Clive Cussler; Craig Dirgo (5 page)

“Yes, sir,” the second officer said.

Aigron started to speak, but Tonty squeezed his Adam’s apple tighter.

“Captain Aigron will be going ashore with me,” Tonty said, as he led the captain to the ladder going down to the shore boat. “La Salle will be back in a few hours. We weigh anchor at first light.”

“As you wish, sir,” the second in command said solicitously.

Tonty dragged Aigron across the deck to the ladder and then down the few feet to the shore boat. Stepping into the boat, he pulled the captain into a seat and motioned for the sailor to shove off. The boat was halfway to the dock before Tonty released his grip on Aigron’s neck.

Staring straight into the captain’s eyes, he spoke in a low voice. “You may take over command of
Belle
or I’ll toss you into the drink right now. What is your choice?”

The hook had crushed his voice box—Aigron could barely speak.

“The
Belle,
please, Monsieur Tonty,” Aigron said in a hoarse whisper.

The shore boat was pulling abreast of the dock.

“You defy La Salle’s orders again,” Tonty said, “and your neck will feel my cutlass.”

Aigron gave a tiny nod.

Then Tonty climbed from the shore boat and walked down the dock without looking back. His friend La Salle dreamed of conquering a continent for his king.

But dreams do not always come true.

FOR LA SALLE, the last two weeks had been a living hell. The fevers had returned and, with them, his feelings of isolation and indecision. Once the trio of ships rounded Cuba and entered the Gulf of Mexico, the tension of the Spanish death sentence made matters worse. At sea any ill will or imagined slights are magnified a hundredfold, and that was the case for La Salle’s expedition. Sailors barely talked to settlers—La Salle and the captains had taken to communicating only through intermediaries.

Just in the nick of time, on January 1, 1685, the bottom soundings turned up land.

In
L’Aimable’s
cabin, La Salle, Tonty, and their faithful Indian guide, Nika, held a hushed meeting. The success of the whole expedition hinged on what these men would decide. It was a decision made under pressure, and those rarely are fruitful.

“What are your thoughts, Nika?” La Salle asked the taciturn guide.

“I think we are close,” Nika noted, “but we have yet to see the brown streak from the muddy waters of the great river.”

La Salle mopped his sweating brow with an embroidered handkerchief. The temperature outside was barely fifty degrees, but he could not stop sweating.

“Tonty?” he asked.

“I say we continue sailing due north until we make landfall, then send a party ashore,” Tonty said logically. “That should give us an idea where we are.”

“My thoughts exactly,” La Salle said.

Three hours later, the dim outline of land was spotted by the crow’s-nest lookout. La Salle went ashore to explore. From land, the area looked different from what he remembered, but there could be good reasons for that. First, the flat marshland featured less vegetation in January than in springtime, which was the only time he had seen it. Second, approaching from water was always tricky; the perspective was different, and landmarks were harder to identify.

Unless the expedition made land near the Head of Passes and could spot the brown outflow, the land might look the same from the Florida panhandle to the Red River. Whatever La Salle decided, it could go either way. The shore boat slid to a stop up a small tributary. The tangled growth of cypress trees and underbrush nearly blotted out the sun. Mullet splashed on top of the water. La Salle brushed a black fly from his neck, then dipped his hand into the water and tasted.

“Fresh and sweet,” he noted. “We are near the fabled rivers of north Florida.”

“I don’t think so, master. I think we are close to the Mississippi,” Nika said.

“It looks different,” Tonty said, “from what I remember.”

A fever racked La Salle’s body. He shivered like a dog climbing from an icy stream. For a moment, he saw stars and heard voices. A vision entered his mind.

“I’m sure the river is over there,” he said, pointing. “Let’s return to
L’Aimable.
We’ll sail west. If we hug the shoreline, we should see the muddy waters.”

In his feverish mind, La Salle was convinced they were somewhere near the Florida panhandle. In fact, they made land only a few miles to the west of the Mississippi River. Going east, they would have seen the brown water by lunchtime.

