The Captain`s Vengeance

no sign of commercial establishments on the ground floor. With their own stabling out back, it'd be even fewer, he deduced.

Ste. Anne began on the east side of the Place d'Armes, the main city square by the riverbank; Rue St. Pierre ran down its west side, so… how did they number their houses? Outward from the centre, the lowest numbers starting on those two streets, or from Rue de l'Arsenal on the east straight to the west? No matter, he thought with a sniff; She 'd said number 26. Unless she 's been lying like a dog right from the start!

He shrugged again and drew out his pocket watch. It was nearly eight! Long past time for him to hare back to the Panton, Leslie Company warehouse offices and catch up with Mr. Pollock, to see what he'd learned today, and proudly impart to him what he had garnered. A growl from his innards warned Lewrie that it was long past suppertime, too. Frankly, he suddenly felt ravenously famished, now that the most important items of his activities list were done, and he had only the idle Spanish to fret about.

Play-acting and fucking! Lewrie happily pondered as he strolled along, clacking his cane on the pavement; Both damn' good for buildin' an appetite, ha ha! Lewrie, you sly dog!

Down Ste. Anne to cross Bourbon Street, then down to Rue Royale, headed for Rue Charles, where he thought he might take a little amble in the Place d'Armes before diving into the commercial jumble round Levee Road, where it was darker, poorer-lit, and the streets narrower, filthier, and nigh abandoned at this hour.

The first two thin and muffled shots, the twiggish crack! crack! made him slam to a stop, head swivelling to track the confusing echoes that swirled from God knew where-closer to the river, or westward down Royale? A third crack! and by God that was a shot, quickly followed by a chorus of harsh shouts and the discharge of a weapon and a keen whine of a ricochet off brick! Definitely westward down Rue Royale, near St. Pierre or Toulouse!

Lewrie took a hesitant step in that direction, recognising the shouts as being made by English speakers. His men from Proteus or some of Pollock's men? Instinct made him reach under his coat and pull out one of his double-barrelled Manton pistols, then spurred him to turn in the direction of the commotion.

The fourth thin crack! was much closer; so was the musket ball that droned past his ear and spanged off a wrought-iron balcony pillar with a departing harpy's howl inches from where he'd stood dithering but an eyeblink before!

The fifth shot forced him to throw his body flat in one of the 'tween-lamp pools of gloom!

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

Lewrie feverishly searched for a betraying cloud of spent gunpowder to mark the shooter's position, but saw nothing. He perked his ears for the telltale sounds of a nearby marksman reloading, the rattle of powder horn on a muzzle, the tinkle of a ramrod-nothing! He got his feet under him, spotted a deep doorway further west down Royale… popped up and turned as if to dash for it…

Crack! A second after he had flung himself down again, a ball went zing-humming over his head, and Lewrie was up and running for the shadowed doorway, reaching its shelter and flattening himself against the east side of the vestibule, out of sight for a moment as he cocked both firelocks of his Manton pistol, tore off his 'wide-awake' hat and put it on his fisted left hand… stuck it out as if fearfully taking a peek, and… Crack! came another shot that spun the hat like a top on his fist after the ball had taken a round bite from its brim!

He swung out-head, shoulders, and gun hand in plain view-to see the faint gleam of a bright-metal movement. Laying his gun hand over his left forearm, he fired one round, absorbing the recoil upwards for a second, then levelling again and firing the second barrel towards the slightest vertical glint of lamplight off what he took for a musket's barrel. The Manton belched two large clouds of blackpowder smoke, in which he slithered away, low to the pavement in a duck-walk to another deep entryway farther off.

With his second double-barrelled Manton, he fired off a round in the general direction of his last vague target, then ducked under the resulting pall and sprinted the short distance to another entryway on the south side of the street, this time.

He heard no more Crack! aimed against him; after a long minute he took note that there were no more shots down Rue Royale, either. A loud chorus of shouts and curses, aye, but no more gunfire. He traded the spent Manton for one of those single-shot pocket pistols, then set off down that way. Halfway there, skulking from one shadow to another, it suddenly struck him…

Twig-crack… no powder smoke or ramming! Four shots, got off in less than a minute, at me! he furiously thought; Bright-metal, not treated blue or brown. Hell's Bells, someone's got a Girandoni rifle!

'Mine arse on a band-box!' he seethed aloud. 'I find out who it was, I'll have his nutmegs off! Pollock's hen-head clerks sold…pah!'

He could not go back the way he had been walking, that was for certain, to attain the relative safety of the evening crowds strolling in the Place d'Armes where, one might assume, the Creoles didn't take pot-shots at each other all that often. Even if the shooter was long gone, the commotion would surely draw the Spanish foot patrol and the idle curious, and he'd much rather not have to answer their questions or be recognised and recalled later. A slight distance more and he'd be at the intersection of Rue Royale and Rue d'Orleans, but d'Orleans dead-ended behind the impressive cathedral, and Lewrie could not recall but one narrow alleyway leading to the square, where the odds were good that he might re-encounter the bastard who had shot at him… or meet up with Spanish soldiers, who'd block both ends and delight in questioning or arresting the first foreigner they came across.

There was nothing for it but to keep on westerly down Rue Royale at least as far as St. Pierre to get to the Place d'Armes, then Levee Road-right into the crowd he could see gathering at the scene of the first shooting he'd heard! At the least, Lewrie thought, he could blend into a much larger crowd and sidle through it with eyes curious and wide, play-acting an idle gawker… hoping that the reek of gunpowder on his person wouldn't be noticed.

One last desperate and intense study of the intersection he had fled, and Lewrie shoved his pistol back into hiding under the tails of his coat, and he launched himself from the deep doorway, sword-cane in his right hand once more to peck out a languid pace down towards that hubbub and growing knot of people near Rue Toulouse, hoping that once near there, he could turn down St. Pierre to the square, on a well-lit and peopled street…

'Empty yore hands, yew English sumbitch!' came a harsh whisper from an unlit doorway he had just passed, almost in his left ear, and chilling him to his bones. He felt the prick of something sharp right through his layers of clothes in the small of his back!

'I was shot at, too,' Lewrie managed to say, though just about as frightened as he had ever been. 'Back there, at Sainte Anne street!'

'Huh!' came the faceless response, with the slightest shove of the sharp object against his skin. 'Gimme 'at sword-cane.'

'You're American… one of Mister Ellison's men?' Lewrie asked as he let his cane clatter to the cobblestones. He winced to think that he hadn't spotted his assailant lurking in the shadows, had not got a whiff of his stench as he passed him, for up close now, the reek of a crudely tanned deerskin hunting shirt or fringed trousers was overpowering. 'Damn you!'

A rough hand groped under his coat, discovering one of his twin-barrelled pistols. Lewrie could hear the man sniff the muzzles.

'It's just a cane, and I shot back at whoever shot at me, that's why the-' Lewrie tried to explain, insulted to be man-handled.

'Yeah… shore it is,' the man sneered.

'There's another Manton, both barrels fired. A pair of pocket pistols, too, not fired, and couldn't hit anything over ten paces if my life depended on it.' Lewrie announced. 'I heard shots, rifle shots, fired down your way, before they shot at me. Like