The Captain's Vengeance

by Dewey Lambdin

  Dining with tradesmen was not so much a downward social step as it was running the risk of being dunned sometime ’twixt the fish course and the cheese and port. Most “gentlemen” stayed in debt to tradesmen of their acquaintance; a number fled like Hell at the sight of ’em.

  Mr. Gideon Pollock, however, turned out to be a most congenial and informative table companion, not that he had a chance to eat much.

  And, so far as Lewrie knew, he didn’t owe the man a farthing.

  No, “nice” as Capt. Nicely was, as solicitous to Mr. Pollock as he behaved, it was more a working supper than a social occasion, with Pollock “singing for his supper” almost from the start. Pollock had no gossip, no books or plays or ear for music to discuss; what he did discuss involved the fetching of charts and maps, of sketching with his fork’s handle or a well-honed pencil stub, as he laid out the situation anent Spanish Florida and Spanish Louisiana.

  “Well, I rather doubt your prize ship went into port at Mobile or Pensacola, Cap’m Lewrie,” Pollock said with a chary expression once the reason for their supper had been explained to him. “Other than the small Spanish garrisons, a few priests and government officials, there aren’t enough customers for the looted goods or the slaves. And not more than a handful of people with more than two silver escudos to rub together. No Prize Court to adjudge and condemn the ship, either,” he said, rubbing the side of his nose, a nervous gesture that he evinced more than once that evening. “Nossir, I’d put my money on New Orleans. There, or Havana. What Spanish ‘captain-general’ of Florida there is, he’s no more than ‘governor of the mildew,’ the mosquitoes, and palmetto bugs!”

  Mr. Pollock also had a nervous habit of jerking his head up and to the right, now and again, with a wee throat-clearing whinny. It was quite unnerving. That, and watching his Adam’s apple bob.

  Pollock bore the complexion of a longtime sailor or huntsman, as creased about his eyes and lips as a Scots ghillie. He was slender and wiry, stood about two inches shorter than Lewrie but appeared to weigh no more than ten stone, and that with his suit and shoes on. He was high-cheeked and lean-faced, with rather remarkably vivd green eyes that seemed to droop at the outer corners, and a nose that put Lewrie in mind of a Welshman or Cornishman; it was long, prominent, and aquiline, with a hook-bump forming the bridge.

  Not exactly English in his speech, either. Mr. Pollock sounded decently schooled, as if he might have been a second or third son from the squirearchy who had strayed from the expected church, law, military, or naval careers, or been “remittanced” overseas to hush up a scandal. He sounded above the station of tradesman but below the idle elegance of a gentleman. Less British, more… American somehow.

  Capt. Nicely had introduced Pollock’s firm as being thoroughly British, established in the Colonies long before the so-called French and Indian War, as the Colonials had referred to it. Lewrie imagined that he’d been among the Yankee Doodles, Dons, and French so long that their patterns of speech had corrupted those Pollock had been born with.

  “We have offices in New Orleans, d’ye see,” Pollock continued, “and I manage to get up there five or six times a year. Believe this, gentlemen, when I say that anything and everything is for sale in New Orleans. And the Cabildo, the Spanish Government House, could float on the bribes! A thoroughly corrupt people, are the Dons. Not that their ostensible subjects, the original French settlers, were a whit better. It’d be an easy thing to circumvent the Prize Court… Just sail your missing ship over to the south bank opposite the town, circulate some flyers—assuming your customers can read, that is!—and open her as an emporium. Once your goods are gone, you sell off the sails and fittings, then the ship herself. The slaves, well… there are itinerant dealers, the caboteurs, who’d meet you at the Head of the Passes and buy them off you, plunk them into their barges, and flog them off in the backcountry, ’thout hide nor hair of them ever appearing where the authorities’d have to take notice.

  “Governor-General Carondelet banned the import of slaves born in the Caribbean in ’96,” Pollock said, with a rub at his nose and a jerk of his head, an “ahem-ish” whinny, and a tug at his costly neck-stock. “They’re s’posed to be inspected and certified as genuine Africans, at Havana mostly, but… ‘Black Ivory’ is ‘Black Ivory,’ what with planters expanding their holdings. They’re switching over to cotton, rice, and sugarcane, and for that the landowners need thousands of slaves.”

  “Er… how is it, Mister Pollock, that you, a British subject, come and go into the Spanish possessions so freely?. After all, we are at war with Spain,” Lewrie asked, puzzled.

  “Bless me, Cap’m Lewrie.” Pollock chuckled over the rim of his wineglass, not without another of those “ahem-twitch-whinnies.” “Our firm damn’ near keeps Spanish Florida and Louisiana a going business! Without us, they’d have no goods, no arms for their Indian allies, no comforts for themselves! Though merchants from Charleston or Savannah cut into us something frightful, we do manage to hold onto a profitable lion’s share, so far. God’s sake, sir… surely you don’t think that Spanish merchants could do it! No, no, their goods have to come direct from Spain and are far too costly, and the bulk of American colonies neither make or export much of use to Louisiana or Florida.

  “Dons rape, pillage, plunder, and exploit deuced well,” Pollock sneered, “but they’re utter failures at manufactury or trade. No high-nosed, haughty Spanish hidalgo’d be caught dead dirtying his hands with low-born doings. Ranch, run plantations, government work, but never in commerce. ‘My family rode weeth El Cid’,” Pollock mock-declaimed in a Castilian lisp worthy of the royal court at Madrid,” ‘we drove ze Moor from España weeth our swords, we sail weeth Colombus, we conquered Meh-hee-co beside Cortes, sheenyor, how dare you shoog-yest …’!”

  “So, their goods cost more than yours,” Lewrie supposed, “and I expect they’re overtaxed, too? So, you undercut, perhaps bribe?”

  “But, of course,” Pollock admitted, preening. “Frankly, were I king of Spain, I’d wash my hands of Louisiana and Florida, for they’ll do no more with ’em than the Indians will. They’re dead-broke—spiritually, morally, and financially—and haven’t a hope of keeping them in the long run. No Spaniards emigrate there, but for government appointees and soldiers, and outside the port towns, there aren’t two of ’em in every hundred square miles, but for priests or barefoot squatters. They simply won’t change their climes to better themselves, as our good Anglo-Saxons will,” Pollock declared. “So, sooner or later, they will lose ’em to the Americans. ’Til then, we at Panton, Leslie will stave off the inevitable. Therefore, the Dons need us,” Pollock said with a sly wink… and another twitch-whinny.

  Once peace had come after the American Revolution, the Yankees had exploded westward, over the mountains, up rivers, game-trails, or warpaths. Long-hunters, then settlers, then traders to service them; surveyors, speculators, and schemers hadn’t been far behind. Each new “sovereign” state had veterans to reward with vast, vaguely bordered land tracts in lieu of pension monies, which soon became speculative stock-in-trade, some for as little as a farthing an acre!

  Spain had one idea where her borders of Florida, and the edges of the Louisiana they had purchased from the French, lay; the Yankees had quite another—or simply didn’t give a tinker’s damn for them. Spain claimed the inland Indians were “allies and clients” whose territories expanded Spain’s claims as far east as the Hiwassee River in the Tennessee Valley, and along the Tennessee (or Tanasi) River.

  The industrious Jonathons, though, befuddled the tribes with a host of trade goods better than anything the Spanish could offer, with an ocean of rum and whiskey. They “rented” grants the size of Ireland for the “loan” of a musket, a stack of blankets, a cookpot, a good horse and saddle! And it was months, or years, before the rare, roaming Spanish soldier or official might stumble upon the unofficial invasion, then hie back to the coast to complain about the entire towns that had sprung up since their last visit.

>   Georgia, Virginia, and North and South Carolina had sent out a host of land agents to form development companies that issued speculative shares of dubious claim and value on these same tracts, when not arguing among each other as to who owned exactly what! The Yazoo Company, Muscle Shoals Company, Cumberland Company… Georgia alone had carved out a Bourbon “County” the size of France and had threatened war on the Spanish possessions, on Spain herself, if not certified.

  North of Spanish claims, the new state of Kentucky had come into existence in 1792, then the closer and more-threatening state of Tennessee in 1796, which resulted in fresh hordes of hard-handed, cussedly independent-minded Americans coming to the eastern bank of the Great River, the Mississippi itself, down the Yazoo River to Natchez, down the Alabama into Florida almost in sight of Mobile, to Baton Rouge or Manchac inside Spanish Louisiana, down near New Orleans!

