The Captain's Vengeance

by Dewey Lambdin

  “Assure me, pray do,” Pollock entreated.

  “I’m an overaged Lieutenant,” Lewrie almost sing-songed what Peel had had the gall to write down for him to study on the voyage. “Was, rather. Little patronage or ‘interest,’ lived mostly on my pay and never had a speck of luck with prize-money… one command, early on. A despatch cutter. Glorious fun, but then I was advanced aboard a Third Rate seventy-four, and that was boresome blockading, with no chance to advance. And no adventure or fun, either.”

  “Mmm-hmm,” Pollock encouraged ‘tween sips of pepper-pot soup.

  “Competent, but no one’s pet,” Lewrie impatiently recited his false biography, one slightly borrowed from his own past aboard the 64-gun HMS Ariadne as a Midshipman, the despatch schooner HMS Parrot. “Started in the American Revolution, second or third son of a freehold family, but nothing grand. I’m thirty-six, so I spent a lot of time ‘tween the wars on half-pay, knocking about in the merchant service, so I can bore people to death with tales about the Far East, Canton in China, Calcutta… and know what I’m saying. Mate aboard a ‘country’ ship, not with the East India Company… that’d be too grand for me.”

  “Quite,” Pollock primly simpered over the bowl of his spoon.

  “Back in the Navy in ’93, when the war broke out,” Lewrie went on, by then bored with repeated recitations. “Impress Service, not sea duty, though. Deptford, ‘cause my old Captain Lilycrop held that district…”

  “As were you, for a time,” Pollock pointed out.

  “Aye, I did, damn yer eyes. Then,” Lewrie muttered, taking time to sample his soup and take a drink of wine. “Um… I learned one could make a ‘shower o’ tin’ crimping merchant sailors even with legitimate protections, farm lads. Fiddled the books, too, over the costs of recruiting, claimed more than I brought in… took bribes from merchant captains t’look the other way, and—”

  “And you ended out here, in my employ,” Pollock concluded for him, as if laying a permanent claim upon him. “The very sort of tar-handed fellow we need, who knows his way with artillery, good with an assortment of weapons… knows how to lead men. Useful but ruthless, none too squeamish if heads need knocking together? Hmm, though…” Pollock stopped of a sudden and gave Lewrie a skeptical appraising, up and down like a disbelieving London tailor presented with a crude, “Country-Put” ape to garb. “What you now wear will do aboard ship, but…” he speculated for a long moment. “Before I turn you loose on the city to do whatever it is you’ll do to seek your pirates, I fancy you should adopt better togs. Now employed, you might be accepted all the more as a flash dandy, now you have the ‘chink.’ New Orleans is hip-deep in dandies. Think of it as a way of, ah… blending in. Do you own shore-going attire, Mister Willoughby… ahem?”

  “Never had need of ’em,” Lewrie gruffly replied, wondering what new horror might be foisted upon him. “Ev’ry stitch o’ ‘long clothes’ I own are back in England.”

  “Then we must come up with something suitable, mustn’t we?” Mr. Pollock decided with a lazy, feral smile and a chuckle worthy of a Covent Garden pimp. “Can’t have you looking too elegant, but… I think that a bit of the gentleman, with a bit of the ‘Captain Sharp’ will suit your needs right down to your toes, heh heh.”

  “Oh, bloody joy,” Lewrie warily groaned, sure he’d despise Mr. Pollock’s choices, even if he did know his home ground and its tastes to a tee; and half worried that the wretched little man would charge him for new clothing!

  “Couldn’t I lurk about in what I’m wearing?” Lewrie asked him.

  “You’d look like a costumed spy right off,” Pollock warned him. “Best to appear as close to the locals’ style as you may and be taken for what the town expects to see from a man of your new station. As for lurking …”

  “How else do we find the pirates who—”

  “Time enough for that,” Pollock assured him. “All in good time.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Christ, I’m a Covent Garden pimp! Lewrie sourly thought, taking in his new “suitings” in a wavy, speckled old cheval mirror aboard the emporium hulk. One o’the canting crew, a pickpocket… an Amuser!

  Mr. Pollock had suggested a touch of “Captain Sharp” and by God he’d delivered: a tawdry ensemble usually sported by “buttock brokers” and confidence men, professional gamblers and ne’er-do-wells, or those who blew snuff in a cully’s eyes in a dark street, then robbed him of all he had—the Amusers of ill repute.

