered no more than a nuisance, encouraged his doubts about the wisdom of the enterprise. It seemed incredible to him now that he was prepared to risk half his crew and possibly the Unicorn herself to save an obscure Spanish official and an insignificant little fort—it was called Le Petit Coquille, he had discovered, the Little Shell. True, he had been swayed by the wider strategic considerations proposed by Imlay but he was inclined now to the belief that strategic considerations should be left to politicians and the more sinister agencies at their command. The last time he had agreed to support Imlay’s grand designs was in Paris and that had led to the loss of the one person in France who really mattered to him.
Did he blame Imlay for Sara’s death? Partly, he thought, though not anything like as much as he blamed himself. And in all fairness he could not blame Imlay for their present situation. He had been entirely opposed to Nath
an’s scheme of attacking the rebels—a “rash conceit” he had called it, and that was the mildest of the expressions he had used—and they had scarcely spoken since. He was now sulking in one of the other boats with Escavar.
Nathan would not have described himself as either rash or conceited but there were times when he appeared to be possessed of some reckless demon that threw caution to the winds. Why? He sometimes wondered if it was a means of escaping the more rigorous disciplines of command, that he preferred the roll of the dice to the more precise calculations of navigation and the day-to-day running of a ship of war.
He was brooding upon this failing—if failing it was—when he found himself staring into a pair of eyes. Indeed he rather thought he had been doing so for some time before he became aware of the fact. Possibly the compartment of his mind occupied with such trivia as his immediate surroundings had categorised them as rocks. But no, they were eyes. Large reptilian eyes emerging from the swamp as if from the top of some creature’s head, like a frog’s. They observed him unblinkingly with what he took to be a cold, clinical regard, as if contemplating the mental torment of a fellow philosopher, though it was far more likely, he conceded, that the creature was considering whether he might be good to eat. The eyes were large enough to make this an immediate cause for concern and in the instant this occurred to him the creature apparently came to a positive conclusion on the subject for without any further warning it lunged forward, rising some several feet out of the water to reveal a massive elongated jaw possessed of a truly astonishing quantity of teeth.
Nathan leaped up in the boat and fell over backwards across the rowers. The boat rocked alarmingly. The beast fell back into the water with a great splash and the thrashing of an enormous tail. Several of the seamen struck out with their oars. But there was no second attack. Nathan gazed at the agitation in the water. He looked down the length of the boat. Saw the shocked expressions, reflecting his own.
“Fucking hell,” he said, with an embarrassed grin.
Several of the hands grinned back. Nathan laughed and then they were all laughing. He sat down, shaking his head but strangely pleased with himself. It was probably not commensurate with his dignity as a captain but he felt that the episode had united them somewhat. Certainly they all seemed more relaxed.