"So, an hour 'fore dawn, and they'll most-like be falling-down drunk and insensible," Lewrie surmised. "Better and better! A grand night's work, Mister Langlie. Damned fine!"
"Thank you, sir!" Langlie gladly replied. "And thank you for the opportunity, to-"
"No one saw you and your party, d'ye think?" Lewrie fretted of a sudden.
"Don't think so, sir, no." Lt. Langlie told him, pensive for a moment. "No hue and cry, that's for certain."
"Well, that's fine, then," Lewrie decided, letting out a much-relieved sigh. "And thank you, Mister Langlie, for an arduous task, nobly done."
"Er… aye, aye, sir."
"If you will, sir, I'd admire the shalope fetched alongside, so I may go aboard her," Lewrie ordered, turning stiffly formal. "I give you charge of Proteus 'til my return, or the completion of our little enterprise, sir. Get her as deep into the channel as you think practicable, Mister Langlie, and her guns well within range, even the carronades if that's possible."
"Directly, sir!" Langlie assured him.
"Damme, I like this frigate hellish-fine, Mister Langlie! Just as she is… paintwork included, hmm?" Lewrie declared, chuckling as he clapped his First Lieutenant on the shoulder.
"I'll take good care of her, sir. No worries."
"I have none, sir," Lewrie replied. "Especially knowing that any scrapes and such'd be your sad task to repair, once back in port!"
Boudreaux Balfa and his son, Fusilier, toiled away on the dark bay side of the captured Spanish schooner, shifting kegs from her entry-port to the sole of a dowdy, paint-peeling, and flat-bottomed lugger, a single-masted boat that could go almost anywhere up the bayous or the coulees that a pirogue could go… if one knew the maze of waterways like the palm of one's hand, as did Balfa, his son and several of his neighbours who'd come along on the raiding cruise. Kegs of silver were shifted from the lugger to their flat-bottomed boats and pirogues, their shares for participating… as well as "a little something extra" that Balfa and his neighbours would rather not have the others know a thing about.
Chere, mo lem-me toi, oui, mo lem-me toi,
avec tou mo coeur, mo lem-me toi, chere,
comme tit cochon lem-me la boul!
He sang softly, covertly, perhaps to hide the sly guffaw at the trick he was playing on all of them, else he would be roaring out loud.
Dear, I love you so, yes, I love you so.
With all my heart, I love you, dear,
like the little pig loves mud! Hee hee heel
"Papa, the others," Fusilier Balfa fretted in a whisper. "If we steal dem blind, dey come after us an' kill us!"
"Naw, Fusilier. Come dawn, ever'body gonna shinny up dere own side, I tell ya," Boudreaux softly snickered. "We just takin' our own shares a little early, is all. For safekeepin'. Comprends, mon fils?"
"I don' know," Fusilier timidly objected, counting off a new keg as it was manhandled across their lugger to a waiting pirogue; that would make twenty kegs so far, he reckoned. And more was coming.
Just in case a Spanish guarda costa or one of those perfidious British men-o'-war ran across them before they'd reached the safety of Barataria Bay, over eight hundred kegs had been put aboard Le Revenant, so if one ship was taken, the cruise wouldn't be a total loss for the survivors. Fusilier's papa had told him on the sly that the take was nowhere near what their buccaneers expected, but that he was to shut his mouth about that until the whole cargo was broken out and the truth revealed… in the morning, when their crew would be groggy and hungover, perhaps gullible enough to settle for what was in hand.
There was enough rum and arrack, enough barricos of rough Mexican wine, to keep the men pliable and "hot" enough to work the ships back to Grand Terre, but not sober enough to wonder where the rest of the money was. Dread of being taken by a passing warship had sped their labours in shifting some of the cargo, then breaking off suddenly and setting sail homeward, with the rest soon to be "discovered."
Balfa and Lanxade would declare that they would take less than their customary shares, so the men would not be cheated. Just as soon as the de Guilleris and their arrogant compatriots were accused of supplying them with false information, a nebulous (but hopefully believable!) plot would emerge with the banker Maurepas, to skim off some of the silver as soon as it landed in New Orleans… Jerome Lanxade would even suggest that Maurepas, Bistineau, and the de Guilleris might have conspired to steal some of the silver from the prize during the night!
Which would conveniently explain why Boudreaux Balfa was taking some tonight, and wouldn't Jerome be surprised! Balfa gleefully thought as he shouldered another heavy keg from one of his cousins aboard the prize and carefully set it by the others in the lugger's amidships. He reckoned that he might be able to make off with about 40,000 silver dollars, which he might split with Jerome… or he might not. Maybe even 50,000, if the water in the creeks, coulees, sloughs, and bayous was up, and they could float that much away.
Did he take a reduced share of the loot in the morning, not the 200,000 he was due but only 50,000, say, the Balfas would be rich for life, rich beyond imagining, when he combined his public share with a little, trifling, miniscule private one, even if he had to give half to Lanxade to mollify him once he found that his imaginative fabulation was true, hee hee!
And just to be on the safe side, he had a second lugger for a quick departure, once the share-out was done, before anyone with quick wits could suspect him. After all, come dawn those witless play-acting bebes would be feeding the crabs; the prize schooner would be emptied, stripped, and burned; and Le Revenant awarded to the strongest, loudest-voiced, and quickest-witted pirate who wanted to stay in business.
"Vite, vite, mes chers, " Balfa stealthily urged. " Un autre … beaucoup d'autres! Another… a lot o' others!"
"It's so pagan!" Charite tittered as she sat cross-legged on a blanket atop one of the ancient Indian earth mounds where she and her brothers and kin had, by right as "leaders," put up a trio of lean-to shelters for the night. "Like something out of an old book."
Firelight flickered high and heathen from several bonfires on the beach, from cooking fires where cauldrons simmered and black-iron pans sizzled up savoury things. The flickering yellow and orange glow from so many fires lent an unreal aura to the shoreline for over fifty yards from end to end, from the beach line to the scrubby bushes above the beach, where the wood had been gathered, and illuminated the tall trees that shrouded their secret lair and the betraying sight of the ships' masts from view from any passing searchers. The light was reflected back onto the rough buccaneer camp by the bleached-bone whiteness of other, lower mounds of oyster, mussel, and clam shells that had been heaped up first by aboriginal Indians, then added to by White fishermen, wanderers, and outlaws. They were not as tall or as deep as the roughly flat-topped earth mounds, but they snaked along like a miniature mountain chain, slumped into each other a bit inshore.