and a third time, roaring with laughter as he did so. With a feral shout, half a dozen buccaneers hoisted him up and flung him overboard, cheered their own boldness, then broke up to hunt down any other lurking survivors.
Boudreaux nodded with sad pleasure to see Fusilier blanch and dash to the opposite bulwarks to puke up his meagre breakfast. At his side was the teenaged boy who'd fetched up the latest victim. He was heaving because he had no stomach for seafaring, and even a moderate chop turned him grass- green, quite unlike his older brother, Pierre.
Fusilier had no stomach for this, bon! Balfa thought. And this would be the last voyage for both of them. There was so much silver stowed below, their shares could support their lands for the next hundred years if they were frugal. No buccaneering scum as friends…
Pierre and the seasick younger Jean, those itinerant La Fitte brothers, had come up the bayou between cruises, looking for land and opportunities, they'd claimed. They had idled on his hospitality, did the least possible to repay it, and spent most of their time spooning his lovely but naive daughter, Evangeline, and turning Fusilier's head with tales of loot and plunder. Balfa had trusted neither one out of his sight, sure they were sniffing round for his hidden wealth! He'd been ready to run them off when the de Guilleris turned up, and once this adventure was done, he'd be glad to see the backs of the La Fittes.
'We did it, Boudreaux, mon vieux! We did it after all!' Jerome Lanxade cheered, capering and performing a creaky horn-pipe, coming up to embrace him, buss him French fashion on both cheeks, then pound him on the back. 'So easy, it was nothing! Spaniards… pah! What a pack of toothless monkeys!'
Yes, it had been easy, so incredibly easy. The intelligence in the letter to banker Maurepas had been like all vaunting Spanish self-delusions, but an empty sham. That so-called company of stalwart soldiers had been thirty- odd idle, seasick Mestizos in shabby uniforms with poorly kept weapons, half-Aztec riffraff led by a fat sergeant, a brace of equally low-down corporals, and a pair of down-at-the-heels officers, one of whom, the senior capitano, had offered to surrender if he could join their merry marauding band for a share of the money!
The cannon were good, but their powder was poorly milled, damp with age and indifferent storage, and the 'well-drilled' naval gunners-one per piece as gun-captains-outnumbered by spiritless, cowardly, and clumsy gutter- sweepings. Only the schooner's capitano and his naval officers had put up much of a fight once their vessel had stalked up to cannon-range, and those hellish, quick-firing air-rifles had put him and his quarterdeck party and helmsmen down in the first minutes, leaving the rest of the crew leader-less and adrift. Le Revenant had more swivel-guns-in the old days, they'd not been termed 'murderers' for nothing!-and they'd had those air-rifles in the capable and deadly accurate hands of the de Guilleris, so the gun-captains, loaders, and rammers, along with the frightened, swaying infantrymen, were blasted off their feet faster than any troops could bear, with half the soldiers shot in a single, brutal minute! After that, no one could resist their howling, shrieking, sword-waving boarders, and the thing was done.
'Too bad we can't keep this schooner of theirs,' Jerome Lanxade went on. 'Might salvage her guns if we had the time, but…'
'No disguising her,' Balfa spat. 'She gotta go down, wit' all de evidence, by Gar.'
'Give her a good cleaning, Boudreaux, a clean sweep down fore and aft, she could serve as our second raider,' Lanxade posed, sweeping at his thin and rakish mustachios, 'like scrubbin' up a whore over in Havana before you board her, hah? We'll get you a suitable ship, never fear.'
'Won't need one, Jerome,' Balfa said in a covert growl, telling truth if only to his longtime compatriot, perhaps the only man aboard whom he could trust. 'So much silver, come to hand so easy… like I gets de shivers dat another prize push our luck. My luck, hein? By damn, I see all dat silver, I feels de rabbits runnin'. We get all o' dis ashore and split up, I callin' it quits.'
'Damn the bastards!' Helio de Guilleri was raging as he came stamping heavy boot- heels up the companionway ladder from below. 'Bedamned to all lying Spanish bastards! Cochons, salauds!'
'What is the matter, m'sieur?' Lanxade broke away to ask him.
