The Captain`s Vengeance

'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'Affame, '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! Jerome 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 Jerome 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. Jerome 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 Feroce?' 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 Jerome Lanxade got the 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' crudest 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?'

'My dear sir, there has always been, ahem!' Pollock told him with an amused chuckle