Tide of War (23 page)

“Not as big as this,” said Desmarais.

“But the ship's boats that we are towing astern?”

“That is possible.”

“What are you proposing?” demanded Imlay in English.

“I am proposing,” said Nathan, “to save you a trip.”

T
HE SWAMP HAD ITS OWN
kind of mist. A grey-green fungus that clung to the surface of the water, rolling away from them in every direction as far as the eye could see. The boats moved through this vapour almost silently, the oars rising and falling like the wings of some clumsy, amphibious bird that could not gain enough momentum to take off. Looking up, Nathan could see stars and a full moon but there was so much moisture in the air, he had the impression he was looking down on them like shells and tiny stones at the bottom of a rock pool, dimly reflecting the light of the sun.

There were five boats in the expedition, each with its complement of marines and seamen, each joined to its neighbour by a long length of rope in case they lost sight of each other. They were crossing a lake—Lake Borgne, the French called it, according to their guide. In fact it was not really a lake at all but a lagoon, separated from the sea by a chain of sandbanks and small islands, more pieces in the Devil's Jigsaw.

Nathan shifted slightly in his seat, moving the sword at his hip to make himself a little more comfortable. The air was oppressively humid and he was soaked in sweat already, though he had none of the rowing to do. Despite the protests of Lieutenant Pym, he had insisted on leading the expedition himself, arguing that he must take the responsibility if it all went wrong. In truth, he could not have
borne to have stayed behind on the
Unicorn
while Pym led half his crew into the swamp. Besides, he knew he was better at this kind of thing than Pym, better than he was at commanding a ship, perhaps.

At Nathan's request, Escavar had drawn a rough map showing the fort occupying a narrow promontory on the northern tip of the island overlooking the Rigolets where the channel merged into Lake Pontchartrain. It looked impressive on paper. A timber stockade with blockhouses at each corner surrounded by earthworks in the shape of a five-pointed star—and inside each of the points two 6-pounder cannon firing through embrasures. The garrison was normally about eighty men but there had been fifty more in the Governor-General's party. The main problem for the garrison was the quality of their powder—much of it was damp and unusable.

The rebels had come up through the Rigolets. Several hundred of them in a fleet of pirogues and flatboats, landing on the neck of the peninsular with their artillery—six 12-pounders and four large mortars, according to Escavar, that they had been given by the French.

Nathan wondered if the
Virginie
had depleted her own broadside to supply them. It might make a difference if and when they encountered her.

Escavar was still rattling on in Spanish.

“The bulk of the force is concentrated on the right flank,” Imlay translated after a while. “On a long stretch of beach, just out of sight and range of the cannon in the fort. But they have pushed their own cannon forward behind barricades of timber, back-filled with earth, so they can bombard the fort from three positions.”

It was the mortars that were causing the greatest problem for the defenders, for it enabled the rebels to lob shells over the earthworks into the stockade itself. Also, they had cannon and mortars mounted on
chalands-a-boeuf
—large flatboats driven by long sweeps and normally used to carry cattle on the Mississippi—which they moved in close by night. Escavar estimated the total number of attackers at between five or six hundred.

Nathan had just sixty seamen and the same number of marines
under Whiteley and McGregor but he was counting on the element of surprise and on attacking from the one direction the attackers had not covered.

Which rather depended on John Who-Lives-in-the-Marshes.

The guide had embellished upon Escavar's account of the siege by explaining that the promontory on which the fort was built was composed of sand and silt washed up by the Rigolets. It was the only solid piece of land on the whole island. The rest was swamp, riddled with bayous. For this reason the French thought they were safe from attack in the rear and had posted only a few sentries. But Desmarais was confident of finding his way through the bayous and landing them on more or less solid ground within a few hundred yards of the French lines.

He was up in the bows of Nathan's barge now with Joseph Bonnet, peering across the rolling bank of mist.

Nathan could not have explained, even to himself, why he was prepared to put his faith in an unknown Indian guide when he could not bring himself to trust Pym, or Imlay—or even the ship's master Mr. Baker. If he had been asked, he would probably have said it was no different from taking a pilot on board to guide them in or out of harbour. But he knew it was something more than that. He trusted Desmarais partly because of something about him, some indefinable quality that gave him confidence. It had been the same when he had first met Tully. Perhaps he was drawn to rogues and outlaws—the sense of independence they had and the pride of the outsider who has no-one to rely upon but himself. But he could not have said for sure what it was. Perhaps it was his own lack of confidence.

“What is the name of your people?” he had asked Desmarais when they were still on the
Unicorn.

“In our own tongue we are the
Taneks-hava,
the first people,” he said with a glint of amusement in his eye.

“And do you have a name, in your own tongue?”

“My family name is Itaanyadi.”

“Do you still have a family?”

“No. They were killed by the French. And I was taken to the mission in New Orleans.”

Did the fact that his family had been killed by the French make it more likely he would help the British—or the Spaniards? Possibly. It was useless to speculate. And too late.

They were approaching what appeared to be the mainland but was probably another island: a dense, seemingly impenetrable barrier of small trees or shrubs rising out of the mist but as they came closer a gap appeared, or rather the mist seemed to flow into a narrow channel between the foliage like a carpet unrolling before them, inviting them to enter. Desmarais seemed perfectly satisfied with this arrangement. And so on they went, into the swamp.

Nathan was no naturalist but it seemed likely from the salinity of the water that this was a mangrove swamp and if his previous experience was anything to go by it would be thick with mosquitoes and other stinging insects. Dr. McLeish had provided them with a concoction of rum and catnip to rub into their faces and other exposed areas as a repellent and Nathan had furtively added a sprinkling of vinegar and oregano which he privately believed would protect him from the miasma, a notorious breeding ground of disease. Otherwise there was only prayer.

The creek twisted and turned among the trees—was this the Little Snake, as Desmarais called it? From time to time it forked left or right and the Indian would issue a command in French which Nathan translated for his coxswain. He was reminded of his journey through the catacombs of Paris with another guide, the man known as Jack the Mule. Imlay had been with him then, too, and the adventure had ended badly, he recalled.

The insects had found them—they could hear them buzzing about their ears—but if they were biting, the men were remarkably stoical about it. On his previous visit to the tropics, Nathan had not been troubled by mosquitoes. He thought they did not like the taste of him—something in his blood, the French perhaps. Bats flitted in the air between the trees and from time to time they heard the cry of a
bird or a large splash and once a grunting cough betraying the presence of larger creatures that remained invisible, at least to their human eyes.

They rowed for above an hour until the creek opened out into another lake, ringed in by distant islands. Desmarais came aft through the ranks of oarsmen and Nathan made room for him on the stern seat.

“The island is over there.” He pointed to the left but it could have been any of them, they all looked the same to Nathan. “If we wait here one hour we will reach the fort just before the sun rises.”

“Very well.”

And so they waited with the men resting up on their oars and the insects in a dense cloud about them, biting now. There were muttered oaths, a slapping of necks and the backs of hands and frequent commands for quiet from the petty officers.

Nathan had not calculated for this delay. And the attentions of the insects, though they might be considered no more than a nuisance, encouraged his doubts about the wisdom of the enterprise. It seemed incredible to him now that he was prepared to risk half his crew and possibly the
Unicorn
herself to save an obscure Spanish official and an insignificant little fort—it was called Le Petit Coquille, he had discovered, the Little Shell. True, he had been swayed by the wider strategic considerations proposed by Imlay but he was inclined now to the belief that strategic considerations should be left to politicians and the more sinister agencies at their command. The last time he had agreed to support Imlay's grand designs was in Paris and that had led to the loss of the one person in France who really mattered to him.

Did he blame Imlay for Sara's death? Partly, he thought, though not anything like as much as he blamed himself. And in all fairness he could not blame Imlay for their present situation. He had been entirely opposed to Nathan's scheme of attacking the rebels—a “rash conceit” he had called it, and that was the mildest of the expressions he had used—and they had scarcely spoken since. He was now sulking in one of the other boats with Escavar.

Nathan would not have described himself as either rash or conceited but there were times when he appeared to be possessed of some reckless demon that threw caution to the winds. Why? He sometimes wondered if it was a means of escaping the more rigorous disciplines of command, that he preferred the roll of the dice to the more precise calculations of navigation and the day-to-day running of a ship of war.

He was brooding upon this failing—if failing it was—when he found himself staring into a pair of eyes. Indeed he rather thought he had been doing so for some time before he became aware of the fact. Possibly the compartment of his mind occupied with such trivia as his immediate surroundings had categorised them as rocks. But no, they were eyes. Large reptilian eyes emerging from the swamp as if from the top of some creature's head, like a frog's. They observed him unblinkingly with what he took to be a cold, clinical regard, as if contemplating the mental torment of a fellow philosopher, though it was far more likely, he conceded, that the creature was considering whether he might be good to eat. The eyes were large enough to make this an immediate cause for concern and in the instant this occurred to him the creature apparently came to a positive conclusion on the subject for without any further warning it lunged forward, rising some several feet out of the water to reveal a massive elongated jaw possessed of a truly astonishing quantity of teeth.

Nathan leaped up in the boat and fell over backwards across the rowers. The boat rocked alarmingly. The beast fell back into the water with a great splash and the thrashing of an enormous tail. Several of the seamen struck out with their oars. But there was no second attack. Nathan gazed at the agitation in the water. He looked down the length of the boat. Saw the shocked expressions, reflecting his own.

“Fucking hell,” he said, with an embarrassed grin.

Several of the hands grinned back. Nathan laughed and then they were all laughing. He sat down, shaking his head but strangely pleased with himself. It was probably not commensurate with his dignity as a captain but he felt that the episode had united them
somewhat. Certainly they all seemed more relaxed.

Desmarais came climbing towards him.

“It is time to go,” he said.

They had been rowing for almost an hour across the lake when there was a sudden flash in the night sky to the north and a noise that could have been thunder. But it was not thunder. It was artillery. There was a battle in progress, or possibly the thunder was entirely at the command of the French. Either way, it indicated that the fort was still holding out.

Desmarais looked back at Nathan and raised an arm and they rowed towards the shore. As they drew closer, Nathan saw that it was not as solid as it had appeared from out on the lake but riddled with small inlets and creeks. On the guide's instruction they entered one, the trees pressing in on both sides and even meeting over their heads. No longer mangroves but more like a variety of willow and the ground appeared less swampy than in other parts. As they glided through the muddy waters the glimpses of sky permitted them through the canopy of trees changed from black to purple to indigo. Then the creek widened appreciably and they saw the first streaks of pink spreading from the east. Desmarais was peering intently forward. For an irreverent moment Nathan thought he might be lost. Then he pointed again and Nathan saw a ramshackle wooden jetty standing up out of the dispersing mist and a patch of muddy strand beyond. This apparently was their destination.

They disembarked one boat at a time, the men moving off rapidly for fear the jetty would collapse under their weight but there was scarce room on the shore for all of them, and there were some nervous glances towards the murky water and whatever menaces it might conceal. Indeed the men appeared more apprehensive of the swamp and the monsters that lurked there than the unknown dangers that lay ahead. The firing was continuous now and much louder, the roar of the cannon accompanied by the sharper report of musketry.

Desmarais was at Nathan's side.

“The fort is a short march from here,” he said. “I will go ahead with my brother, in case they have posted pickets.”