'I've counted kegs, Capitaine Lanxade, counted them twice, and there aren't enough to make six million dollars!' de Guilleri seethed, lowering his voice at Lanxade's urgent hand gestures so their sailors wouldn't hear that they'd been denied a single sou. 'There is not one ten-gallon barrico aboard, just five-gallon kegs. A thousand dollars each, none of the ones that hold two thousand!'
'Putain, mon Dieu!' Lanxade spat, blanching beneath his swarthy lifetime sea tan. 'Mon cul!' he gravelled, teeth grinding.
'My ass!' Balfa groaned, too. 'Dey didn' hide some down among d'eir water butts an' salt-meat kegs? How many barricos you find?'
'Only two thousand, Capitaine,' Helio de Guilleri told him in a grim mutter, nigh snarling as if it was he who'd been robbed. 'That only makes fifty-five tons of silver, no gold. Here!' he spat, making them look at a small ledger book. 'Hippolyte found this aft, in their capitaine's cabins, in the mint official's bags. It says they carried only a third of the total shipment!'
'By damn, d'ose Spaniards get clever after all!' Balfa hooted with inexplicable laughter after a moment of thought. 'Sent one ship close inshore to Texas Province, like lubbers feelin' d'eir way scared o' open water. But, dey done put de rest in two more fast schooners! Figure dey lose one, but de rest sail far out at sea… Might now be off Fort Balise, safe as lambs! But, mes amis,' he slyly pointed out, 'we still got two millions of it!'
'Lads won't be happy, though, cher, ' Lanxade griped, plucking at his finery most fretfully. 'They think we're fools, they've been cheated somehow… bad thing to do, to fail in our trade.'
'Ah, mais oui, ' Balfa uneasily agreed, grimacing over the tales of what had happened to even the greatest pirates who'd lost the trust of their crews… who'd seemed to lose their magic 'touch.'
'For now, there is rum, wine, food, and loot,' Lanxade supposed, peering about the schooner's decks to see his crew busy with newly captured muskets and pistols, new cutlasses and infantry hangers hung by new baldrics over their shoulders. Dead men's hats were being quarreled over and gambled for, as were coats, waist-coats, shoes, and the few pairs of salvaged boots. 'Rest of her cargo, the butts of Mexicano wine, and that peasant-brewed pulque and arrack… that can keep them satisfied for a while. Quiet, fuddled, and too drunk for a proper counting. Proper thinking.'
'Enough silver for each hand t'get two, three keg apiece, right away,' Balfa cannily speculated. 'Delay de reckonin', n'est-ce pas? Set aside dead men's shares, in plain sight?'
Poor and poltroonish as the Spanish resistance had been, they still had managed to slay or mortally wound at least seven of their buccaneers before going under. Wives, children, and lovers were due a lost man's 'lay.' Or what Balfa and Lanxade could later swear was a proper share, after… deductions. Those wounded, but not mortally, were owed bonuses, too, depending on whether they'd lost something off their bodies; an eye, hand, digit, or foot, a leg… a 'pension' paid in one lump sum if their seagoing life was curtailed by disabilities.
'You fear your own men?' Helio de Guilleri asked with a gasp of surprise. But then, he was used to absolute obedience and deference from house slaves and street negres, those below his social class. It never occurred to him, would never occur to any of his cohorts, that the piratical trade was the freest sort of democracy.
'They discover the sum we took is off, yes,' Lanxade whispered, wondering if old Boudreaux might not be quitting the trade at the best time, after all… and might it not be in his interest to do so, too.
'Well, this schooner is worth a lot, too, so couldn't they wait until it, and that British prize, were sold, and we-' Helio asked.
'Non, mon cher!' Lanxade hastily objected. 'This schooner must disappear, and quickly, before the Spanish begin a search for her. If they lose a guarda costa lugger, a few local merchant ships, that they could abide. Blame the Anglais. But a royal vessel, with two million dollars aboard? Even they would be stirred to action.'
'Well, take her back to Grand Terre, unload her, and strip her of anything useful,' Helio pressed, sounding almost whiny to them.