  He’d been given a tightly woven and wide-brimmed planter’s hat made of the slimmest straw or cane fibres from Cuba, nigh as big about as a washtub, what local settlers called a “wide-awake,” since it was nearly impossible to see whether the wearer was asleep or awake underneath its cooling shade if one had one’s head down. Below that, he now was clad in an exaggerated tailcoat, assured that it was “all the go” in Paris, London, or Madrid. The lapels were extremely wide, the square cut-aways didn’t come down to his waist, there was no way it could button together over his chest, and its long scissor-tails fell to the backs of his knees. The sleeves were almost excruciatingly snug, and puffed up where they joined the shoulders, putting Lewrie in mind of a gown his wife, Caroline, was partial to. The tailcoat was bottle green, but made from an extremely glittery fabric.

  Under that, he wore a shiny, nubby-silk waist-coat weaved in vertical stripes—salmon, burgundy, white, and tan, with lapels of its own, best displayed overlaid upon the coat lapels, so very snug, short-waisted and double-breasted that he found it hard to breathe.

  Sensible neck-stocks were no longer the ton; no, one had to wear a florid paisley Frog invention, the cravat, which even tied could do double duty as a child’s bib or a diner’s napkin, and tickled his chin every time he moved, it was so big, wide, and puffy.

  Pollock let him keep his own watch, fob, and chain, but tricked him out in trousers, much snugger and more stylish than his accustomed slop trousers at sea; they were white, and fitted so close to his calves that he had no trouble donning a horseman’s top-boots.

  A small pistol fit into his coat’s breast pocket, its twin in the small of his back. He could wear his own Gills’ hanger, but on a flashier snake-clasp waist belt. Finally, with a cherry-ebony walking stick to fend off riffraff and mendicants—it hid a slim eighteen-inch sword as well—he was simply “the crack,” and “all the go”!

  Before Pollock trusted him to survive on his own versus suspected pirates, though, that worthy sent Lewrie and Jugg, still dressed as an idle bully-buck, aboard the Yankee emporium hulk to check out their wares and prices. “Think of it as a dress rehearsal!” Mr. Pollock had chirped. Jugg also went well armed; his clothes were so loose he could carry a whole armory, so much so that Lewrie feared he’d give himself away by the clanking!

  Damn Pollock, and Commerce! Lewrie thought after only a few minutes aboard, in the main display area on the lower deck. The prices were chalked on slate or penned on brown paper scraps atop the baskets or bins, altogether a mind-boggling array of international currencies and exchange rates. Louisiana should ask payment in centavos, escudos, or silver dollars, even old pieces-of-eight, but, like the rest of the Caribbean and the New World, local currency amounted to whatever was at hand, including Austrian Maria Theresas (all dated 1780!) as well as Dutch, Danish, French, or Portuguese coinage. Try as he might to make the calculations in his head, to recall prices and what sold the quickest, Lewrie couldn’t keep things straight without a surreptitious jotting with a pencil stub and a folded-over sheet of foolscap. With his nervousness over being caught out, and without any decent ventilation belowdecks, and a winter’s day in New Orleans sullenly hot and muggily humid, he was quickly reduced to a muddle-headed puddle.

  People always said I was too dense t’make change, but Lord! he fretted. And whenever sales clerks looked his way, he broke out in a fresh sweat, reducing his original sour opinion of his appearance from “pimp” to a “whore in church” or a guilty-looking, potential shoplifter! And Pollock’s list of pri
me items to be compared in price, which he thought he’d mostly memorised, had quite flown his head. What he’d do when spying-out pirates, he couldn’t imagine!

  The American emporium seemed to be doing a thriving business at that somewhat early hour, in spite of the closeness. Elegantly gowned Creole ladies and their ever-present slave maids swished about slowly, more sashaying or parading than shopping, as if borrowing the Spanish custom of strolling the city squares each evening, eligible young ladies circulating clockwise and the young men strutting in the opposite direction. They tittered behind their fans, and they softly giggled and peered over the lace fan-tops.

  Hang Pollock and his junk, Lewrie thought; There’s women afoot!

  And some of them were quite pretty and fetching; some of mixed race but almost White, some raven-haired but blue-eyed, the majority with sandy or light brown hair, and green, blue, or amber eyes, which put him in mind of Caroline. This gave him a check for an instant but did not deter him from circumspect ogling… fantasising, undressing them with his imagination. He looked down for a moment into a discreet bin back at the rear of a glass display case of medicaments and saw a pile of paper-wrapped cundums, priced at…

  Um, pesos to pounds, that’s one pound, seven shillings to the dozen, or two shillings thruppence each, and that’s highway robbery! he rapidly figured, then felt his mouth almost drop open in astonishment. Amazin’ what you can do, do you put yer mind to it! he told himself.

