The Captain`s Vengeance

behind them from an interloper's view. There might be a gap in the levees where someone had a seasonal sluice- gate to flood and replenish his secret acres. There might be the tiniest peek of a farmhouse's roof and chimneys, faint wisps of cook-fire smoke at times; the larger pall of bittersweet white smoke as a field was burned off for a fresh seeding with sugarcane or cotton.

But, all in all, it seemed such a thinly settled place, a spookily off-putting land so daunting that only the desperate, the forlorn, would dare attempt to tame it or wrest from it a farthing's profit, or sustenance.

There came a promising little zephyr of wind from the West at last, a welcome bit of coolness after the sullen, damp-washcloth heat of even a winter's day in Louisiana. Lewrie's flesh beneath the stifling closeness of his clothing goose-pimpled to that zephyr. As if to a forewarning, but of what?

CHAPTER NINE

Lewrie wasn't sure exactly what he was expecting once Azucena del Oeste weathered the last bend of the Mississippi, abeam a Westerly wind, and began a long 'reach' up the centre of the river's widening channel. To hear Mr. Pollock, Capt. Coffin, and his mates gush about New Orleans, it was a blend of Old Port Royal, Jamaica, the old pirate haven, London's East End docks for commerce, Lisbon for quaintness, and Macao in China for sin.

Lazing on the starboard foremast stays and ratlines just above the gangway bulwarks, using his telescope on things that caught his interest, he watched New Orleans loom up at last. Like most realities, though, the city proved a letdown, compared to the myth.

Near the city, the levees were higher and better-kept, on the east bank at least, with a road atop them bearing waggon traffic and light carts. The road sometimes crossed wooden bridges above sluice-gates and canal cuts that led to planters' fields. Even here, though, Spanish Louisiana still looked thinly populated. One would expect a modicum of commercial bustle so close to a seaport of New Orleans 's repute, but…

The river widened and ran arrow-straight, finally, and Lewrie could espy buildings and wharves, another vast, sloping levee in front of low but wide warehouses. Dead, bare 'trees' turned out to be masts of a whole squadron of merchant ships tied up along the quays, along with a confusing tangle that looked like a gigantic log-jam. Nearer up, the log-jam turned out to be a fleet; hundreds of large log rafts or square-ended flatboats that had been floated, poled, or sailed to the docks from the settlements far upriver. Those would be sold off and broken up for their lumber once their voyages were done, Mr. Pollock had told him.

But for church spires and a few public buildings, nothing was taller than two stories, though. Within the last mile, Lewrie could estimate the city as only ten or twelve city blocks wide, and might straggle north towards Lake Pontchartrain another half-dozen blocks. Within throwing distance of the town, swamps, marshes, and forests took over, again; brooding, foetid, and primeval.

'That's it?' Lewrie grumbled in disbelief. 'That's all there is to it? What a bloody gyp!'

The river wind brought the tang of 'civilisation' from toilets and garbage middens, from horse, mule, donkey, oxen, and human 'shite,' from hen coops and pig sties; and the Mississippi wafted even more evidence- drowned rats, cats, and dogs; wilted vegetables and husks of fruit; butchers' offal; and turds. Evidently, not only was no one interred belowground in marshy Louisiana, but no drains or sewers could be dug, either! The river that close to town had gone from leaf-mould and silt tobacco-brown to a piss-yellow, shit-brindle colour.

'It ain't that bad, sir,' Mr. Pollock said from below him on the gangway, having heard his disappointed muttering. ' 'Tis a very wealthy town, for all that. A most pleasant and delightful one, too.'

'Wealth? There in that… village?' Lewrie scoffed.

'Consider it a London, Bristol, or Liverpool in their youngest days,' Pollock replied with faint amusement. 'So recently settled a port city, much like a new-found Ostia serving an equally unimpressive Rome a generation or two after its founding. An Athens or Piraeus in the days of Demosthenes, a Genoa or Marseilles when the Gauls had 'em? Even in their heydays, the fabled ports of antiquity were nowhere near as impressive as present-day London or, say, Lisbon, Lewrie. Ancient Alexandria, Jerusalem in the times of the temple, fabled Babylon, or the hellish-rich Troy of Homer's myth weren't all that big, either. Nothing like Paris or London. Though I doubt the modern world has, or the ancient world had, New Orleans 's match when it comes to wealth and vital location.'

