The Sea Hunters II: More True Adventures with Famous Shipwrecks, Page 3

  Aigron was a short man, just over five feet in height and weighing 120 pounds. Pursing his lips, he puffed on a long thin pipe. The bowl of the mahogany pipe had been carved into the shape of a jellyfish. Waving away the smoke, he pointed to a crude chart on the table in Joly’s captain’s quarters.

  “I’m more than a little concerned,” Aigron noted. “Nowhere on this crude chart do I see where La Salle has marked the great river running into the Gulf of Mexico.”

  “I asked him before we left La Rochelle,” Beaujeu said as he sipped from a silver flute of wine, “what exactly was our intended course. Then as now, he refused to disclose the route.”

  Aigron nodded and waited for Beaujeu to continue.

  “Honestly, I don’t believe La Salle knows where we are going,” Beaujeu concluded.

  Aigron stared at Beaujeu. His fellow captain was not a handsome man. His left cheek sported a dark red birthmark that was roughly the shape of the British Isles. Half his front teeth were missing, and the rest were stained from the wine Beaujeu habitually drank.

  “I agree with you, Captain,” Aigron said. “I believe La Salle is bluffing. Even though he claims to have traveled to the mouth of the river by land, I don’t think he has a chance of finding it from sea. Navigating on land is much easier than over water.”

  “It will become extremely dangerous once we enter into the gulf,” Beaujeu noted. “From there on, we’ll be sailing under the Spanish death sentence.”

  For the last hundred years, the Spanish Crown had made it known that any foreign vessels found in the Gulf of Mexico would be impounded and their crews killed. That was the primary reason no navigational charts were available. The Spanish alone had charts, and they were not about to share them with another country.

  “La Salle must be losing his mind” Aigron said.

  Beaujeu nodded and took another puff. At this very instant, La Salle was bedridden with the fevers, so it was hard to argue with Aigron on that point.

  “Then we need to make plans to ensure the safety of our ships and our sailors,” Beaujeu said.

  “Understood,” Aigron agreed.

  Then he reached for a flask of brandy to toast their treasonous alliance.

  * * *

  As La Salle lay in his sickbed, the fact that his expedition was already fractured was the least of his worries. Surely, the lies he had told his king must have topped the list.

  Specifically, to receive the funding necessary to the venture, La Salle had told Louis XIV three lies.

  The first lie was that the savages in the new land sought conversion to Christianity. The truth was far from that — other than a few scattered pockets where the Jesuits had made inroads, the Indians had resisted any attempts at salvation. Second, La Salle had boldly claimed he could raise an army of 15,000 savages to stave off any attacks from the Spanish, who currently claimed the area. That was simply not true. The Indian tribes in America were scattered and warring among themselves. The third, and probably the most important, was his representation that the return to the mouth of the great river was a foregone conclusion. The truth was that his knowledge of the river came only from land — finding it from sea was an entirely different matter altogether. He clung to the hope that he could locate the muddy brown stain where the river mixed with the salty water of the gulf. And that would prove as easy as finding a pin in a hayfield the size of Belgium.

  The date was December 1684, two months after their arrival in Hispaniola.

  * * *

  “I feel stronger now,” La Salle said to Tonty, who sat in a chair near his bed.

  Tonty was the son of a Neapolitan financier who was La Salle’s closest friend and adviser. A French soldier until the loss of his hand to a grenade, he was now fitted with a crude iron device where his hand had been.

  La Salle was still far from healthy. He was worried that, if the expedition did not sail soon, it might never make it off the island. Spanish buccaneers had already captured St. François, the expedition’s thirty-ton ketch assigned to carry fresh meat and vegetables for the colony. In addition, the French sailors had spent most of the last two months in Haiti, drunk and disorderly. To compound the troubles, the settlers, who were tasked with forging a colony in the New World, were at odds with the sailors. Of the more than three hundred that had left La Rochelle, sickness and desertion had taken a third. And then there was the festering revolt by the captains. Word had leaked back to La Salle about the frequent meetings between them, and he feared the worst.

  The situation for the expedition was grim — and growing more deplorable by the hour.

  “We must sail in the morning,” La Salle murmured weakly. “We cannot wait another day.”

  “My friend,” Tonty said, “if that is your desire, I will alert Captain Beaujeu.”

  Leaving the house in Port-de-Paix, Tonty descended the hill to the port. A stiff wind was blowing from the north, and the temperature, which usually hovered near ninety degrees, had dropped into the low sixties. Rounding a curve in the cobblestone street, Tonty stared at the three remaining ships anchored in the bay. The thirty-six-gun ship of the expedition, Joly, was farthest to sea. The Belle, a small frigate mounting six guns, was closer to shore. The 300-ton store ship for the expedition, L‘Aimable, lay just off the docks at anchor. As the sun slipped behind the clouds, the water in the bay turned a midnight black. Tonty continued to the dock. Once there, he boarded one of L’Aimable’s launches for the short ride out to the vessel.

  Captain Aigron had been alerted by the lookout that Tonty was on his way out. Defiantly, instead of leaving his cabin to stand on deck as a show of respect, he remained below until Tonty was led down.

  “Monsieur Tonty,” the sailor said, after knocking on the captain’s door.

  “You may enter,” Aigron said quietly.

  The sailor opened the door, then stepped aside to allow Tonty entrance. L’Aimable’s captain’s cabin was high in the rounded stem of the vessel. Though not particularly large, the cabin was fitted out in a splendor not seen in the rest of the ship. Several brass whale-oil lamps were mounted on swivels that rocked with the ship. One lamp was placed near the berth, another near the table where Aigron sat, and another near an angled shelf mounted to the wall where the navigation charts were kept. A finely woven Persian rug, now becoming moth-eaten and worn from foot traffic, lay on the floor. To the right was Aigron’s berth. Little more than a wooden shelf with high sides to prevent a person from rolling out as the ship rocked, it was fitted with linen sheets and a pair of feather pillows.

  Atop one of the pillows lay the ship’s cat. The aged feline looked worse for wear. He was a dusty yellow-and-brown color with a missing ear, the result of a rat attack deep in L’Aimable’s hold. The cat hissed as Tonty entered the cabin.

  “Monsieur Tonty,” Aigron said, still sitting at the table, “what brings you here?”

  “La Salle orders you to prepare L’Aimable to sail in the morning,” Tonty said evenly.

  Tonty did not care for Aigron, and the feeling was mutual.

  “Captain Beaujeu and I have been talking,” Aigron said haughtily, “and before we will set sail we must see Monsieur La Salle’s charts. We have no idea of the location of the river. More important, we need a solid course to sail.”

  “I see,” Tonty said quietly. “So you and Beaujeu have decided this?”

  “Yes, we have,” Aigron said forcefully.

  “Then you leave me little choice,” Tonty said.

  Tonty took two steps closer to Aigron, then grabbed him with his iron hand by the neck and held tightly. Dragging him along the passageway to the ladder, he pulled him topside to the deck. Once on the main deck, he shouted to the closest sailor.

  “Who is the second in command?” Tonty asked.

  A tall, thin man stepped forth. “I am, Monsieur Tonty.”

  “Scrub this ship from stem to stem,” Tonty said. “We sail in the morning with La Salle as your captain. Is that understood?”

&nbs
p; “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 und
erstand.

  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.