The Captain`s Vengeance

It appeared that tonight would be a game-feast, for, whilst he and his Navy sailors had been birding, others from the brig's wardroom had been hunting ashore in the forbiddingly dark woods on the northern bank. Two daintily lean yearling doe deer hung over wooden buckets on the larboard gangway stanchions. They had already been gutted, washed out with river water, hooves and scent glands axed off so their meat wasn't tainted, and their throats cut to drain into the buckets so the cook could try his hand at making blood sausages. Mr. Caldecott, the brig's hearty First Mate, was just beginning to skin and butcher them, surrounded by a clutch of hecklers and bemused 'advisors.'

The Azucena del Oeste had become becalmed the afternoon before and had been forced to come to anchor for the night. Dawn had brought a contrary light wind, with fitful zephyrs from out of the East-Northeast, which in this stretch of river just below the English Turn, made for a 'dead muzzier' right down her throat, against which the brig had no chance to make a foot of headway, unless back-breakingly rowed with long galley sweeps. Not being Navy, and in no particular hurry to get hernias, Pollock and his ship's Master, a Mr. Coffin, had decided that they'd take a 'Make and Mend' day of ease, secured with both her best and second bower anchors, with the river chuckling about her hull and frothing from her anchor cables, as if she still was making three or four knots.

Once secured about two long musket shots from the north shore, they had tried their hand at fishing. Last night's supper had been a 'mess' of catfish; big ones, Lewrie had been enthusiastically informed. The catfish had resembled be-whiskered, shiny-hided sharks, scaleless, and as big-about and long as a stout man's thigh, and just about that meaty. Pollock had said they were reckoned a fine treat, after being breaded with crumbled ship's biscuit and powdered day-old toast, fried in deep iron skillets and lard. 'Just be wary of the bones!' Pollock had warned.

'Least I'm eatin' well, Lewrie could conjure to himself in consolation. He had also thought that, for a rare once aboard a ship, he could sleep in as late as his idle nature desired. But one night out to sea and the sounds of the brig making a goodly way, the sounds from the watchstanders changing at four in the morning, had roused him, and that had been the last night he'd enjoyed a lubberly 'All- Night-In.' A half of his life spent at sea had engrained wary and wakeful habits in him, and it was a rare morning when he could roll back over and 'caulk' even for a slothful extra hour! Even if the brig belonged to Mr. Pollock and his company, even if she had a most competent Master in Mr. Coffin, with a full complement of tarry-handed Mates, he still haunted her deck in fretful and enforced impotence, like a coachman who was forced to ride inside for once, far from his familiar reins.

'Well, how was the air-rifle, sir?' Pollock enquired, coming up as cordial as anything in hopes perhaps that Lewrie's approval (as if that held sway with Admiralty!) might result in a profitable contract.

'Fine, does it work, sir,' Lewrie replied as he unslung the gun from his shoulder. 'When it doesn't, it might serve as an oar, a club, or a punt pole.'

'Yet you bagged a dozen, I see… ahem.' Pollock twitch-whinnied and beamed like a horse dealer trying to palm off a half-dead sway-back for a thoroughbred, did he wink and smile often enough.

'Ah, but the ones lost to misfires,' Lewrie told him as he held the air-rifle 'twixt thumb and two fingers, as if the firearm was that aforementioned dangerous asp.

'About what the Austrians said, too,' Pollock said with a disappointed sigh. 'Still, there's hopes the Yankee long-hunters, the local swamp-runners and Indians find them knacky. So quiet-like, fast-firing? Tell you what, sir. I'll make you a present of it, e'en so.'

Lewrie was tempted to tell Pollock where he could shove such a handsome offer, that he wouldn't take it on a penny wager, but suspected that Mr. Pollock might think repacking it more trouble than it was worth. After all, he still had eight dozen of the Girandoni air-rifles crated up, a dozen to the crate, and stowed below.

Back in England, the Girandoni might have a curiosity value to someone, did Lewrie hold onto it long enough. Surely there would be a collector so eager he'd trample small children to lay hands on one, to say he had it, if nothing else.

There were other air-powered sporting arms made in Europe, but usually only to single custom orders, whereas the Girandoni rifle was the only one mass-produced for military service.

