The Captain`s Vengeance

Still, eight hundred thousand Spanish dollars was ?200,000, and that was nothing to sneeze at. Admiral Parker got an eighth, and Captain Nicely got an eighth, as senior admiral and 'squadron commander,' respectively. But that still left Lewrie his traditional two-eighths as captain of the successful warship, and that resulting ?37,500 was his ticket to a life of imcomparable wealth!

He could buy his farm from Uncle Phineas Chiswick, who resisted the odds with his typical stubborn meanness and absolutely refused to die-if he couldn't take all his own wealth with him, Lewrie suspected. There could be a decent townhouse in London, too, and still leave them ?30,000 to place in the safe and solid Bank of England's Three Percents and that would yield ?1,000 per annum, before the bloody taxes due, of course. A family his size could live as grand as an earl on a sum like that. Why, he could even spare an hundred… well, fifty would suit, he idly supposed… to dower his penniless ward, Sophie de Maubeuge, buy things to improve her paraphernalia to help attract a suitable man with decent breeding and fair prospects of his own. Sewallis and Hugh, his daughter Charlotte (those offspring it was safe to claim!) would be assured the very best educations, and a leg up for their entry into adulthood. His wife, Caroline, well… hmm.

Sudden wealth might mollify her, he could hope, might soften her heart enough to forgive his overseas amours at last. It wasn't as if any of them had been anything more than temporary foreign 'diversions,' conveniences, really. And weren't a couple of them mounted under the orders of superiors 'topped' in the name of grim Duty? That Claudia Mastandrea with the bountiful 'poonts' in the Italies, and Charite his most recent?

It felt callous to think that Caroline could be swayed by a pot of guineas, that she could possibly be that flinty- eyed and mercenary. Yet… Riches, as good as absence, might make the heart grow fonder! Too busy to remember despising him whilst spending, getting, feathering her nest, hmm?

Dressed proper at last, Lewrie took his hat in hand and walked to the forrud door, or tried to. Toulon and Chalky had developed a new game with which to plague him. Whether genuinely glad to have him back aboard as their main delight, their security, or their chiefest playmate in 'their' great-cabins, or whether this was a holdover from the time that Capt. Nicely had usurped that space, a devious mischief they dreamt up to harass him (when they weren't spraying and marking everything in sight, and thank God they'd stopped doing that!), their sole waking delight, whenever he rose from his bed, desk, or settee, was to dash ahead of him, looking back impishly, fling themselves down in his path with their paws aloft and bellies exposed, and God help him if he didn 't stoop or kneel to pet them and make fusses over them, else his ankles and stockings were in for 'heavy weather.'

'Aye, damn yer eyes,' Lewrie relented with a put-upon sigh, all but stumbling over their writhing, tail-whicking eagerness. With much 'oofing' and groaning, he knelt to placate them, but it hurt some, and was a slow process, too. 'God's sake, don't try this after dark, will ye, Toulon? I can almost see Chalky, but you, ye menace, you're black as a boot! Yes, big baby Wubby feel good? Oh, you too, Chalky lad.'

'Mister Gamble… Sah!' the Marine sentry outside his doorway bawled, slamming his musket butt on the deck and stamping his boots to announce the presence of their newest 'gift' Midshipman, Darcy Gamble, who came well recommended by both Admiral Sir Hyde Parker and Nicely.

'Oh, hell,' Lewrie groaned, caught kneeling, and a cat's belly under each hand. 'Come, dammit! Christ!' he added under his breath.

'The First Officer, Mister Langlie's duty, sir, and-' Mister Gamble began to say, stepping briskly into the great- cabins, hat under his right arm, chin high in the proud execution of his duties. He widened his eyes, though, and could not help laughing at the sight of his captain on his knees.

'Yess, Mister Gamble?' Lewrie drawled, embarrassed, but determined not to let it faze him. He sat back on his haunches and continued petting the cats, careful for his fingers should they get too happy.

'My pardons, sir, but the, ah… mongoose problem the ship had a few months ago, sir?' Gamble stated, eyes on the stern windows, and all but biting the lining of his mouth to stay sober.

