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    Fair Blows the Wind (Louis L'Amour's Lost Treasures): A Novel
    Fair Blows the Wind (Louis L'Amour's Lost Treasures): A Novel
    Fair Blows the Wind (Louis L'Amour's Lost Treasures): A Novel
    Ebook383 pages6 hours

    Fair Blows the Wind (Louis L'Amour's Lost Treasures): A Novel

    By Louis L'Amour

    3.5/5

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    About this ebook

    As part of the Louis L’Amour’s Lost Treasures series, this edition contains exclusive bonus materials!
     
    His father killed by the British and his home burned, young Tatton Chantry left Ireland to make his fortune and regain the land that was rightfully his. Schooled along the way in the use of arms, Chantry arrives in London a wiser and far more dangerous man. He invests in trading ventures, but on a voyage to the New World his party is attacked by Indians and he is marooned in the untamed wilderness of the Carolina coast. It is in this darkest time, when everything seems lost, that Chantry encounters a remarkable opportunity. . . . Suddenly all his dreams are within reach: extraordinary wealth, his family land, and the heart of a Peruvian beauty. But first he must survive Indians, pirates, and a rogue swordsman who has vowed to see him dead.

    Louis L’Amour’s Lost Treasures is a project created to release some of the author’s more unconventional manuscripts from the family archives.
     
    In Louis L’Amour’s Lost Treasures: Volumes 1, Beau L’Amour takes the reader on a guided tour through many of the finished and unfinished short stories, novels, and treatments that his father was never able to publish during his lifetime. L’Amour’s never-before-seen first novel, No Traveller Returns, faithfully completed for this program, is a voyage into danger and violence on the high seas. These exciting publications will be followed by Louis L’Amour’s Lost Treasures: Volume 2.
     
    Additionally, many beloved classics will be rereleased with an exclusive Lost Treasures postscript featuring previously unpublished material, including outlines, plot notes, and alternate drafts. These postscripts tell the story behind the stories that millions of readers have come to know and cherish.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRandom House Publishing Group
    Release dateJul 3, 2018
    ISBN9780525486350
    Fair Blows the Wind (Louis L'Amour's Lost Treasures): A Novel

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    Reviews for Fair Blows the Wind (Louis L'Amour's Lost Treasures)

    3.5/5

    75 ratings7 reviews

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    • 3/5
      I've got a soft spot for L'Amour novels, but this one didn't quite work for me. There's two compelling storylines, the 'present' set (I think) of the coast of the Carolinas, with Tatton Chantry shipwrecked along with another group of castaways, and the flashback/past, describing Chantry's boyhood in Ireland and Britain. Either storyline would have worked well as a novel, but I felt like both got short shrift as L'Amour tried to squeeze them into a single narrative.
    • 3/5
      Introduction of the Chantry lineage. More swashbuckler than his more numerous westerns.
    • 3/5
      Over the course of his lifetime Louis L'Amour wrote many stories, and several series about fictional families that lived in early America. One of these series is about members of the Chantry family, and this particular volume is the first.

      Tatton Chantry is a pseudonym, a name taken by a young man to hide his Irish heritage from those who would kill him. He survives in Elizabethan England by his wits and grows into a soldier and trader. And on one of his voyages he finds himself marooned on a barrier island of the Carolinas.

      I enjoyed the story, though the flashbacks were a little confusing at times.
    • 3/5
      Beginning caveat: I like L'Amour's books from the early period.
      Complaint: as with any long-lived writer, he eventually reached the point where there is nothing new being said, and no editor would point that out.
      The Hero of this novel (all his protagonists are Heroes*) is in the usual mold.
      Although the setting of Elizabethan Empire is different on the surface (and not badly done), the plot and characters within the milieu are not very different from those of the Western volumes.
      The literary name-dropping common to L'Amour's work is more intrusive than usual (although deliberately so, to make his usual point that Action Heroes are not illiterate clods), and the artless meandering through rhetorical questions is irritating; however, the bones of the story are good.
      I personally do not like framed narratives, preferring to begin at the beginning and go on to the end, rather than starting at the near-end and flash-backing to the Hero's life-story.
      *Footnote: it occurred to me, having re-read a Dick Francis novel recently, that one could take a hero out of L'Amour's world and drop him into Francis's without any problem and vice versa, and the same with Robert Heinlein's Cast.

