They want me t’take Proteus into the Mississippi? Lewrie gawped.
Lewrie took note that the chart was British, reading the description: The Entrance of the River Missisipi (misspelled) at Fort Balise, Taken in the King ‘s Ship Nautilus in the Year 1764 (Oh Christ, rather a long time ago!) with fathoms indicated in Roman numerals, and soundings in feet shown in Arabic … rather a lot of Arabic numbers, hmmm.
There was a mud bank, there was a large white expanse he took as a featureless alluvial island, and a hellish-shallow swath of soundings in feet betwixt; a narrower channel to the West of the featureless island where Fort Balise was situated, and a note above the fort, indicating that ships anchored there to lighten themselves before attempting to cross the river bar. East of the blank might-be-an-island was illustrated what Lewrie first took for the faithfully reproduced tracks of several drunken chickens, or wee little “fishies.” More on the eastern mud bank, hmmm… A closer perusal with a quizzing glass revealed that they were supposed to be an enormous maze of trees that had washed downriver; heaps that had drifted to the mud bank and had aided its formation. Hmmm… “Printed for R. Sayer & J. Bennett, No. 53 Fleet St. as the Act directs, July 1779.” Rather a long time ago, too! More trees littered the north bank of the tri-furcated channel.
Well, just thankee Jesus! he exultantly thought.
“A formidable fort, is this Balise, sir?” Nicely asked.
“Not really, Captain Nicely,” Pollock said, shrugging. “Simple stone water bastion, faced with earth and its guns old and rusty.”
Lewrie turned his concentration to his glass of brandy, let his eyes roam the parlour’s furnishings, and stifled a yawn, giving Mr. Pollock’s explanation but half an ear, and ready to stroll to a large bookcase and pull down a novel he’d heard of but hadn’t yet read.
Pass a L’Outre was a shortcut to the Head of the Passes, where all the forking channels came together; bloody grand for someone. Up halfway at a Northwest bend was a better bastion, Fort Saint Phillip; ho-hum. Halfway to New Orleans was Pointe a La Hache, but no fort, so who cared? Ninety miles up past the Head of the Passes was the great Nor’east bend called the English Turn, and Fort Saint Leon, a substantial obstacle, though.
“Know why they call it the English Turn, sirs?” Pollock japed.
Now that’s unattractive on him, too! Lewrie thought, grimacing.
“When the French still owned Louisiana, we actually put a fleet this far upriver,” Pollock said with a lopsided smile, “but the old governor, Bienville I think it was, made such a belligerent display, daring us to come get slaughtered, that we fell for his bluff and put about… right there,” he said, tapping the map with a forefinger.
“What’s the current?” Nicely enquired, frowning.
“Five to six knots, sir,” Pollock supplied. “It takes nearly a week to ascend the river. Boresomely slow passage. In small vessels, and with the help of hired locals, one could approach the city up the various minor rivers and bayous. Bayou Teche, Bayou La Fourche, from Atchafalaya Bay, or from Barataria Bay further west, where there is a lake and a major bayou of the same name. Very few people live on the coasts, but they make wondrous hidey-holes, and privateers and pirates have been reputed to use them, now and again.”
Lewrie abandoned the idea of borrowing the novel and returned his interest to the chart at the mention of “pirates” and the coastal lairs they might be using.
“Do you envisage an overland expedition?” Pollock grimaced in distaste for such an endeavour.
“Through the swamps?” Nicely said, shying from the idea, too.
“Wouldn’t have a corporal’s guard left by the time you got to New Orleans,” Lewrie said, chuckling, half his mind on that topic, too, still intent on the passes into the aforementioned bays. “Snakes and hornets, alligators … biting, bloodsucking insects? God help the poor, tasty British soldier subjected to that!”
“Captain Lewrie, when a Lieutenant in the last war, sir, did a stint ashore in the Spanish Floridas,” Capt. Nicely explained. “With the Creek Indians up the Apalachicola, was it not, Lewrie?”
“Aye, sir. Once was enough for me,” Lewrie said, mock-shivering. “Does Sir Hyde intend a descent upon Spanish Louisiana, I could think of no worse way to go about it.”
“Um, then,” Nicely grunted, sounding hellish disappointed. “If it must be a coup de main, and nothing stealthy, then, Mister Pollock, what about coming in from the East? These tempting bodies of water, this Lake Pontchartrain or Lake Borgne, for instance. Looks to me as if our pirates could hide in there, too, hey, Lewrie?”
