“You heard the man,” Red said, as he picked up his cutlass and started walking away. “You coming?” He looked at me.
I took one look at Rhames, who nodded to me in assurance. He was clearly in pain, but was sitting upright in the stern of the boat, the flintlock pistol secure in his belt.
He removed the gun and handed it to me. “Go,” he said.
I slid the barrel into my waistband and went after Red, who was already a few hundred feet away. When I caught him, he looked at me with a half-smile that concealed his intentions. The smile turned to a frown when he saw the weapon in my possession. Rhames may have saved himself as well as me by giving me the pistol. If he had passed out with the gun, one of the men would surely have shot him, and with the weapon I held the upper hand with Red.
We trudged along the bank, fighting through the calf-deep muck along the mangrove-lined shores. Although the temperature was fair, within minutes we were sweating from the exertion of walking through mud.
“How far you reckon, Mister Nick?”
We had been moving for what I figured was half an hour. I stopped to catch my breath and looked behind us. If we had gone a mile, it would have been hopeful. I had never been in the estuary before, but from where its entry lined up with the tip of the island to seaward, I estimated we had to cover two miles to reach the river mouth. “About the same. Maybe another mile,” I replied and started moving again. Sweat stung my eyes and my throat was parched, but this was not the time to show weakness.
We picked up our pace as we heard the grunts from several gators concealed in a small creek on our left. Finally the bottom started to turn hard and we could see the river. Although it was a relief to be able to walk on hard bottom, I noticed the water was getting shallower as well. By the time we reached the middle of the small pass, we were ankle deep at best. The mangrove roots along the shore revealed what I suspected that we were close to high tide now. If we wanted to use this pass, and we had little choice, as any other route would expose us, and we would have to portage the boats. Red must have come to the same conclusion.
“Gonna be a bit of work here to get the boats over,” he said, and turned around to go back.
“Wait. I want to go out to the point and have a look.”
“Suit yourself,” he said, and remained where he was.
I ran the hundred yards to the seaward side of the small inlet and went down the beach as far as I dared. I didn’t want him out of my sight and turned back several times to confirm he was still there. From the point, I had an unobstructed view of the river mouth and, as I suspected, Lafitte’s frigate guarded the entrance, but the shoals near shore forced him to stand half a mile out to sea. I couldn’t see any longboats in the water, but I suspected he would launch a reconnaissance before the day was out. Our only chance would be to make the portage and enter the river at night.
Lafitte was a seasoned and capable seaman. He and his men had been double-crossed by the US government following his help in fighting the British in their attack on New Orleans in the War of 1812. The Navy soon labeled his small community on an island near Galveston a pirate haven and burned it to the ground. I considered myself fortunate to meet the man and had learned much about both strategy and business by listening to his talks with Gasparilla. They had become friends, but there was no doubt Lafitte knew of his demise and now sought the treasure.
I ran back to Red who stood in the same spot.
“Well?”
“Lafitte’s ship is in the mouth of the river. We’re going to need to make the portage tonight if we want to get upriver.”
“There’s no other way,” Red stated.
“No. The Navy is on the other end and Lafitte is here. Neither will be willing to go too far upriver, especially if they don’t have any reason to suspect we have gone there.”
“Let’s get back, then,” Red said, and started wading through the muck.
We reached the clearing an hour later and collapsed by the boats. Rhames was still alive, but hovering on the edge of consciousness. I looked toward the west to gauge how much daylight was left and realized we would have several hours to wait before leaving. “We move in two hours,” I called to the men, and went for one of the boats, where several coconuts were floating in the bilge water. I took two and went toward Rhames, who opened one eye. From my belt, I pulled out a small dagger, took the steel point, and inserted it into the coconut. Once it was embedded I started to push and twist. It was far from clean, but I pulled the blade out and saw a residue of milk on it. I handed it to Rhames and watched with satisfaction as he held it to his mouth and drained the juice. I took the other and repeated the process, keeping this one for myself, before cleaving them open and sharing the meat.
Rhames looked better after the nourishment, but I was worried about his wound and knew I needed to care for it while we still had daylight. I went to him and started to remove the dressing. The bleeding had stopped, but the wound was weeping and ugly. Its edges looked like the leaves of a palmetto palm and were starting to turn green and fill with puss. I left him and went to gather the discarded coconut halves and brought several back. From these I scooped the paste from the edges and started to apply it to the wound. He jumped when I touched it, but knew as I did that something in the oily meat of the coconut helped the healing process. I just hoped he wasn’t too far gone.
I left the wound open to look for anything that might help me close it and went back to the men who were huddled together talking. They stopped as soon as I approached, and I knew something was amiss. As I turned to go back toward Rhames, one of the men jumped on my back. He held me while another slammed his fist into my stomach. I doubled over in pain. Without knowing, I reached for the gun, heard it fire, and collapsed onto the sand, thinking I had shot myself. As I hit the ground I realized it wasn’t me, but the man holding me. The other men stood frozen staring at me, the smoking pistol still in my hand.
11
As quickly as I could, I reloaded, watching the process with one eye while my other watched the men gathered around the downed man. Their disorganization gave me time to finish loading before they could act, and I regained an advantage as I held the pistol in my hand.
“Do we have a problem here?” I asked, looking at Red, who stared at the ground. I met the eyes of the other three dissenters one at a time.
None spoke, but slowly they met my gaze, having realized their gambit had failed. We were six men now with two boats, barely enough man power to move the chests. I looked back at Red. “We together or not? If we stay together we can do this.”
Red nodded and looked at his compatriots. They seemed to reach an unspoken agreement. “Sorry about that, Mister Nick.” He shrugged. “Our greed got the best of us.”
“I want a vote right now. I’m either captain or we elect someone else,” I said. It was a gamble, but the pistol in my hand gave me courage. Red was the decision maker for the other three, and I appealed to him, “We need the numbers to stay alive and keep the treasure.”
“You seem to have learned a bit from the captain.” Everyone dropped their heads at the mention of Gasparilla. “But all the same, we can split the loot and go our separate ways. With just you, and Rhames near dead, I don’t expect you’d get far.”