The Captain's Vengeance

by Dewey Lambdin

  There really was a Girandoni air-rifle. Austria bought 1,800 to 2,000 of them and “got shot of ’em” right-quick, too. In 1805 Lewis and Clark took air-rifles on the Corps of Discovery trek, and theirs, made in America, worked a lot better. Almost anything else would.

  Pierre and Jean La Fitte, hmmm. I couldn’t resist slinging them into a novel set round New Orleans and their future infamous haunt on Grand Terre, in Barataria Bay. Even if they were enigmas! None of my research sources on them—including a Young Adult nonfiction book I bought that tried really, really hard to make slave dealing, slave stealing, piracy, and murder sound like just grand, Politically Correct fun—can agree on where Jean La Fitte was born: Bordeaux, Port-au-Prince (Haiti), or Cartagena? He was nineteen in 1799, he was ten! He went to a military school on Guadeloupe, Martinique, or in France. He was part-Jewish and his family had run afoul of the Spanish Inquisition and had fled to the Americas, Jean being born in 1782. Now, there’s a good reason to prey on Spanish ships; they’d tried to turn your grandparents into tiki lanterns! The only point of agreement is that Jean La Fitte was a sharp businessman but a horrid sailor who’d heave up his innards on anything but a dead-calm sea.

  Anyway, whether Jean La Fitte was seventeen, fourteen, or twelve in early 1799, he could have been part of Jérôme Lanxade’s crew, serving an “internship” in murder and mayhem, so why the hell not?

  Stodgy academics may take umbrage, but let me put it this way: “It’s my bloody book, so sod you, write yer own! Pee-Aitch-Dees… Pee-Aitch-Dees! Wwee don’ need no stinkin’ Pee-Aitch-Dees!” And let me refer any thin-blooded revisionists to my earlier statement about Louisianans’ family names…

  “I am well armed and know how to use them.”

  Lewrie’s and Pollock’s “appreciation” about the best way to get at New Orleans: it was shorter, quicker, and cheaper than trying to float an army down the Mississippi and, at the time, would’ve worked! Could it be that Lewrie’s plan mouldered in a soggy Admiralty basement ’til 1814, the mouse-nibbled thing was pulled out and given to General Sir Edward Packenham when he went up against Andrew Jackson? Robert V. Remini’s The Battle of New Orleans (Penguin Books) lays the whole thing out, though Packenham “screwed the pooch” just as Lewrie suspected any British Army might, since “daring” and “quick” weren’t in their vocabulary. And will a Commodore or Rear-Admiral Lewrie play a role in it, hmmm?

  So, the bad guys have had their “stuff” scattered to the wind, and Lewrie has come out smelling like rose-water again; not only successful, but fairly damn rich for a change, when a “chicken-nabob,” fresh-returned from India with £50,000, was thought immensely wealthy.

  Will money soften Caroline’s heart? Whoever that spiteful and incognito scribbler is that writes anonymous letters to her detailing his amours has run out of fresh material and knows nothing of Lewrie’s Caribbean doings. Might she ascribe to the views of Clinton backers, “That’s old news. Let’s just… move on”? Or will it still be “Hell hath no fury”?

  I planned on killing off Charité de Guilleri, but she’s one of those characters who grows on you. Will she escape her dull relations and find a powerful sponsor, and… who might it be? We left ol’ Guillaume Choundas an American Navy prisoner on his parole, but never count him out ’til you drive a stake through his heart; he’s harder to kill than cockroaches. Could it be?

  Will the cats stop marking territory, now Nicely’s gone? Will Midshipman Gamble fit in aboard that floating mad-house, HMS Proteus? Will Lt. Langlie’s marital prospects towards Lewrie’s ward, Sophie, be improved, now that he’s in for a goodly share of “chink,” too? And those mongeese… how did the Marines find them so far from India and the island of Trinidad, and how’d they smuggle it (them) aboard in the first place?

  Will Alan Lewrie stay tagged as “The Ram-Cat,” or will “Iron-Bound” become his new sobriquet in the Royal Navy?

  All I can say, for now, is … stay tuned, buckaroos, and…

  Prospero: I’ll deliver all.

  And promise you calm seas, auspicious gales,

  And sail so expeditious that shall catch

  Your royal fleet far off-

  My Ariel, chick,

  That is thy charge. Then to the elements

  Be free, and fare thou well—please you draw

  Near.

  Exeunt Omnes.

  THE TEMPEST, ACT V, SCENE 1

  WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE