Up to the Nor'east, Lewrie could almost make out a second boat with two men in it. "Mister Jugg?" he called. "Use my glass and tell me if you recognise anyone in these two boats nearest us."
Jugg trotted up from his task of helping secure their prize and took a long gander with Lewrie's telescope. " 'At 'un up in th' Nor'east, sor… don't think I know them fellers," he said after a long moment. "Left-hand'un, though… 'at's Boudreaux Balfa at 'er starboard oar, as big as life, sor! We goin' after 'em, Cap'm?" he eagerly asked.
Lewrie took his telescope back, extended the tubes to full magnification, and eyed the closest of his known foes. "Damme!"
He grunted as if punched in the stomach as he recognised another person in Balfa's boat: Charite! She'd turned to peer astern anxiously and he spotted her long mane of chestnut hair, her soggy shirt plastered to womanly breasts. "The murderin' bitch. Do we have a boat handy?" he loudly demanded, rounding to peer about the schooner's deck. "We're off after 'em, if we have t'paddle logs!"
"Two, sir," Midshipman Larkin responded. "Our shalope's jolly boat, and… that," he said, pointing over-side at a scrufulous pirogue tied up alongside their captured schooner's larboard chains.
"Cox'n Andrews! You, me, and four hands in the jolly boat, men who can row like Blazes!" Lewrie quickly decided. "All to have muskets and cutlasses." With the shore fight seemingly done, and Capt. Nicely in charge of that, there was nothing to deter him from wrapping things up, nabbing Balfa… and getting a personal matter finished. "Mister Adair… take charge here 'til I get back. Send word ashore if you're able, and tell Captain Nicely where I've gone."
"Aye, sir," Lieutenant Adair crisply replied.
"Hands for the pirogue," Lewrie bade to his crewmen. "Any volunteers to…
"Me, sor," Toby Jugg quickly spoke up. "Sorta personal, like." Lewrie looked him in the eyes for a moment, then nodded assent. Just 'cause he once knew the bastard…! Lewrie thought with a mental shrug as he headed for entry-port; no reason not to trust him. Jugg and his two almost inseparable mates, his fellow Irishmen Mannix and Dempsey, followed Jugg into the pirogue as Lewrie took charge of the tiller of his own rowboat. "Shove off, out oars… and let's be after the bastard!" Lewrie urged his hands.
As their boats began to surge in pursuit, he did take a moment, though, to wonder if he could shoot a woman if he caught up with Charite.
"Dey gainin' on us," Balfa muttered, arm muscles bulging as he dug deep with his oar, laying out almost prone at each stroke to sweep their boat faster; almost ruing that he'd rid himself of the La Fittes, now that they needed fresh, strong backs. "Gonna cotch us… I think. Dat pirogue… she be… faster, her," he grunted 'tween hard strokes. His tongue was about lolling out, and Fusilier's youthful power was nearly played out, too. The girl could steer adequately, but she'd not last five minutes on an oar. "Mam'selle … dat rifle o' yours… you can use it, hein? You good shot?"
Helio had showed her how to use the air-rifle, though she didn't consider herself a crack shot. Charite had opened the magazine tube as they'd rowed past Le Revenant, when the La Fittes were still aboard, to count remaining rounds. There were only seven. Helio and Hippolyte had bragged how far it could shoot… She angrily swiped the sleeve of her shirt over her eyes to blot the fresh tears that the thought of them evoked. They were prisoners of the hated Anglais, now, on their way to a British noose, cruelly wounded, or… dead and gone!
Everything was lost! Ships, crew, the silver, and when news got to the Spanish, the surviving de Guilleris would face arrest and trial and the garotte in the Place d'Armes. All they owned would be forfeit, even if her parents and sisters had had no knowledge or part in their planned revolution.
Her own fate was the bitterest of all to savour; she would die not as a martyr for France, but as a fool, an utter failure who'd gotten her brothers killed, a lunatic with a demented dream! And Creoles, even those who might have taken up arms with them, would be cowed into silence and ineffectiveness! Louisiana and New Orleans would stay part of Spain!
Better to die now, Charite bleakly thought, fantasising a tale told of a brave but foolish girl who'd slain her heartless, pursuing Englishmen and died in battle, than to be abased in a court like Joan of Arc, then strangled in the public square.
"Mam'selle?" Balfa prompted.
"I can use it, Capitaine," Charite grimly promised. "When the time comes, I will. I'll not be taken, non."
But oh, it would be hard to die, when she'd only had nineteen sunny years. Couldn't there have been many more, in a Louisiana that was free and French again, her holy duty done?
"Hoy, the boat!" an Anglais shouted from a boat on their starboard quarter. "Lay on your oars and surrender, in the King's name!"
"Shit on your king!" Boudreaux Balfa hooted back, "an' kiss my rosy 'Cadien ass!" In a mutter, he added, "De time be come, mam'selle. Try your eye, an' I'll be ready wit' my pistols for when dey gets real close."
Charite abandoned the sweep-oar, pulled the air-rifle up off the boat's sole, and cranked the stiff loading lever to chamber a ball, then turned on her thwart to take aim, frightened to death but determined to take at least one despicable Anglais with her before she fell.
"We know who you are, Boudreaux Balfa!" the Anglais bellowed in a quarterdeck voice, shambling half bent over to stand in the bows of his boat. "Charite de Guilleri! Surrender, and no harm will come to you!"
She started with alarm, chilled that the British knew her by name! Over the sights of her rifle, she peered at the officer in the bows, a "Bloody" cochon in a gilt-laced coat, face shaded by a large cocked hat, hands cupped to his mouth. He would be her target. She cocked the valve mechanism to the air-chamber.
The officer lowered his hands, took off his hat as his boat got within sixty yards, and a long musket shot… Him?Mon Dieu, Alain?
A spy, a glib liar, an arch foe of all she held dear! Crack!
Her first round was short and to the right, but Alain's oarsmen faltered, and she'd forced him to duck, rocking his boat alarmingly. Cold-bloodedly now, Charite reloaded and recocked her air-rifle, then brought the rifle's stock back to her shoulder, her fluttery fear now departed, her hands and body no longer shivering. Charite de Guilleri was filled by a calmly righteous and vengeful anger.
"Pirogue's gettin' close, aussi, mam'selle," Balfa cautioned.
As if she was still Papa's little prodigy hunting quail in a cut-over cane field, Charite swivelled to face dead aft and put a well-placed ball square in the pirogue's bows, forcing all three men in it to lay flat and fall back as they abandoned their paddling.
"Give it up, Charite!" Willoughby-whatever the lying bastard called himself-shouted over. "We won't hurt you… swear it!"
Vous! she thought, utterly revulsed that she'd let him even put his hands