“How large a vessel was it?” Pollock asked.
“A large two-masted, tops’l schooner,” Nicely quickly answered. “Might have six to eight feet of draught, if laden with booty?”
“Well, one could enter the Mississippi Sounds and get to Lake Borgne below, ah… here. Below Cat Island, there is Pass Maria, and a vessel could find sufficient depth to enter. As for any ships they captured, though, hmm … ahem. They’d be much larger, with deeper draught, and there’d be no place to strip them of goods and fittings, ‘less they did it in plain sight.”
“And getting to New Orleans itself from there?” Nicely added.
“From the West shore of Lake Borgne it’s fifteen or so miles to the city, or, one could enter Lake Pontchartrain from Lake Borgne by the Rigolets Narrows,” Pollock hazily surmised. “But, that pass is guarded by Fort Coquilles, and once into Pontchartrain—a very shallow body of water, I must tell you—there is still Fort Saint John on the city’s northern outskirts, to guard that approach, and the fast water route down Bayou Saint John.”
“If we did invade New Orleans from there, Lewrie,” Capt. Nicely prompted, “sometime in the future, ah… how does it look to you? If our pirates could use it to get their goods into the town, couldn’t a military expedition use the same route, perhaps?”
“Well, sir …” Lewrie stated, then took time to read the depth notations and slowly shook his head. “Mister Pollock is right. The ships of the line and the troop transports would have to lay off this Cat Island, outside the Sounds, and you’d need hundreds of cutters and barges to pull it off, lots of gunboats and bomb ketches to reduce this Fort Coquilles, too, I s’pose. I could sail Proteus up there and take fresh soundings for you, if Mister Pollock thinks the pirates might’ve used this short approach to the main market for their loot.”
“Yes, hmm,” Nicely grumbled, sounding guarded.
“If our presence, scouting and sounding their water approaches didn’t give the game away, of course, sir,” Lewrie added. “For later.”
“Perhaps a covert approach,” Nicely posed, “in a civilian ship flying, oh… an American flag might suit. Sound and scout this way to the city… perhaps even sail up the Mississippi right up to the town! Take a look at their garrisons, their river forts, ah… just in case we are forced to use blunt force, and risk the English Turn once more, hmm?”
“Whilst I’m looking for pirates, sir?” Lewrie asked, grinning widely at how eager (yet cagy) Capt. Nicely looked to have an active part in whatever it was that Admiral Sir Hyde Parker, the general in charge of their Canadian possessions, and far-off London might have in mind. “Of course. My frigate could back you up should you get into trouble. Just so long as you’re near the coast, not actually upriver beyond that… what did you call it?… the Head of the Passes?”
Poor fellow, bored to tears! Lewrie thought sympathetically.
“Do you personally wish to scout the city, though, sir, posing as an American,” Lewrie japed the so pleasant and good-humoured Captain Nicely, “I’d strongly advise you to learn how to chew a quid of tobacco and how to spit. ’Tis hardly a skill one quickly learns. And, I’m told that neatness counts, sir, hah hah!”
“Ah ha!” Nicely rejoined, though not looking quite so amused by his joshing as Lewrie would have imagined. “Lewrie’s first command was a captured French corvette, I’m told, Mister Pollock,” he added as he turned to face
that worthy. “Admiral Hood renamed her HMS Jester. Given Captain Lewrie’s wit, one does not wonder why, hmm? He’s such a droll young wag.” Nicely’s smile was feral, an I’ll-get-you-for-that.
Why ain’t he laughin’? Lewrie had to wonder; Did I put him in a pet? Fact is, he couldn’t pass for American in India!
“Excuse me, sir,” Nicely’s longtime Cox’n, now the majordomo of his unwelcome shore establishment, interrupted as he slid back the pocket doors to the parlour. “Your other visitor, a Mister Peel, is arrived, sir.”
Peel! Lewrie gasped to himself, feeling his supper and two bowls of “chocolate pudding pie” turn to liquid in his bowels; Shit, and God help me! Is he a part o’ this, whatever it is?
And whatever it was that Capt. Nicely was so sphinx-faced about Lewrie feared that it would not be a duty quite so straightforward as hunting down pirates.
CHAPTER SEVEN
A pleasure to see you once again, Captain Lewrie,” Peel said, once the introductions were done.