      Anyone want to add a writer to the line-up?
    • 2/5
      This is a roaring bodice ripper with not too many bodices since most of the yarn is female free. Tattom Chantry is an Irishman who flees his homeland at the age of 14 for adventures in England, Spain, France, and on sailing ships. Eventually he ends up castaway in Florida wilderness where his sword fighting prowess gets him a fortune and the girl. I did not enjoy this as much as his early westerns. Too much coinincidence and mythology in here for me. Imagine the King of France interviewing a defeated opponent and then giving him a horse & freedom to get home. Too much. Not in the vein of L'Amour's best.
    • 2/5
      Tatton Chanty arrived in the New World (America) with his father. At age fourteen, he's been with his father all his life until unexpectedly, his father was murdered. And a whole new life began for him.

      While he's at America, he meets quite by chance a terrible teenager named Rafe Leckenbie. When Rafe almost killed Tatton, he vows to beat him again someday.

      So he practiced his not-too-good swordsmanship for the climax of the story in which he has all to lose and everything to gain.
    • 4/5
      I was in the mood for a pirate story, so I came across this book. L'Amour is my dad's favorite author, so I figured I'd give him a shot. It was a pretty good book! Well paced, with a good storyline . The main character, Tatton Chantry, is a wandering swordsman in Elizabethan England who fled from his home in Ireland as a boy when his father was murdered by the English. He makes his way around northern England & Scotland, looking for fencing teachers along the way to avenge his father. During this time he meets the evil young man who becomes his arch nemesis, Rafe Leckenbie. Chantry & Leckenbie run into one another throughout the rest of the story, and their final clash sets the stage for the books big climax. Chantry grows into a young man in search of his fortune, and this allows L'Amour to bring us to a wide array of settings, including the Carolinas, British Isles, Spain and France. This also allows for a range of characters, from Guadelupe Romana-the beautiful half-Peruvian, half-Spanish captive in the Carolinas, to Jacob Binns, the mysterious courier of an unnamed European secret society. The only negative I found is that the multitude of spelling & grammatical errors were somewhat distracting--but I guess this was also published before the advent of spellcheck.

    Book preview

    Fair Blows the Wind (Louis L'Amour's Lost Treasures) - Louis L'Amour

    CHAPTER 1

    MY NAME IS Tatton Chantry and unless the gods are kind to rogues, I shall die within minutes.

    My two companions are dead, and those who came to this shore with us have fled, believing me already killed. Their boat bobs upon a gray sea flecked with the white of foam and soon they shall be alongside the Good Catherine.

    I am alone. I am left without food, without a musket, with naught but the clothes in which I stand…and a sword. I also have its small companion, a knife.

    But what man can claim to be alone when he holds a sword? A man with a sword can bring a kingdom down! Many a man has a fortune who began with no less and no more. I stand upon the outer edge of a continent, and who is to say that continent cannot be mine?

    But first, I must live…and to stay alive I must be brave, but more than brave, I must be wary.

    Crouched at the base of a gnarled and wind-racked tree, I wait with pounding heart. For they will come now, for me. My two companions are dead, and they must know that I am alone. One against many.

    My lips are dry, and my tongue keeps seeking them. Am I, then, a coward? Death hangs over me like a cloud. Am I, whose blade has sent so many others to their deaths, afraid to die?

    How easy to be brave when others stand round! How many a brave man is brave because he is watched, because he is seen. But none can see me now. I am alone. I can be a coward.

    I can flee. I can hie myself down the beach, running until they bring me down like a frightened hare.

    A Chantry flee? True, the name is not mine. I have but claimed it, used it, found it helpful. Dare I dishonor it? Dare I be less than the name deserves? I have carried it proudly. Therefore if die I must, I shall die proudly, even though the name is not mine and I die unheralded at the hands of savages.

    Need this be the end of all my dreams, my struggles, my boasts? Am I, the son of kings who reached the heights and descended to the depths, about to die upon this lonely, far-off shore?

    They have killed some of those who came with me, but was I seen? Is it possible that I escaped notice? Do they know that I am here? Do they delay killing me only to despoil those already slain?