In 1780 the Austrians had ordered nearly two thousand of them from Bartolomeo Girandoni for sharpshooting skirmishers from several regiments' light companies. It fired a lighter.51 calibre ball, one even lighter than Lewrie's prized Ferguson breech-loading musket that he'd picked up during the Revolution, or the fusil-musket he'd gotten as a grim souvenir after his disastrous Florida expedition in 1783.

The Girandoni looked more like a sporting arm; the fore-stock was half the length of a typical three-banded musket, ending about one foot ahead of the trigger guard. The fire-lock mechanism looked much the same as a flintlock, but it lacked the dog's-jaws, the flint, and the raspy frizzen to strike the flint, as well as the powder pan that ignited a powder charge. Its buttstock was detachable, made of iron, and formed the pressurised air flask-it came with three.

What was most promising about the Girandoni air-rifle was that a skilled user could get off twelve shots in about thirty seconds and never have to ram a ball down the muzzle! Twelve lead balls could be loaded down a tube in the fore-stock, all at once.

Pull back the brass lever along the bottom of the fore-stock and a ball would pop into the opened breech from below; return the lever to its slot and the breech was sealed; cock the lock, take aim, and squeeze the trigger, and a complicated clock-work spring valve opened from the buttstock, and there would come a faint, barely perceptible, crack! as the ball was propelled at 700- 800 feet per second!

It was said (by Pollock, who was hot to flog them off on somebody!) that it was accurate on man-sized targets beyond one hundred yards, not the fifty or so of a smoothbore musket. Nowhere near as good as the two hundred yards of a European Jaeger or Pennsylvania rifle, but they were very slow to load and needed a greased patch to grip the rifling. Perhaps this time, quantity could make up for quality and incredible accuracy.

The main drawback was that the user might as well hire a clock-maker to go along and keep the Girandoni working properly, and the oil-soaked leather seals on the air flasks leaked like an entire litter of puppies, as Lewrie's last shot at ducks could attest. There had been a serpentine hiss, then aphfft! of low- pressure air and sealing oils, which put Lewrie in mind of a sailor betrayed by his bean soup. And to pump the flasks back to full pressure, propping the detachable rod against a tree or wall (in his case, the ship's main-mast) for the last, hardest strokes looked like slow, strenuous buggery.

'Well,' Lewrie responded, shamming real gratitude, 'it does have its curiosity value. Thankee, sir. Most kind of you.'

Even if his round-dozen waterfowl had used up all three flasks and four dozen lead balls, and he was a better wing-shot than that!

'We'll be under way by dawn,' Pollock informed him, turning his face northward, going gloomy again. 'The wind will come Westerly or Sou'westerly, in my experience. Enough for us to weather the English Turn and Fort Saint Leon. Another stretch of river, one more big bend, and after that 'tis an arrow-shot, the last twenty-odd miles, to New Orleans.' He sounded loath to arrive.

'Then we'll be about our business… whatever it is,' Lewrie rejoined. It had not been a joyful 'yachting' voyage; Pollock was in a permanent fret of exposure, of letting his firm down, ruing the day he'd made Peel's acquaintance, and had begun to nibble round the edges of espionage, as the Frogs called it. He had never before been asked to do anything quite so overt and was definitely 'off his feed' with qualms. Ruing the night he'd dined with the forceful, brook-me-no-arguments Capt. Nicely, too, Lewrie shouldn't wonder. On Peel and Nicely at least, he and Pollock saw eye to eye, if on little else.

'God help us,' Pollock said, all but chewing on a thumbnail.

'Might get lucky,' Lewrie japed. 'Murder those two whose names we know straightaway, and put the wind up the others, hey?'

Pollock shuddered, glared at him, then toddled off without one more word to share, muttering a fair slew of imprecations, though.

Lewrie leaned on the bulwarks and plucked at his 'costume' cotton shirt, most slack and lubberly fashion. Pollock had advised that he and his small band of Navy men dress as anything but sailors. They had been forced to don thigh-long hunting shirts over rough trousers, older, battered tricornes or low-crowned farmers' hats. Ruing