'Oh, the Marines' rat-killin' Trinidad mongoose?' Lewrie asked, as if it was trifling. 'Our pagan Hindoo mongoose? Aye?' Lewrie secretly savoured the look of perplexity on young Gamble's phyz, wondering if the lad feared he'd landed a berth in Bedlam, not a crack frigate.

'The First Officer, Mister Langlie, is of the opinion that it, ah… was a she, Captain, sir,' Gamble reported, lips quivering as the lunacy of what he was saying struck him. 'A pregnant she, in point of fact. There are simultaneous sightings of… mon-geese, one must assume… everywhere, now, sir!'

Lewrie shut his eyes and let a bemused smile spread on his face. 'Mine arse on a band-box. Yet the rats are kept in check, hey? Next match, Mister Gamble… put me down for a shilling. On the mongoose.'

I'm rich enough now, Lewrie supposed to himself as he slowly got to his feet; I can afford aflutter!

AFTERWORD

Ah, N'awlins, the 'Big Easy'… the city where I once had four Hurricanes and closed Pat O'Brien's at dawn, then thought that I was Jean La Fitte, after an LSU-Ole Miss football game at Baton Rouge! I'd driven down with a couple of 'Good Ol' Girls' from Ole Miss whom I had met in Memphis. Ole Miss lost 66-6, Archie Manning was quarterback and playing in a cast on his arm, so they took the defeat, and their cry of 'Hoddy-Toddy, Christ A'mighty,' much like Dionysius's Greek followers took 'Evoe!', a reason for serious boozing.

Thanks to Louisiana State University Press for The Founding of New Acadia by Carl Brasseaux and Africans in Colonial Louisiana by Gwendolyn Midlo Hall; and to Pelican Publishing of Gretna, Louisiana, for reprinting George W. Cable's 1884 book, The Creoles of Louisiana for the description of the city and its citizens' character, or lack of it. He did know them best!

Creole and Cajun character names were chosen blind from the indexes in these books, and others, so if anyone whose family name is mentioned may wish to take umbrage, consider this…

I am well armed, and know how to use them.

Boudreaux Balfa's name was inspired by one of my Bluegrass-Americana CDs, where I found several Cajun- Zydeco cuts done by Dewey Balfa (are we kinfolk?) and his family band, though I recall that his family reside on Bayou La Fourche, not Barataria, so as Dewey Balfa said in the liner notes, Toujours Balfa! and more power to 'em, 'cause they're great! I'm trolling for a free CD, Dewey!

For my rendition of Cajun diction, blame that famous Cajun comic, Justin Wilson, with whom I spent a day doing a couple of TV commercials in Memphis in the '80's, when I was a producer-director at WMC-TV.

For the Tennesseans, I borrowed a few of my own kin from my old stomping grounds round Campbell, Claiborne, and Knox Counties, Tennessee. My maternal grandmother, Mary Susan Bowman Ellison, spoke of a cousin of her youth, Jim Hawk McLean, in the Powell Valley, which is halfway between La Follette, Tennessee, and the Cumberland Gap. Every spring, or when a wild hair hit him, Jim Hawk and his cronies would build a flatboat and head downriver to the Mississippi, then raft down to Vicksburg or Natchez, sell their produce and the boat, then buy horses and good breeding stock and come home up the Natchez Trace to Nashville, the Cumberland Trail to Knoxville, all for a lark. They'd sell all but the best mounts in Knoxville, then return to the Powell Valley (originally Powell's!) with half their cash money for the year, so I couldn't resist working a Jim Hawk Ellison into the tale!

Yes, there was a Panton, Leslie Company, a British firm that traded with Indians, Spanish, and frontier settlements. It's mentioned in both The South In The Revolution, Volume Three of A History of the South by John Richard Alden (LSU Press) and The Southern Frontier, 1670 to 1732 by Vernor W. Crane (W. W. Norton Co.). Both provide 'dirt' on the many plots and schemers who wished to expand westward along the entire length of the Mississippi, the United States plans, the British scenarios,