    If they know I live they will stalk and find me, and surely, then, they will kill me. Nor can they fail to discover me if they but look, for the belt of brush and dwarfed trees that borders the shore is sparse indeed. Beyond me lies the open sand and then the sea.

    We had come ashore for fresh water. Our casks were filled, all were aboard the ship’s boat but we three, two of the hands and myself, and we had lingered to look about. They started back at the call, but I saw a corner of something projecting from the sand, and paused.

    The savages came then, with a soundless rush, charging the boat which lay yet along the shore, and they struck down my two companions, which delayed them long enough for the boat to shove off into deeper water.

    Arrows struck the boat, doing I know not what harm to its crew, and spears were thrown, but most fell short. Then some good lad fired a musket.

    The ball caught a savage in the face and he fell, his head half blown away. Shocked, the savages stopped their rush and the boat gained the current and was gone, downstream and to the sea.

    Then the savages were stripping the two dead men, muttering and exclaiming over what they found.

    Now a faint breeze ruffles the leaves, and I crouch, waiting. Cold sweat beads my brow, trickles into my eyes, and I dare not move for fear my motion will be seen. Very still am I, for they are but thirty yards away and often within plain sight.

    My fears are with me. For I know that when they come—as soon they must—I shall charge among them and cut and slay until they kill me. Death is to be chosen above capture if all one hears of their tortures be true.

    Is this to be the end of me? Of Tatton Chantry? The last of his line, the first of his name?

    There lies the ship; the boat is now alongside. How I wish I were on it, to climb aboard! How many times since the voyage started have I wished to be ashore. And now ashore, how I long to be safe aboard once more!

    The water casks are being hoisted aboard, and finally the boat itself. Before long my companions will be relating the story. Soon they will sail, and I alone will remain upon this barren shore. Alone, but for the savages…

    In the ship’s small cabin our captain will dine by himself tonight, for I, his companion at table, and a merchant venturer aboard this ship, will not be present.

    What of my goods? What of my small share in the voyage? In the hold of yon vessel lies all I have earned until this moment, all that from boyhood I have managed to put together, that which I hoped would be the foundation for a new fortune for future generations of the family I will call Chantry.

    Will the good master take it for himself? Or put it in trust for my heirs, of which, God save me, there are none? Or hold it a decent time against the chance of my return?

    I wait and watch….Now the sails shake free, the wind takes them and the Good Catherine moves. Something within me dies. I have never been one to weep, nor to bewail my fortunes, which God knows have been ill enough, and I cannot find it in me to don the mantle of Job. Perhaps it is that I am Irish. We Irish wear the cloak of adversity with style.

    And being Irish, how can I be downcast or without hope?

    Cold winds may blow, rains may beat upon my body, hunger gnaw at my belly, but am I not Irish?

    The trouble is that no one has thought to tell the savages yonder.

    I wait…the sails of my ship drop below the horizon. The squabbling of the savages has ceased.

    They will come now. I shall meet them as my father’s son should meet them, sword in hand. If I am to die, being the last of my line, let me go well that my ancestors need not feel they bred in vain.

    Let cowards scoff at heroes because in their secret hearts they fear they could not measure to the standards of men. Let them cower and bend their backs to the lash. But I was bred on stories of Hector, Achilles, and Conn of the Hundred Battles. I straighten up, stretch my legs, hold my sword at the ready. They do not come.

    Very well, then! I shall go to meet them! If there be lives beyond this, let them make ready. I shall go to meet them now.

    They are gone! Did they despise me, then? Did they think me too meek a man for their killing? Or did they simply not know I was here?

    The two dead sailors, good men both, lie horribly cut about the face and body…mutilated.

    To them I doff my plumed hat in silent tribute, for they did what they were set to do on ship and shore, they lived and died as men. Yet had they been even the lowest of scoundrels I would have wished them alive and with me, for now I am alone.

    How complacent we become when we sit secure, hedged round by laws and protections a government may provide! How soon we forget that but for these governments and laws there would be naught but savagery, brutality, and starvation!

    For our age-old enemies await us always, just beyond our thin walls. Hunger, thirst, and cold lie waiting there, and forever among us are those who would loot, rape, and maim rather than behave as civilized men.