  Pollock, thankfully, had the proper maps handy for his spiel.

  Indeed, New Orleans was becoming the main entrepôt for Yankee frontier goods, rafted or barged down for shipment back East on American merchant ships, which was much quicker than over-mountain, upriver trade to the original Thirteen Colonies. Spanish and French companies either died or got co-opted; went broke or grew obscenely rich from the influx—which, unfortunately, filled New Orleans with “chaw-baccy” Yankee merchants, and Louisiana with unwanted land-grabbers.

  Spitefully, the Spanish had banned American traffic on the river, in New Orleans, but that had been a failure, and the ban had been lifted the year before, in ’98. Nothing seemed to avail.

  “The Dons don’t know what to do.” Pollock let out a snicker, which, accompanied by a twitch-ahem-whinny, looked positively ghastly on him. “At least with American goods, a lot of money changes hands. And goods off Yankee ships that come upriver for cargoes are first-rate and cheap, so they can’t really complain too much. My company thrives on wilderness goods, as well, I must avow.”

  “Your Indian trade, though… with the Spanish,” Lewrie asked.

  “Well, the old Indian trade is not as profitable as it was,” Mr. Pollock replied with a wry smile, just as perfectly offputting. “The American trade makes up for it. They’ve no money in the backcountry, but both they and the Indians have hides, furs, whisky, and tobacco to barter with. And, so far from East Coast manufacturies, and so hard it is to get finished goods westward in carts, small waggons, or mule-back… the small, poled flatboats, well… here Panton, Leslie is, with British goods at decent prices, heh heh heh!”

  Gawd, he sets me teeth on edge when he laughs like that! Lewrie thought with a cringe; Was I a Yankee or Indian, he did that just once, I’d run like hell… or scalp him!

  “So, sooner or later the Americans overwhelm Louisiana and the Floridas, you expect, sir?” Lewrie asked.

  “Indeed, Captain Lewrie,” Pollock gravely agreed. “There’s a good chance all this trade, ours and the Americans through New Orleans, is drawing even more settlers than do the empty lands! I’d give them no more than five or six years before the Yankee Doodles just up and take the place, and have done. Either the United States acting as an organised polity, or the frontier states acting on their own.”

  “Indeed!” Capt. Nicely harrumphed in surprise.

  “Kentucky and Tennessee, their settlers below the boundaries, are so isolated from the rest of the States, they might as well still answer to London, sirs.” Pollock chuckled. “Physically and politically too, d’ye see… ahem. The backwoods have little in common with those ‘civilised’ sorts ‘cross the mountains. The settlers are rankled by the games played by speculators and diverse state governments, the broken promises of pensions…”

  “Like the Whisky Rebellion?” Lewrie asked with a knowing smirk.

  “Very much like it, aye.” Pollock laughed. “Americans are the most stubborn, anarchy-minded, personally independent folk, ever I did see! Some over-mountain people aspire to personal fiefdoms, like the rebellious state of Franklin that sprang up in East Tennessee just a few years ago. The Indians are no real challenge, not really, and the Spanish aren’t much better at protecting their holdings, so…”

  “Might be a good idea to encourage that sort of thing,” Captain Nicely posed, “since it should be in our interests to rein in the Americans, before they get too big and powerful to deal with, hmmm?”

  “Well, I dare say… heh heh,” Pollock responded, sounding as if Capt. Nicely had broached a topic best left alone.

  To Lewrie’s puzzled look, Captain Nicely softly imparted, “There are plans afoot, Captain Lewrie, I may tell you in all confidence, o’ course, for some, ah… lands lately in rebellion against the Crown that might be recovered, Admiral Sir Hyde Parker has corresponded with our British North American forces to, ah… effect the taking of the Mississippi. If necessary. To that happy conclusion, we would need free entry to a strong military and commercial base. Mobile or New Orleans, control of the west bank of the Mississippi, if nothing else, hence, to control its entire length, and hold the Yankees snug in their kennels.”

  “Enticing the breakaway backwoods Americans in the new western states to, ah …” Lewrie gawped. What have I got into? he wondered.

  “Depend on us for their economic well-being, aye,” Nicely said.

