God above, not lambent! Don Rubio chid himself. He'd sound lame and prissy as a dancing master! No true gentleman wasted time on such limp tripe!. Like a born Creole grandee, he had no time for poetry or books, though girls did put a deal of stock in such-
A series of thuds alongside brought Rubio back from his fancies as the launch butted the schooner's hull below the entry-port and was hooked onto the chains. A moment later, Capitaine Boudreaux Balfa was clambering up the battens on his large and gnarly bare feet.
L 'Affame… more hungry for hog meat than booty/ Rubio thought.
Boudreaux Balfa was typical of the shoddy, run-of-the-mill Louisiana Acadian, dressed in a homegrown rough cotton ecru shirt, homemade and indigo-dyed knee breeches of the same cotonnade material. Shoes, or stockings, well… if nagged, rustics such as Balfa might don cowhide moccasins to attend church, knee-high moccasins to wade after his lost pigs in the swamps. Shoes and stockings Balfa might possess, for weddings or funerals… if at all! And, like most Acadians, the man was so abstemious that he wore his clothes
until they were halfway between mauvaises and usees; meaning 'tattered' or 'threadbare.' Atop his crown, Balfa wore a plaited palmetto-frond tricorne hat so old its wide brims sagged down nearly to horizontal… and looked as if rats had been at it.
'Ohe, Lanxade,' Balfa gravelled in glum greeting to his old-time partner, sweeping off that shabby tricorne to bare a fierce and wiry thicket of unruly iron-grey hair, and studiously ignoring his employers. 'See dat sky, dis choppy water? Feel dat wind? It'll be a good half a gale by sundown, by Gar. Let's get dis over wit', cher.'
In his younger years, Capitaine Boudreaux Balfa had been a doughty figure of a buccaneer and privateersman, but time and shore living on a hard-scrabble plot of land had not been kind. He had thickened and grown a trencherman's gut, a shad belly, though not an ounce of him was yet soft. Balfa was as thick as a fierce boar hog.
'Ah oui, Boudreaux mon cher,' Lanxade agreed. 'We don't make a ceremony out of it, we can be fifteen lieues alee by sundown. In deep water, and scudding Large. Bosun, fetch them up!'
He took Balfa by the arm and together they walked back to the rails, away from the swaggering, tipsy revellers. Time had been somewhat kinder to Lanxade; he was still tall, lean, and flat-bellied, unbowed after the toils of peaceful employment on trading company shalopes upriver to Manchac, Natchez, St. Louis, and the old Illinois settlements, and back. But Boudreaux did imagine he heard a suspicious creak from somewhere near Lanxade's middle, which put him in mind of a well-hidden corset. And Balfa allowed himself a secret smile to note that his old compatriot's grey roots were showing, along with the telltale splotch of greenish walnut-husk oil on his ears that betrayed his use of hair dye to remain so dark and virile-looking!
Sure enough, a playful poke at Lanxade's boudins met well-stayed canvas and whalebone resistance. 'Hawn hawn hawn!' He softly, nasally chortled at such vanity.
'Oh, shut up, you old bougre,' Lanxade hissed back, stiffening to maintain his dignity. And his secrets.
'So, we kill dem, or we maroon dem?' Balfa asked off-handedly.
'Maroon,' Lanxade told him, 'for the novelty of it.'
'Dem babies not tired o' killin' yet?' Balfa wondered aloud.
'Bored with it, more likely,' Lanxade said in a harsh mutter. 'I could say queasy of the consequences, but with this lot, I wouldn't count on it. Sated for now, but a few weeks ashore, and they'll wish to be back at it. Piracy's addictive… as we both know, cher. Pissing God and the Devil in the eye.'
'By damn, dey wanna see real piracy, Jerome, what say we jus' take dis damn' goelette for our own?' Balfa softly cackled. 'Mak dem walk de plank, jus' like de ol' days, maroon dem, 'long wit' dem poor salauds down below, hein?'
'They're too rich and important to go missing, Boudreaux, and we'd swing for it,' Lanxade countered, though not without a long pause to ponder it.
'But we won't for dat Dago guarda costa lugger? Merde!' The Spanish government lugger, outbound from Havana, returning rebel slaves for execution at Mobile-along with a profitable load of other negres and smuggled goods that her unscrupulous captain had meant to land on the sly-was their latest capture. The small crew of Spaniards had gone overside, as had the convicted rebels, though they'd kept the untainted negres for sale to the caboteurs, the itinerant backcountry slave dealers. After the Pointe Coupee slave insurrection four years earlier, though, even a blind planter would have spurned such lash- or manacle-scarred slaves as cutthroat troublemakers, not with brigands such as St. John or St. Malo leading vengeful runaway slave bands in the swamps of Louisiana.
Those captives had held no value, except for sport. With their hands free, but with leg shackles linked and weighted with shot, their struggle to stay afloat had been tres drole, the strong futilely trying to buoy up the weaker after they'd been forced over the side, once the lugger had been stripped of everything useful, then sunk. The Spaniards had had it kinder; they'd walked the plank with only their arms roped, free to kick- swim to stay afloat, and alive, 'til the game had palled, and the youngsters had honed their marksmanship skills on them. Now, there would be more fun.
Hoots and curses erupted from the schooner's crew, more wine was poured by their youthful employers, as the six remaining prisoners off the prize ship were fetched up the narrow and steep companionway ladder from the schooner's foetid orlop. Stumbling and sickly reeling, their eyes blindfolded and their arms bound, they were unable to help themselves.
'Time to die, bastards!' Helio de Guilleri taunted in English, though his intent was spoiled by tittering at his own wit and putting stress on the second syllable of 'bastards.'
'Go game, lads! Go game!' one of the older captives urged his mates. 'They're nought but prinkin' Frogs an' Dons! Buck up, young sir!' he added as the youngest began to mewl and gasp in dread.
'Fack th' bloody lot o' ye!' another doughtier prisoner cried, head swivelling as if trying to see. 'And th' Shee's undyin' cess be on yair black damn' souls.'
'The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not… Britons never never never shall be…!' others wavered.
'Shut the Devil… up' Capitaine Lanxade bellowed, drawing a long-barrelled pistol from his waistband and firing into the air. 'Christ, you damned noisy sons of dogs! Once we leave, you can scream all you wish. Stuff your faces with bird shit, drink your own piss… drink the sea and go even madder, for all we care. Loose their hands, men.'
'But, Capitaine,' one of the de Guilleris objected.
'They cannot climb down into the boat, else,' Lanxade snapped back. 'Their blindfolds, aussi… take them off. Let them see what a fine estate we give them, ha ha!'
A mutual gasp of bleak realisation wheezed from the doomed men as they beheld the islet, providing even more amusement for the captors.
And with much eager poking, prodding, and shoving, the prisoners were forced to the entry-port, to lower themselves into the centre of the launch, where extra hands with pistols and daggers waited to receive them. Balfa and his oarsmen got down into the boat with them and steered towards the shore.
'Stroke, stroke,' Balfa chearily directed, tapping the time on the tiller-bar. 'A little song, mes enfants!' he urged.
'Ah! Suzette, Suzette, to veux pas chere?
'Ah, Suzette, Chere amie, to pas Vaimin moin.
M'alle dans montagne, zamie,
M'alle coupe canne, chere amie,