    If we sit secure this hour, this day, it is because the thin walls of the law stand between us and evil. A jolt of the earth, a revolution, an invasion or even a violent upset in our own government can reduce all to chaos, leaving civilized man naked and exposed.

    As I am now….

    It had been better were I born a lad of forest or farm, but for these past years I have been a creature of cities crowded about by men, and sometimes, God save me, by women.

    Would it were so now!

    What am I, Tatton Chantry, to do, marooned upon this shore with nothing?

    I am, and have ever been, a superior swordsman. I have more than a modicum of knowledge as to tactics and fortification, and I have some knowledge of herbs, medicine, and magic—if they be not the same.

    I could, on request, conduct a siege or a battle, or I could train a legion. I could negotiate a truce, a surrender, or a ransom for a king, but how can I find a meal upon this desolate shore? What use is my knowledge now?

    It has been said of my family that we are descended from Irish kings, that our family came to Ireland with the Milesians. That I was born to the velvet. Yet I remember only that I was son of an Irish chieftain living in what passed for a castle on the rocky shores of Ireland.

    As a boy I roamed those rocky shores, fished and swam, hunted too, seeking out all the caves and crannies.

    They came hunting us then, the British did. Like wolves they hunted my family down, driving us one by one to the wall. My father and my uncles died, fighting bravely, and at the end my father told me to flee. Go! he said. Go the way you know, and live, that our blood shall not die, and that our name shall live, if only in our hearts! Go now, my son, for I love thee well and would not see you die! Live well, live as a gentleman born, as a man bred, and as an Irishman always!

    And so I went….

    A boy I might be, but the British would still have cut me down had I not fled. But I had nimble feet and a nimble brain and the wish to live long enough to see them die.

    It was then my knowledge of the crannies and caves served me well, for I led them a chase down the rocks. I went through cracks where they could not follow, being so much larger than I, and I taunted them with it.

    One tried to follow and became wedged between two boulders, trying to get a pistol up with a free hand to shoot me. Before he could fire I bashed him on the skull with a boulder, grabbed his knife from his belt, and fled down a tunnel under the rocks which none of them knew. Thus I left the body of my father and the ashes of my home.

    There followed months of dodging and hiding, of stealing a bit of milk here or begging a scone there until I came at last to the sea again. I was not the first to flee my island home, nor would I be the last.

    There were cousins of mine in armies abroad, and could I but reach them….

    CHAPTER 2

    BUT ALL THAT was long ago. Now I stood alone upon an empty shore, my ship gone, and I myself given up for dead. My small fortune was gone, nothing left for me but what I could win with my wits and a sword.

    Now the sea was empty, and empty the shore as far as eye could reach. It was a gently curving shore falling away to the west and south, for where our ship had put in lay in a wide bay between two capes, the one still visible to the east.

    We had come ashore in the dawning, and it was not yet midday.

    Far away to the north, a half-year of walking, lay French settlements. To the south were Spanish settlements, and one of these was said to be on the Savannah River. My choice was a simple one: stepping from the brush, I turned right and started to walk.

    Soon my strides shortened, for the sand was deep. My boots and my jerkin were heavy and the weather was warmer than that to which I was accustomed. Pausing at last, I removed my plumed hat and mopped my brow.

    Far away to the south I thought I could make out the topm’sts of the Good Catherine. All I possessed was aboard that ship, carefully saved and treasured to make my venture. Had I remained aboard and the trade gone well, I might have returned a wealthy man.

    On I walked into the blue and white afternoon, a blue sky above me, a blue sea on my left, and a long white beach before me, stretching away to infinity. I walked now with a certain swagger, for my depression was ended. After all, was I not the son of kings and cavaliers? And best of all, I had my youth, my strength, and all the wide world before me.

    How, in such fine weather, could a man be anything but in humor? True, there was no tavern around the corner to which I might repair for a bit of a dram, or a cold bottle and a bird, if the thought came. There were savages about who might take my life—but take it they must for I would not offer it freely. How could I feel the less because of this? I had strength and a sword, and a man has been known to conquer a world with no more.

    This thought I kept with me, for what small nurture it would be, during the darkest hours. My enemies, if such they were to be, had bows and arrows, with a far greater reach than the point of a blade.