Another wrong decision would doom the expedition to failure.

“LA SALLE HAS no idea where we are,” Beaujeu noted.

“Placing a non-navy man in charge of navigation is both unheralded and unwise,” Aigron said.

Beaujeu nodded. “Return to your ship. Short of mutiny, we must follow the order.”

“Mutiny might be wise,” Aigron said, rising to return to
Belle.
“The damned settlers are eating my sailors’ rations. If we don’t make land and get a hunting party ashore, we may all starve to death.”

The next morning, the trio of ships began sailing west. The tiny
Belle
hugged the shoreline, while
L’Aimable
stayed in the middle. The gunship
Joly
stayed farther out to sea to defend in case a Spanish ship happened past. A week passed, with the Father of Waters falling farther off their stern. When the expedition finally arrived off Texas, it was low on food and lower still on morale. Events were quickly turning worse.

“These barrier islands must have been farther out to sea,” La Salle said.

“Then behind the islands is where we planted the French flag?” Tonty asked.

“I believe so,” La Salle said.

Nika sat silently, brooding. Their current location was different from what he remembered. Here, the species of birds were not the same. Not only that, the beasts he glimpsed on land were more like those that graced the Great Plains.

Even so, the taciturn Indian said nothing. No one had asked his opinion.

“Even if the lagoons are not the outflow of the Mississippi, they must be a tributary that the river empties into,” La Salle said. “We will make land, send out hunters, erect a fort for protection, then set out exploring. I have a good feeling.”

His feeling came from the fever, but there was no one to second-guess his decision.

BELLE
HAD PASSED the bar.
L’Aimable
and
Joly
remained outside.

“Sir,” Aigron said, “I must protest. The water is shallow and the currents tricky.”

It was the first face-to-face meeting between the two men in months.

“
Belle
has been inside,” La Salle noted.

“A smaller, shallow draft vessel,” Aigron said. “
L’Aimable
is three hundred tons.”

“I am ordering you to take command of
L’Aimable
and take her inside,” La Salle said, “or face charges of mutiny.”

Aigron stared at the menacing presence of Tonty only feet away.

“I will draw up orders absolving me of any responsibility,” Aigron said, “which you must sign. Then I am transferring my personal possessions to
Joly
outside the bar.”

“I will agree to those terms,” La Salle said wearily.

Aigron turned to his second in command. “Have sailors sound the bottom and lay a string of buoys lining each side of the channel. We enter at high tide tomorrow.”

La Salle rose. “I am turning over command of this vessel. Have a shore boat drop our possessions on land. Tonty, Nika, and I will stay on land tonight.”

“As you wish, Monsieur La Salle,” Aigron said.

LA SALLE, HIS two trusted companions, and a small party of settlers and sailors spent the night on land. The twentieth day of February 1685 dawned clear. Only a few scattered gusts of wind marred what appeared to be an otherwise perfect day. La Salle was tired. Indians from a nearby tribe had approached twice. So far the savages had remained peaceful, but they spoke a dialect neither La Salle nor Nika could understand.

Their intentions remained an unknown.

La Salle ordered a party of men to a small forested area nearby to fell a tree to be used to construct a dugout canoe for exploring the shallow waters. Staring out to sea, La Salle could see
L’Aimable
weigh anchor. At just that instant, a sailor jogged over to where he was standing. He was breathless and required a second to catch his wind.

“The savages,” he gasped at last, “they came and took our men.”

La Salle stared out to sea. The
Belle
was supposed to tow
L‘Aimable
through the gap, but she remained away. Was the pilot intending to take
L’Aimable
in on sail against orders? There was no time for La Salle to find out. Together with Tonty and Nika, he ran toward the Indian encampment.

Looking over his shoulder, La Salle watched as
L’Aimable
’s sails were unfurled.

IT WASN’T THE wine as much as the brandy that gave pilot Duhout and Captain Aigron their courage. With sails to the wind, they closed the distance. On old sailing vessels the pilot faced backward, staring at the horizon behind. With masts, riggings, and supplies stacked on deck, there is little to see facing forward.