  Pepper, salt, and thimble prices might be Chinee chicken tracks to Lewrie, but something prurient ever would spark his interests!

  “Help you, sir?” another roving clerk suggested from behind the counter.

  “No, no, just looking about,” Lewrie tried to reply glibly, languidly, though the interruption almost made him leap from his own skin with an Eep! Fresh sweat awoke, he blinked rapidly.

  “But of course ya are, sir,” the clerk sarcastically accused.

  “Ye kin help me, then,” Jugg said at his elbow. “I’d admire a half-dozen cigaros, them slim’uns, no bigger’n yer little finger, an’ a wee flask o’ whisky. Yer payin’, are ye not, Mister Willoughby, as ye promised?” Jugg hinted, all but digging him in the ribs with an elbow, all chummy-like.

  “Um …” Lewrie stammered, turning to peer bug-eyed at Jugg, who was smiling fit to bust. “Well, this once I s’pose,” he said, though feeling the urge to clout the impudent bastard silly, clap him in irons in the cable-tiers, then have him flogged bloody for his egalitarian “sauce”! Sailors and officers, English and Irish, were akin to oil and water—they never mixed.

  “Need a deal more of ’em for th’ rest o’ th’ lads, so we will, sor, ‘fore we saddle up an’ head for th’ backcountry,” Jugg continued.

  “Prospectin’ for land, are ya?” the clerk asked in a friendly manner, no longer considering Lewrie a sneak-thief.

  “Hopin’ t’do some tradin’ in the east bank country, ain’t we,” Jugg confided, as if inspired. “Got th’ lads t’gether, got the Cap’m here t’lead, an’ only lackin’ trade goods t’make a payin’ proposition, right, Mister Willoughby?” Why, the bastard had the nerve to wink!

  Huh! What? Lewrie silently flummoxed, peering at the bearded rogue as if he’d never clapped eyes on him before.

  “Perhaps find some land to claim, as well,” Lewrie said at last, as if that was a secret wrung from him; his reply certainly was wrung! “Store or trading post, eventually. Um… might as well let me have a flask of whisky, too.”

  The clerk fetched out their purchases, then produced a flintlock tinderbox with which to light Jugg’s cigaro, making him lean over the counter to do so. With a fiendish little grin, Jugg handed Lewrie one, and he had no choice but to get his lit, too, and puff it into life. The clerk named a figure, Lewrie dug into his coin-purse to show British coins, paid the translated rate, and then, at the clerk’s request, went up the civilian-style stairs of the awning weather deck to smoke them.

  “Thankee, sor, I owes ya,” Jugg gleefully muttered round his lit and glowing cigaro.

  “Bloody hell, Jugg! Now see hear, my man…”

  “Ain’t on th’ ship, sor,” Jugg idly pointed out, rocking on the balls of his feet and exhaling a jet of smoke before pulling the cork of his quarter-pint flask of whisky with his teeth and spitting it out overside. “An’ this ain’t play-actin’, not ‘gainst th’ sort o’ people wot took th’ prize ship an’ marooned us, kindly beggin’ yer pardon, an’ all, Cap’m, sor. You’re t’be a cashiered awf ‘cer, I’m t’play an Irish ne’er-do-well, mebbe spent some time among th’ Yankees an’ caught ‘at Democracy fever? Man like me’d never tug ‘is forelock, nor scrape an’ bow t’him wot just hired me on, d’ye see, sor?”

  “I s’pose …” Lewrie muttered, heaving a bitter sigh and still highly irked for the vast gulf to be spanned ’twixt a Commission Sea Officer of the King and a common seaman. Even in a sham!

  “Just till we’re back aboard good ol’ Proteus, Cap’m, sor, then I’m back in yer harness, like,” Jugg vowed, turning earnest. “We step outta character, d’ye see my meanin’, an’ them pirates’ll scrag us in a dark alley ‘fore we kin say ‘nay,’ sor. Just playin’ parts, we are.”

  “Damme though, why do I think you enjoy it so bloody much?”

  “Went t’plays in Dublin an’ London, I did, sor,” Jugg happily told him with a droll grin. “Some parts them actors played looked to be more fun than others, Cap’m, sor!”