    Arrows and a bow? What was I thinking of? Had I not, as a lad, used an English longbow? And had I not made one or two of my own?

    When I had walked the sun down, my eyes were restless for a place to sleep, some shelter, some haven, some corner away from the eyes of those who might come seeking.

    Fortunately, in the loose sand my boots left no defined print. I slowed my pace. The sea was empty still, yet there were ships along these shores, the ships of several nations, and it was possible I might come upon one such to which I might signal. Ships came hither to trade for furs or pearls, to seek for gold, to take on water, or just in passing from the Spanish seas back to Spain itself. Dutch, English, and French ships were also here, and not a few of them. But now, when I needed the sight of one, there were only empty seas.

    A moment! What lies yonder? Some dark mass, extending from the sea’s edge inland, piled high…tangled. Roots, old casks, broken spars…a stove-in ship’s boat.

    Here in a tight turn of the shore, the sea had swept itself of debris and piled it, thrown ashore by wave and wind.

    Warily, I circled the heap. My route led past it—which meant that I must go inland around it—but here, I thought, lies shelter. Surely, amidst this piled-up drift from the sea, there must be a corner away from the wind.

    Removing my hat to spare the plume, I ducked under an overhanging root thrust like a tentacle from the root-mass of a great up-torn tree. I stepped over a smaller trunk and found myself in a shadowed and secret place, a cave half-covered and all hidden. Hanging my hat and jerkin upon a root, I gathered great slabs of bark from the drying trunks and placed them overhead to shelter me from rain. I gathered others to form better sides, and in a matter of minutes had a tidy little home, lacking but fire and food.

    Almost a hut, as thick-sheltered overhead as though thatched. What more could be wished by man or beast?

    How simple are the wants of man! How much at ease he can soon become! Yet my stomach growled, protesting my good spirits.

    Be still, beast, I said cheerfully, you’ve naught to gain by complaining. This day you’ll do without, and perhaps many another, so let you be silent and endure.

    The sea was out there. With the coming of day, and with some ingenuity, I might rig a pole and line, cast into the surf, and catch a fish or two. Yet to do this I must stand bold against the sky, visible for some distance, an invitation to any scalp-hunting Indian. Better a growling, protesting stomach than one ripped open to the blowing sand.

    And so…I slept.

    MY STOMACH AWAKENED before my eyes did. Some vagrant odor, some sweet aroma…broiling meat!

    I sat up.

    Morning had come while I slept. The sun was in the sky, the waves rustling on the beach…and again, that smell of broiling meat. I got up swiftly, banging my skull on an overhanging limb. The sea had been a good builder but a poor architect. Brushing off my clothing, I rearranged my jerkin, shook the sand from my hat, fluffed the plume, stepped out upon the sand.

    Nothing.

    To my left and right, nothing. Before me the forest, behind me the sea, all else was sand. Yet the smell of broiling meat was fresh upon the breeze.

    My stomach growled anxiously. Indians? I hoped not. White men? Unlikely. There was no ship within sight, and no place one could well be hidden.

    My eyes adjusted to the change of light and caught a faint drift of something that might be smoke above the trees. I started, cautiously, in that direction. I was no hunter, but chose what cover I could find. Suddenly, I came upon tracks in the sand at the forest’s edge—several people with heels—I followed the tracks.

    Soon I heard voices. Pausing, I listened. They spoke in Spanish. The Spanish were enemies of the English, but there were Irishmen in the armies of Spain as there were in the armies of France, Austria, and several other nations. I had lived, briefly, in Spain and spoke the language fluently.

    Again I looked to the sea. No ship. No sign of boat or barge, nor was there any obvious cove or inlet where a ship might be hidden. Yet I knew enough not to trust my eyes on that score. Many such places are invisible until one is close upon them.

    I had been told that there were outer islands that sheltered inland seas, islands many miles long, thin bars of sand crested by brush. Was I on one of those? It seemed likely.

    Walking through the trees, I found myself at the edge of a small clearing. And there, gathered as if for a picnic in the forest, were a dozen people. Three were women—at least one of whom was young and lovely.

    Some of the men appeared to be gentlemen. The others were soldiers, or sailors. They were roasting meat. There was also another odor, very pleasant…it brought memories of Constantinople.

    Coffee! Only a little of the delightful brew had come to England, by way of Arabia and Turkey. The brew was discovered, it was said, by a goatherd who found his goats remaining awake all night after eating of the berries.

    Stepping through the last few trees, I paused. Dramatically, I hoped. Their eyes came to me and I made a low bow, sweeping the grass with my plume, and greeted them in their own tongue. At the sight of me the men’s hands went to their weapons, the women’s to their bosoms.

    Señores and señoritas, I greet you! May I ask what brings you to my humble estate?

    CHAPTER 3

    THEY STARED AS well they might. One of them, a young man with arrogant eyes, black mustaches, and a pointed beard, replied sharply. "Your estate?"

    But of course! Do you see anyone else about? Replacing my hat, I walked toward them. I am Captain Tatton Chantry, at your service.

    An Englishman! he almost spat the word.

    An Irishman, I corrected, and I bid you welcome. If you are hungered, feel free to kill what game you need, and please drink of the streams. The water is fresh and cold.

    By what right—

    Before he could continue the question which might have proved embarrassing, I interrupted: I do not see your ship. Is it close by?

    Our vessel sank. We have been cast ashore. It was an older man who spoke, a fine, handsome gentleman whose hair and beard were salted with gray. If you could lead us to a place of safety we should be eternally grateful.

    It was not my intention to reveal my own destitute condition, for at all times it is best to deal from a position of strength—or seeming strength.

    Unfortunately, there is no such place near here. My own people are not close by. I paused. You were bound for the Indies?

    For Spain, the older man said. I am Don Diego de Aldebaran. You speak excellent Spanish, Captain.

    The pretty young woman interrupted. Will you join us, Captain? I fear we have little to offer, for we escaped our ship only in the nick of time.

    I bowed. A pleasure, I assure you! Well, that at least was honest. Little did she know how much of a pleasure. Your vessel sank, then?

    She was sinking. There was little time to take more than the merest clothing, and a little food.

    Yet all the men were armed with swords and cutlasses, and an occasional pistol and musket were visible. Both Don Diego and the arrogant young man, whom I now ignored, carried pistols in their sashes.

    Another young woman, an Indian servant by her appearance, brought me meat, bread, and coffee. As we ate, for the others dined also, they talked. Wisely, I kept silent and listened.

    It became immediately apparent that they suffered from a divided command, with differing notions of what was now to be done. Don Diego wished to go north, believing another ship would come along which they might signal and which might take them aboard. The arrogant one, whose name proved to be Don Manuel, wished to go south to the Spanish settlements in Florida. Just how far distant they were, he obviously had no idea. I did.

    Of one thing you must be warned, I offered. The Indians are not friendly. Two of my men were killed yesterday, only a few miles from here.

    They were startled. That aspect of their situation had not occurred to them. Living as they had been accustomed to, in well-protected cities, they had no true understanding of what might lie out in the wilderness.

    You will frighten the ladies, Don Diego warned.

    Señor, my tone was cool, they would do well to be frightened, and so would you all. The danger is not to be exaggerated. I would suggest a smaller fire, and that you remain here no longer than you must.

    Do not fear, Don Manuel said contemptuously. We are alert.

    I observed that, I commented, when I walked into your camp.

    He put his hand to his sword hilt. I do not like your manner. The menace in his tone would have amused me at any other time.

    I merely shrugged. "So? If you wish to fight, do not fear. You will have many chances before you reach your people. If you reach your people. Now let there be less fire."

    One of the soldiers stepped forward and began drawing sticks from the flames by their protruding ends.

    They ignored me then and began a casual, desultory conversation that had to do with clothing, the difficulty of walking, and whether they might have to sleep out another night.

    The coffee was excellent, and I ate the bread and meat, savoring each morsel. My years of soldiering had taught me to rest when opportunity offered, to eat whenever there was food.

    The man who had taken the sticks from the fire, obviously a soldier, stopped near me. He was a broad-shouldered, powerfully made young man, at least five inches shorter than I. Under his breath he whispered, "I am glad you are with us, Capitán. Save for the soldiers not one of them has ever slept out, carried a pack, or walked, except on well-trodden paths."

    I had lived too long not to have an eye out for the main chance. One lives, one survives, and if one is wise, perhaps one gains a little. Your ship sank?