  “I thought we were to speak of finding pirates, my missing—”

  “I only give you the background, sir,” Capt. Nicely cautioned. “Sir Hyde instructed me to reveal this much to you, before you sally forth to haunt the coasts. Sir Hyde told me that Mister Pollock, in his capacity as a trader allowed into Spanish possessions, could aid your search… provide information anent New Orleans, the identities of notorious brigands who might’ve been involved in taking your prize and committing their… atrocities, then send you coded letters by way of his smaller vessels.”

  “I assure you, Captain Lewrie, that I know where all the bodies are buried,” Pollock intoned, with another of his ghastly grins. “And who is most likely to be your perpetrators. I cannot give you active assistance without, ahem … revealing my, and my firm’s, ties to the Crown, ’thout being garotted as a spy by the Dons, but…”

  “In the meantime, whilst I haunt the coasts, you’ll really be… spying, anyway? To aid any future, ah… descent on New Orleans or Louisiana?” Lewrie sourly realised, aloud.

  “One observes, one notes. Quite innocently… ahem!” Pollock rejoined, looking quite happily “sly-boots.”

  “And here comes dessert!” Nicely suddenly exclaimed as supper plates were whisked away by his house-servants, and an intricate cut-crystal serving bowl was trotted out. A jumble or trifle, most-like?

  A shit cobbler? Lewrie dubiously thought as he took note of the dish’s brown colour, all streaked with what looked like crust, and some whitish creamy layers. There were some suspicious yellow lumps, too.

  “You’re reputed to be a man possessed of a fine palate, Captain Lewrie,” Nicely enthused, hands a’rub in gleeful expectation. “But I dare say you’ve not tasted the like o’ this in all your travels!”

  “I dare say not, sir,” Lewrie squeamishly confessed, his eyes fixed upon the dollops being spooned out in smaller bowls. “What—”

  “Caribbean and New World, sir!” Nicely boasted. “All regional ingredients. Rum and sugar, molasses for thickening. Bananas, fresh off the bush. And sweetened chocolate beans, pulverised and boiled to a milk paste. I call it a chocolate pudding pie. Taste, sir!”

  “Good God in Heaven!” Lewrie had to splutter in amazement once he’d had a tentative, tiny spoonful. “It’s Ambrosia! Why, I never … bloody marvellous!”

  “Once we’ve eat our fill, we’ll retire to my parlour,” Captain Nicely simpered ’twixt avid bites of his unique concoction, “where we may have our brandy or port, and consult the charts, so Mister Pollock may further enlighten us regarding our mission, Lewrie.”

  Our mission, is it? Lewrie thought with a brief check. I know he’s bored shitless, but… oh, well. At least the pudding’s good!

&
nbsp; CHAPTER SIX

  So, Mister Pollock, what’s the best way to get at ’em, in your estimation?” Capt. Nicely eagerly enquired, once a parlour table had been cleared of decorations, and the maps and sea charts assembled. He took a slurp from a snifter of brandy, then used it to anchor a corner of a chart. “Should it be necessary, of course.”

  “Well, sir, ahem,” Mr. Pollock carefully began, “you will note that New Orleans is situated a fair piece or better up the Mississippi River, an hundred miles or more. The river is somewhat unique in that its silt deposits form this massive delta on either bank that extends so far out into the Gulf of Mexico. The rules of Nature do not obtain in Louisiana… The streams don’t flow into the river, they seep out in sloughs and bayous, and those meander and divide into a trackless maze. The land south of Baton Rouge is flat as a table-top, and but a few feet above sea level, ahem.

  “No cellars or basements in Louisiana, sirs! Nor will you find the dead buried in the ground, hah hah! And what appears to be solid ground is so saturated, you may sink into spongy, saturated ‘quaking’ prairies … if not an outright marsh. Rich soil, yes, refreshed by the annual floods, where it’s arable. But it also makes for swamps you must see to believe.”

  “Grand place for Frogs, then… swamps,” Lewrie japed.

  “As to getting upriver to New Orleans …” Pollock continued.

  What the Devil’s that t’do with capturing my pirates? he asked himself, cocking his head to one side as Pollock “prosed.”

  “There are several nevigable entrances to the Mississippi delta… the Southwest Pass, South Pass, and the Southeast Pass. I prefer the Southeast, myself, as closest to Jamaica, so…”