“I just wish I could say the same, Jemmy,” Lewrie rejoined with a tart grimace. “Not when you wear your ‘official’ spy phyz, though.”
“Who says that I wear it now, Lewrie?” the darkly handsome and well-knit Foreign Office agent said with a smirk.
“You’re here, damn my eyes,” Lewrie spat back. “That’s proof enough for me.”
“Oh, ye of little faith,” Mr. Peel—James Peel—mocked with a mournful “tsk-tsk” and a shake of his head.
“Oh, I of scars aplenty,” Lewrie said right back, scowling.
“You know each other, sirs?” Pollock dared ask.
“Yes,” “No!” Peel and Lewrie said in the same instant.
“’Tis good to see you again, Mister Pollock,” Peel said. “Your business thrives?”
“Indeed it does, Mister Peel,” Pollock allowed. “Well-met, sir.”
“Oh, Christ,” Lewrie whispered, passing a hand over his brow as he realised that Pollock and Peel might have worked together before, and what that signified!
“Thank you for coming, Mister Peel,” Capt. Nicely bade him. “I s’pose you’ve already eat, but…”
“Aye, I did, sir, but thankee,” Peel pooh-poohed.
“Perhaps coffee and a dessert would not go amiss, hey?”
“Your chocolate concoction, Captain Nicely?” Peel brightened. “That would be capital, indeed!”
“We were just discussing where Captain Lewrie could best search for our murderous pirates, Mister Peel,” Nicely said, inviting all of them to sit. “And some details of that, ah, other matter,” Nicely concluded with a wink towards Peel. “Have you learned anything as to the identity of who some of the bastards might be, sir?”
“I did, sir,” Peel rejoined, turning to Lewrie. “Pardon me for taking the liberty, Lewrie, but I spoke with your surviving crewmen at the hospital…”
“Was Toby Jugg, or whatever his real name is, involved?” Lewrie demanded.
“No, I don’t think he was,” Peel stated. “Not that he isn’t a shifty fellow, at bottom. But he’s innocent of your prize’s taking. Wrong place, wrong time, that sort of thing. I’m convinced of it.”
Mr. Peel steepled his fingers under his nose, an unconscious imitation of his old mentor, that master spy of Lewrie’s past acqaintance, the now-retired Mr. Zachariah Twigg.
“However,” Peel alluringly added, “that’s not to say that Jugg didn’t know at least one or two of the leaders. The one who declared himself when he marooned them, who called himself Boudreaux Balfa for one. Mister Pollock,” Peel said, swivelling about, “you’re much more familiar with Louisiana and New Orleans. That name ring a bell?”
“I’ve heard him mentioned, yes, Mister Peel,” Pollock intoned. “Ahem … (twitch-whinny) he made a name for himself during the Revolution as a privateer. An exiled Acadian, from old French Canada, he is. I think he lives somewhere down Bayou Barataria now. Used his profits to buy land and retired from seafaring, so I’ve been told. A widower, I think I also heard? Went by the sobriquet of L’Affamé, ‘the Hungry,’ at sea.”
“Your Toby Jugg sailed with him years ago, Lewrie,” Peel said, with a sly delight to impart that fact. “Your Jugg admitted to me he didn’t want to be recognised. Something about cheating this Balfa of a share of old booty. And, in the years since, he’s thickened, aged, and wears that thick beard, so, thankfully, Balfa didn’t tumble to his presence. Else he might’ve lost his ears, Jugg told me.”
“Put him to the Question like the Spanish Inquisition, did you?” Lewrie cynically supposed.
“Hardly that extreme!” Peel laughed heartily. “Though I did get him in quite a sweat when I interrogated him alone.”
“Good!” was Lewrie’s sour comment to that news.
“The long, lanky one who impersonated him in your Bosun’s Mate’s clothes,” Peel prosed on, “your Jugg might have known, as well. Got it garbled, o’ course, the other sailors. Another name to conjure with, Mister Pollock,” Peel said, turning about, again. “Lanxade?”
“Oh, him!” Pollock exclaimed in instant recognition. “He has a fair amount of fame in New Orleans, too, ahem (twitch-whinny). He and Balfa must have ended up with four or five privateers at sea, towards the end of the last war! Jérôme Lanxade. Made umpteen thousands from privateering… some say from piracy, too, ‘fore the war, and perhaps for a time after. Spent it like water, though, gambled deep, and lost most of it. Or, spent it on the, ah… ahem! … the faster ladies.”
