And the Englishmen were gone. They hadn't sprouted wings. They hadn't dug into the ground like blind snakes, though Roland would gladly have consigned them to hell. And he didn't suppose they'd grown fins and scales, either. Which didn't mean they hadn't left by sea. The Royal Navy was the strongest one in these waters. Roland didn't know how the enemy's ships got to the right place at the right time, but manifestly they did. Nothing else was possible.
"What do we do now, Monsieur?" a lieutenant asked. Like Kersauzon, he was looking out at the lovely, deep blue, treacherous sea.
A tern dove into the water. It came out with a wriggling fish in its beak. A big black frigate bird, the sac at its throat like a scarlet pig's bladder, harried the tern till it dropped the fish. The frigate bird snatched it out of the air and flew off with it. Radcliff's English settlers might have been frigate birds, too. Like this one, they were getting away with their robbery.
"What do we do?" Roland echoed. "What can we do? We go back and help Montcalm-Gozon. He is the man facing the enemy right now."
The lieutenant sighed. "It's a long march. And it will seem even longer because we've done so much of it before."
"Don't I know it!" Roland started swearing at Don Jose again. When he ran down-which took a while-he said, "What other choice have we got, though? Would you rather stay here? Do you like running after the Spaniards' Negroes and copperskins?"
"Good God, no!" the junior officer exclaimed.
"Well, all right. I would have chased you into the ocean if you'd said yes," Kersauzon told him. "We go north. If the slaves harry us, we make them sorry for it. If they don't, we leave them alone. Any objections?"
"No, sir," the lieutenant said.
"Then let's go." Roland raised his voice and gave the men their new orders. They liked the idea of leaving Spanish Atlantis. So did he. He suspected the Spaniards made a lot of money from their settlements here. But they made even more from the gold and silver of Terranova. The ones who lived here were the ones who couldn't make a go of it there. They acted like second-raters, and came down hard on their slaves because they lacked confidence in themselves.
"We need shoes, Monsieur," a soldier called. "We've done a devil of a lot of marching, you know."
"Yes." Roland nodded. "It could be that some will come down in the supply wagons." Everyone laughed, knowing how unlikely that was. Even victuals had been in short supply lately. He went on, "Or it could be that you will find some lying around with no one using them."
The men pondered that, but not for long. They grinned and nudged one another. They'd foraged to keep themselves fed. Now they had official leave-or what amounted to it-to forage to keep themselves clothed. Roland suspected the Spanish settlers would soon regret that. He also suspected Don Jose would soon bawl like a branded calf. He suspected he himself would grow remarkably deaf to the governor's protestations.
"Where are the Englishmen?" asked a Spanish cavalry officer, encountering the French settlers tramping north. "What have you done with them?" He spoke French with a trilling Spanish accent.
"Why, they are in our rucksacks, of course," Roland replied. "We will keep them there until we quit Spanish Atlantis. And I promise you by God and all the saints that they will trouble you no more."
"In your rucksacks?" The Spaniard frowned. Since his eyebrows grew together above the top of his nose, he looked fearsome-but since he had only a handful of men behind him, not nearly fearsome enough to intimidate Roland. "If I ride south and find them marauding-"
"If you do, you may track me down and do as you please to me," Roland broke in. "But for now, Monsieur, you may get out of our way, for we are on the march." He raised his voice: "Forward!"
His men rolled down on the Spaniards. The luckless officer and his squadron could get out of the way or get trampled. The Spaniards got out of the way. The road was muddy. The meadows to either side were muddier. The horses had to keep moving lest they start to sink. The officer looked daggers at Roland, who wondered if the fellow would draw his pistol and start a fight even if he was supposed to be an ally and even if he was hopelessly outnumbered. He seemed angry enough not to care.
But, no matter what he thought, he didn't do anything. Once the French settlers passed him by, would he get back on the road? Would he ride south and discover that the English really had vanished from Spanish Atlantis? And would he conclude from that that Kersauzon really did have them in their rucksacks?
When you were dealing with Spaniards, you never could tell.
When you were dealing with Englishmen, you never could tell, either. The French were the only sensible people in the world: Roland was convinced of it. And even among the French there were unfortunate gradations. Marquis Montcalm-Gozon, for example, though surely a good fellow, did not seem nearly so sensible as a man from French Atlantis. They're going to seed over there in Europe, Roland thought sadly.
The sound of gunfire ahead snapped him out of his musing. "Scouts forward!" he called. "We'll find out what that is. Then we'll put a stop to it one way or another. Fix bayonets and load your muskets!"
Before long, the scouts came back. It was a brawl-almost a battle-between slaves and Spanish settlers in what was no doubt usually a sleepy little town: about what Kersauzon had expected.
"Let's go!" he said. "If the blacks and copperskins run from us, well and good. If not, it's their funeral."
They ran. He'd thought they would. They were brave enough, but had little in the way of organization. They could fight settlers who also didn't know what they were doing. Real soldiers advancing in neat ranks with bayonets gleaming under the subtropical sun? No. The slaves melted into the woods.
Cheers from the Spaniards failed to warm the cockles of the French settlers' hearts. The town was big enough for two cobbler's shops. The French settlers looted both of them. They cleaned out the taverns, too. Some unfortunate things probably happened to a few of the local women. Roland thought that was too bad, but he didn't intend to do anything about it as long as the soldiers followed orders when it came time to leave.
They did. Fewer cheers came to them when they left than when they'd arrived. Somebody fired an old fowling piece at them as they marched away. None of the junk in the gun barrel hit anybody. If some had, the French settlers probably would have turned around and done a proper job of wrecking the town. As things were, they just kept going.
"You know, Monsieur, the copperskins and blacks will come back as soon as we've gone a couple of miles," a sergeant said.
"But of course," Kersauzon replied. "What do you want me to do about it?"
"Well, sir, the Spaniards said we could come in if we helped them with the slave uprising," the underofficer pointed out.
Roland told him what the Spaniards could do about it. In the telling, he violated as many commandments as he could without having either a sculptor's tools or someone else's wife handy. The sergeant, a man as accustomed to harsh language as anyone of his rank, stared in goggle-eyed admiration. Having slowed down a little, Roland said, "I came down here to fight the damned English settlers. If I can't do that here, I'll go where I can do it, by God. Any questions?"
"Mais non. Certainement pas," the sergeant said hastily, and went off to find somewhere to bathe his bleeding ears.
If the slaves got in the French settlers' way, Roland's men went through them. If the slaves didn't, the settlers ignored them. They took what they needed from the surrounding countryside, as if in hostile country. The locals took to running from them, and occasionally, as in that one village, shooting at them. The French made them sorry when they tried it.