  “Christ! Just… don’t develop bad habits you can’t break later, Jugg,” Lewrie cautioned, unable to do much more to the man, not in public at least, not as long as they were stranded so far from the Navy’s discipline.

  “Oh, aye, and I won’t, on me honour swear it, yer honour, sor!” Jugg vowed quite theatrically, dropping into a deeper “Oirish” brogue. “On me poor mither’s eyes, i’ ’tis. Faith… and arrah!” Jugg japed. “An’ an’t these th’ foinest sway-et cigaros, Mister Willoughby, and Oi thankee kindly fer ’em, and at’all and at’all.”

  “Oh, stop yer gob,” Lewrie said, slumping in surrender, though ready to turn away, run to the nearest rail, and laugh in spite of all.

  He took a puff on his cigaro, but it had almost gone out after being amateurishly neglected. Lewrie hadn’t even been tempted to partake of tobacco since he’d hocked up half his lungs among the Muskogee Indians in ’83, the last time he’d been involved in a similarly covert expedition. Jugg blew ash off the glowing tip of his own and offered it to relight Lewrie’s.

  He was bent over and sucking to reignite his when a boisterous pack of shoppers came tramping up the sets of stairs leading from the landing stage, and Lewrie turned his eyes to look at them.

  “What the Devil?” he whispered, half coughing, for the pall of fresh smoke had been trapped beneath the wide, drooping front brim of his “wideawake” hat, making his eyes water.

  “Yankees, sor,” Jugg muttered from the side of his mouth, “an’ a rare lot they are, sure.”

  Outré might have been a better choice of words for the Yankees, rather than “rare.” They were frontiersmen, of a certainty, clad in long-fringed hunting shirts of homespun cloth or supple, but stained, deerskin. They wore homespun trousers stuffed into the tops of knee-high boots, deerskin trousers laced inside calf-length moccasins, or loose and flapping over ankle-high beaded moccasins. At every hip was a fighting knife that looked as if it had started life as a double-edged broadsword or Scottish claymore. Some wore nearly civilised coats and shirts, though none of those wore neck-stocks or cravats, and their headgear ran the gamut from tricornes to flat-brim farm hats, shapeless, spreading cone-topped slouch hats, cast-off Army cocked hats, Jacobin-type stocking caps, an assortment of ratty straw … “things,” and several masked and tailed fur caps that departed life as honest and upstanding foxes, raccoons, and possums. One man, a particularly blank-looking and pimply malevolence whose eyes almost crossed, had on a black-and-white fur cap that fixed Lewrie’s gawping (teary, blinking) attention.

>   “Whut?” the fur cap wearer truculently said, noticing that he was being ogled like a whirling Persian Dervish in Hyde Park. “Air ye lookin’ at me, mister?” Which growl brought the others to a halt.

  “I, uh …” Lewrie spluttered back. “I don’t believe I’ve ever seen your species of hat, sir. It isn’t… cat, is it?”

  “Polecat!” the wearer of that hat snapped back, “Ye wanna make somethin’ o’ h’it?”

  “Now, Georgie,” the much better-dressed apparent leader of the gang cautioned as “Cross-Eyes” thumped closer to Lewrie and the rest sidled behind him to watch the confrontation. He heaved a little sigh as if to say, “here we-go again,” as he stayed by Georgie’s side, as if to intervene… or referee should it come to blows.

  “Polecat is what they call a… skunk?” Lewrie asked, determined to stand his ground and glad for all the weaponry that he bore, of a sudden.

  “H’it is,” Georgie said, “an’ what of h’it?”

  With “Georgie” only six feet away from him, Lewrie could note that the skunk’s mask had been left on, as well as its long, bushy and luxuriant black tail with two white stripes. Tiny yellow glass beads had been sewn into the eye sockets, and the lips of its long, sharp muzzle had shrunk back from two rows of wee teeth, as if it still grinned.

  “Don’t they, ah… smell rather bad?” Lewrie enquired, taking what he hoped was a casual but expert puff on his cigaro.

  “Yeah, ‘ey do. So?” Georgie rumbled from deep in his throat.

  “Well, I’d expect it took a deal o’ work to skin and tan it,” Lewrie replied with studied nonchalance. “Upwind all the time, I’d wager.” This close to him, the unforgettable odour of skunk, merely a slight tang of it, reawoke Lewrie’s memory of the genuine, undiluted article, and he strove not to wrinkle his nose.

  “Huh! Soaked h’it near two weeks in a cold, fast crick a’fore I could touch h’it,” Georgie boasted, partially disarmed from his anger.