    He shrugged an eloquent shoulder. She was afloat when last I saw her but she was making water fast.

    Too bad. There might have been food aboard her, and more weapons. A thought came to me. You came ashore in a boat? Where is it now?

    Yonder. He pointed through the trees. She was damaged in launching. We barely made the shore.

    But they did reach shore, and there was a boat. Boats could be repaired. I made the suggestion.

    Who knows? It might be done, but Don Manuel was all for marching.

    Little by little, as we ate, I drew information from him. He called himself Armand, the Basque. He had been a soldier in Peru. Don Diego had been governor of a province, Don Manuel an official of some kind, reputed to have influence in high places. My informant knew little more than shipboard gossip.

    Don Diego was guardian of the lovely one, Guadalupe Romana, now en route to Spain to be married…maybe. There was more than a little mystery about her—or so I gathered from listening to Armand, the Basque.

    I glanced toward her. She had been looking at me and her eyes slid away as mine reached hers. She was lovely, very much so. Large, dark eyes, rimmed with long lashes, a proud, beautiful face with a touch of sadness in it and a hint of something else—

    Don Diego was coming over. You have experience of this country? he asked me.

    I did not wish to lie. I did wish to survive. So I would not lie; neither would I admit to no prior experience of the country. For one thing I knew: Without guidance this lot would not survive the week.

    Enough to know there is great danger. My advice would be to return to your boat, repair it, then sail south to your settlements in Florida.

    Who knows how to repair a boat? We are gentlemen and soldiers, not workmen. Boats are for fishermen and sailors.

    You wish to die, then? It was a time for brutal honesty. A few years back a ship was wrecked on the shores of southeast Africa. It was Portuguese. The only way the people could survive was to walk, but they were mostly gentlemen and ladies who had never walked. One man was so fat he could not walk and had to be carried. The few sailors carried him only a little way, then refused to carry him further. They left him sitting on the sand. He died rather than make the effort.

    But the boat is damaged! We scarcely made the shore!

    If it brought you this far the leaks cannot be so great. It is my thought to repair it. Believe me, the journey will be easier, and safer, than if you go by land.

    But who could do this, Captain? A gentleman such as yourself would not have the skills—

    I have lived in your country, Don Diego, and know that a gentleman there does not work with his hands, but we Irish…we do what needs to be done.

    Guadalupe Romana walked over to us and stopped beside Don Diego. She was looking at me and her gaze was disconcerting.

    Don Diego, if you attempt to march north now, you will surely encounter the Indians who killed my men. Dangerous as the sea may be, it is preferable to the land, especially as you have women along.

    We have seen no savages, Don Manuel interrupted. Nor do we fear them.

    If you do not fear the savages, I did not wish to offend him more, so tempered my language, you might ask yourself if you and the women are prepared to swim the mouths of rivers. Or to cross swamps infested with snakes and alligators.

    Don Manuel did not like me. What he might have said I do not know, but a fourth man now approached us, and spoke. Señor Chantry speaks truly. On my last voyage along this coast, we came close inshore and sailed past the mouths of several rivers. There are miles of swamps. If the boat can be repaired, I would recommend it.

    Don Manuel turned on his heel and walked away, disdaining to talk longer. Don Diego lingered, then followed Don Manuel, and they stood together, talking, with many gestures.

    The third man remained beside me. He was a man perhaps ten years older than I, with a stern, confident way about him, a man of substance, I thought, a man who knows himself.

    Tell me, he said, do you think we could reach Florida?

    It is not far…I have heard there is a colony on the Savannah River, which is even closer. I hesitated, glanced at him, and then said, I do not know the situation there…or here, but I have a feeling all is not well. Perhaps you would know better than I whether it is safe to go to Florida.

    Your feelings do not lie, Captain. Don Diego and Don Manuel have agreed to the marriage of the señorita. Her marriage is to a creature of Don Manuel’s, through which both hope to profit. Now there is trouble.

    I waited.

    He glanced at them, but they were concerned only with their own affairs. Señorita Romana was standing by herself near a tree. There is trouble, indeed, he said. "Don Manuel now wishes to marry the señorita himself, and this Don Diego does not want. For if she marries Don Manuel she is out of his hands, and he will get nothing more

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