'It looks no bigger than Kingston, English Harbour, or Sheerness,' Lewrie said with a grunt as he jumped down to the deck.

'Think of Baltimore on the Chesapeake, sir,' Pollock countered with a wry grin, ' Philadelphia or Charleston. Neither are particularly impressive to look at, but rich? Oh, my my, ahem!' Pollock gushed, making another of his throat-clearing twitch-whinnies. ' Port-au-Prince or that shabby hole, Cape Francois, on the north shore of Saint-Domingue. You've been to both, I'm told. Nothing to write home about, but consider the vast wealth that passes through those ports each year.'

' Sodom and Gomorrah?' Lewrie queried with a smirk.

'Neither known for trading wealth,' Mr. Pollock primly replied, ' 'less you consider that their, ah… reputations drew hordes of rich visitors. As does New Orleans. The most, um… entertaining town within five hundred miles in any direction, ahem.'

'Well, hmmm,' Lewrie speculated. Though even at less than one mile's distance now, New Orleans still appeared small and sleepy, with no sign of anything wondrous, amusing, or sinful about it.

' 'Tis a mortal pity it's so hard to get at,' Pollock said on, half wistful and half wolfish, 'for its sacking by a British expedition would go a long way towards erasing the Crown's war debts.'

'That rich?' Lewrie gawped, turning to regard the approaching town more closely, seeing it in a much better light, of a sudden.

At least I see what makes him happy, Lewrie thought, comparing Pollock's relaxed stance and evident appreciation of New Orleans to his earlier sullenness on the voyage.

'All the wealth of the West pours down here to New Orleans,' Mr. Pollock nigh dreamily praised, eyes alight with Pound Sterling symbols, 'from the joining of the Ohio and Missouri Rivers. Spanish Louisiana extends to the Great Lakes, and our Hudson 's Bay Company's territory, then far west across the great unknown to Spanish California.'

'There for the taking,' Lewrie speculated, idly fantasising if anyone would miss a wee chunk of it, the size of Scotland or Ireland, say… and dare he call it 'Lewriana'?

'For the settling, eventually,' Pollock mused on most happily, for once. 'There's very little there now, but for Indians and game. A few wretched settlements like Saint Louis… crossroad or river hamlets. But someday… as the Americans spread out, as we spread west from Canada, the wealth flowing down to New Orleans is certain to be tremendous.'

'Of course, Panton, Leslie Company already trades with the isolated rustics and tribes up yonder?' Lewrie asked smirkily.

'We, ah… and the Hudson 's Bay Company, ahem!… are laying the foundations for a British presence, should the Crown desire such, sir,' Pollock assured him with a soft voice.

'Hemming the Americans in,' Lewrie decided. 'Even if they get to the east bank of the Mississippi, and south from Tennessee to the Gulf, in Spanish Florida. Hmmph!. Take 'em a century t'eat that!'

'More than enough room for them. Let us reclaim a bit of Spanish West Florida, as far east as Mobile, say, and we will have an unassailable buffer against any American expedition against the meat of the matter… New Orleans,' Pollock speculated, fiddling at his open shirt collars and throat.

Capt. Coffin ordered the brig's hands aloft to reduce sail now that New Orleans had finally been fetched. Her helm, though, was put up, not down, to steer away from the quays, levee, and other shipping, pointing the brig towards the opposite bank.

'We never go to the town docks first,' Pollock told Lewrie in answer to his puzzled look. 'We go alongside our hulk, yonder, to unload the lighter goods, the, ah… most desirable luxury items.'

'Why not use the piers, sir?' Lewrie wondered aloud.

'Land cargo direct to the warehouses, Captain Lewrie, and the Spanish customs officials must levy their