“Port a quarter,” Duhout shouted to Aigron, who adjusted the wheel.

“Starboard an eighth.”

And so it went.

Aigron steered
L’Aimable
through the first shoals successfully. Lining up with the buoys, he began his run past the reef. In a few minutes, he would be inside.

“ONE AX AND a dozen needles,” La Salle offered as trade for his men.

Nika translated as best he could, then waited to see if it was understood.

The Indian chief nodded his assent and motioned for the men to be released.

La Salle and Tonty stepped outside to stare at the water at
L’Aimable.

“If they hold the present course, they’ll run her aground,” La Salle said to Tonty.

“I fear you are right,” Tonty said, “but there is nothing we can do.”

La Salle was completing the negotiations when he heard the cannon shot the expedition had agreed upon as a sign of distress.
L’Aimable
had run aground.

WOOD RUBBING AGAINST a reef makes the sound of a screaming infant.

In the lower hold, the supplies to sustain the expedition were already becoming damp. If they were not quickly removed and dried, they would be lost.

“She’s hard aground,” Aigron said to Duhout. “The reef has holed the bottom.”

“The wine and brandy,” Duhout said, “should be salvaged first.”

LA SALLE MADE his way back to the coast with his freed men as quickly as he could. As he rounded a corner and climbed up a small rise, his eyes met a grim sight.
L’Aimable
was hopelessly aground atop the reef, the tear in her side discharging the cargo into the water. To make matters worse, out in the Gulf of Mexico the sky was turning an angry black.

All that remained was to salvage what they could and pray for better luck, but luck would prove elusive. The rest of the day, the crew salvaged what goods they could by loading them onto small boats and transferring them to shore. At nightfall they set up camp.

Tomorrow, God willing, they would return for the rest.

The winds and the waves came calling that night, battering the stationary
L‘Aimable
like a punching bag being pummeled by a prizefighter, and the ship was ripped to shreds. The morning sky dawned red. At first light La Salle stood silently, watching as wave after wave washed over the few sections of
L’Aimable’s
hull that remained above water.

Little remained but to add up the losses.

Nearly all the expedition provisions were gone, along with all the medicines. Four cannon and their shot, four hundred grenades, and small arms to protect the settlers. Iron, lead, the forge, and the tools. Baggage and personal items, books and trinkets.

The loss of
L’Aimable
was the deathblow, but La Salle had yet to realize it.

With what goods could be salvaged, La Salle moved inland and constructed a fort he named for the king of France. Fort Saint Louis gave La Salle a base from which to explore. With the few sailors and settlers still loyal, he began his search for the elusive Father of Waters.

But fate was a cruel mistress.

With La Salle’s permission, Captain Beaujeu took all the settlers wanting to leave aboard
Joly
. In March of 1685, he returned to France. The next year was one of hardship and disappointment for La Salle. His inland expeditions made him realize he was hundreds of miles from the Mississippi River Delta.

After months of hardships, he returned to Fort Saint Louis to regroup. Upon arriving, La Salle received word that Belle had run aground and sunk.

The loss of
Belle
added fuel to the disillusionment of the remaining settlers and soldiers. The little ship was the only visible lifeline to France. With
Belle
destroyed, the settlers were little more than stranded visitors in a savage and cruel new world.

It was the final straw.

“I’LL TAKE A few men and set off for Canada,” La Salle told Tonty. “You remain here so I have someone in control.”

“That’s a thirty-five-hundred-mile trip on foot,” Tonty said. “Are you sure?”

“What other choice do we have?” La Salle said. “If we don’t get some supplies soon, we all die. I’ve made it down the Mississippi before.”

Tonty nodded. That had been years before, when La Salle was younger and healthier.

“How many men will you need?” Tonty asked.

“Less than a dozen,” La Salle said, “so we can move quickly.”

“I shall arrange it immediately,” the always-loyal Tonty said.

IN MARCH OF 1687, La Salle set out, but an old wound would bring death.