Pollock actually looked as if he would blush!
“What is he doing now, and where could he be found?” Peel asked.
“In any b-b-bordello in New Orleans, actually,” Pollock admitted. “He’s infamous for it. High-born French Creole lady or tavern drabs, no matter, and ’tis said no husband, father, or beau sleeps sound if Jérôme Lanxade’s on the town.”
“We have a good physical description of Balfa from Lewrie’s men. What does Lanxade look like? You’ve seen him yourself, Mister Pollock?” Peel casually pressed, his eyes alight as the game took foot.
“Each time I return to New Orleans, yes,” Pollock supplied them. “Hmm… very tall and lean. Very long and spiky waxed mustachios in the Spanish style… uncommon vain, he is. Still tries to twinkle in style, but, oh… he’d be in his fifties, by now, I think, so his appeal of old is fading. Dresses in the highest fashion… garish, loud colours, but very fine material,” Pollock told them, head cocked most parrot-like in forced recollection. “I’m told that he employs dye to keep his hair and mustachios dark, and… rapier-thin though he still is, good living put a gotch-gut on his middle, so there’s some say he wears a canvas and whale-bone corset to maintain his manly figure!”
“And his activities, of late?” Peel asked.
“Oh, I do believe he only sails the Mississippi, now,” Pollock responded, snickering a little at any man who’d held such a fortune and squandered it, now reduced to the Prodigal Son’s beggary. “Works for some trading company, captaining shalopes up to Natchez, Manchac, Baton Rouge, and the west bank settlements like Saint Louis. Jérôme Lanxade …” Pollock pondered with a long sigh, ruminating. “Him, I can see returning to a life of piracy and looting. From what little I know of Balfa, though, I’d have thought he’d have more sense.”
“And Lanxade was known, in his privateering days, as ‘the Ferocious’ … Le Féroce?” Peel almost happily concluded.
“That was the name connected to his repute, yes, Mister Peel.” Pollock assured him. “Once gained, how hard it must be to dim…”
“There’s your principals, Captain Nicely, Captain Lewrie,” Mr. Peel told them, beaming, turning away from Pollock as if he had wrung him dry of all that was necessary.
“A description of their schooner, and the names and descriptions of the leaders,” Lewrie said, pleased as well. “So I’ll know who to whack when I cross hawses with ’em. Excellent work, Mister Peel!”
“Well, there is the matter of where a penniless Jérôme Lanxade got t
he wherewithal to outfit a ship and hire on a crew,” Peel said in caution. “What he promised this Boudreaux Balfa to come out of retirement. Your sailors also spoke of some others aboard the schooner, the morning they were put ashore on the Dry Tortugas …”
“The young ‘uns, d’ye mean,” Lewrie said, recalling what he had heard in the hospital ward. “The titterin’ cruelest ones?”
“It is also quite intriguing to me,” Peel continued, “that our pirates, but for the seizure of your prize ship, Lewrie, seem to take great pleasure in only attacking Spanish vessels.”
“Hmmm …” Capt. Nicely sagely stuck in as Peel’s coffee and pie at last appeared, silencing them until they’d been set by Peel’s chair on a round wine-table, and the servant had withdrawn.
“Who backed them, and why, you wonder,” Nicely supposed, once they were alone again. “Where the seed money came from?”
“Most-like, they both fell on hard times, as Mister Pollock suggests,” Lewrie dismissed, “they’re bored, and piracy’s the only trade they know that pays. Reliving their wild and misspent youth! Began with a cutting-out raid in a brace o’ rowboats and moved up from that. The schooner might be their best, and latest, capture, is all.”
“Mister Pollock,” Peel said, turning to that worthy again, after a pitiable grin at Lewrie’s supposition. “What’s the mood among the old French Creoles with whom you deal? Have you heard any expression of dis-satisfaction with Spanish rule, of late?”
“Of course, Mister Peel!” Pollock quickly assured him. “They barely tolerate ’em in the best of times. They’d despise anyone other than their fellow Frenchmen ruling them. No one else in the world is, ahem! … cultured enough to even rub shoulders with ’em. There’s a long-simmering revulsion, ever since old King Louis sold Louisiana to the Spanish.”
“Anything beyond a grudge, of late, though, Mister Pollock?” Peel further enquired. “The talk in parlours and streets, your store, any more fervid? Any rumours of revolt?”
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