Deej Recommends: Billy of the Bayous

Kids adventure by J. Allan Dunn

Technically speaking, this story is not pulp. It was first published in Boy’s Life magazine in July 1919, and that’s the reason I’ve chosen it for the Substack today.

This is not Dunn’s first story in Boy’s Life, but it pops up in his first year publishing there in an interesting way. Dunn began a series of stories in December 1918 about Jim Morse, and those stories were actually an unofficial serial later published as a book, Jim Morse, South Seas Trader (which is all kinds of fun, and will show up from iktaPOP sometime next year, and/or from Raconteur Press). But for some reason, in July, he skipped his series character to give us this nifty little adventure, which is both extremely fun, and written in a way to encourage boys who like it to start doing a little historical research on their own, which you’ll see well before you get to the end.

Billy of the Bayous

J. Allan Dunn

Billy awoke with the roar of the forward Long Tom in his ears, followed by the grating rush of its recoil on the deck just above his head, the hurried tread of the gun-servers. For ten hours before midnight he had been on his feet in the main cabin serving the whims of Captain Lafitte and his officers, fierce-eyed, hard-featured Creoles for the most part; pirates under an infamous chief, singing and carousing. Now the schooner La Cygne, fastest craft in all the Caribbean, was speeding after a prize, and it behooved Billy to report aft to act as messenger for the rover captain or know to his sorrow the too familiar sting of a rope’s end.

With piracy, as with greatness, it may be said that some men are born pirates, some achieve piracy, and some have piracy thrust upon them. To the third class Billy belonged. His fiften years had held plenty of adventure. He had been told by “Turtler” Tom, who, in a way, adopted him, that he had been found in a skiff entangled in the water-flags of Lake Pontchartrain, after a hurricane, in company with an aged negress, who had gone mad with the horrors of the tempest and calamity, and could tell nothing of his history. Friendly blacks had fostered him, regarding him as a luck-child, and for twelve years he had run wild in the swamps, learning to swim and fish and trap, paddling a log canoe about the bayous that emptied into Barataria Bay, known as Billy of the Bayous, Then “Turtler” Tom had taken him in charge, using him as cabin-boy in his cruises among the Caribbean Cays, teaching him to reef and haul and, on occasion, steer.

One day Captain Lafitte had overhauled the “Turtler’s” sloop, despising its cargo but supplying himself with spare ropes and sails and with the contents of the sloop’s larder. Tom took his loss philosophically, but when Lafitte, casting his eyes on Billy, remarked that he looked like a handy boy and that the schooner was in need of a lad for the cabin, Billy fought like a wild cat in the grip of the two pirates who seized him, laughing at his struggles until, in desperation, he fastened his teeth in one’s forearm, when he was cuffed almost into unconsciousness and flung into the quarter-boat.

For over a year he had been the slave of the outlaws, and he was sick of it, body and soul. But he had served his rough masters well, and his efficiency had won him a certain measure of protection from Lafitte, but had also prevented him from carrying out his one constant idea, to escape. Like a prized dog, Billy was always held in leash.

Billy went up on deck, tired, hungry, hurrying aft to act as deck messenger for Lafitte. The pirate, gay in a laced coat, a red silk handkerchief about his long black hair, that was tied in a queue, a sword by his side, and pistols in a wide belt, paid no attention to him, but watched the chase.

Billy was glad that his duties were not to carry powder or to take any part in the combats that invariably ended in one way, the victory of La Cygne. The schooner always outmanned and carried heavier metal than the ships she chased, and any resistance meant but one thing; dead men flung overboard from the red decks of the prize; some “forced” to turn pirates; others set adrift or marooned upon a lonely cay.

England and America were hard at it on the seas, using their ships to fight out sea supremacy; too busy to bother yet with Captain Lafitte and his associate pirates. French men-of-war were scarce, and it was said that Lafitte had an understanding with the country of his blood to confine his depredations to the vessels of other nations. On the other hand, commerce was slackening in the troublous times and prizes were few.

The present chase was a topsail schooner of good size. She was to windward and making good weather of it, but La Cygne ate up the distance between them rapidly.

As Billy took his stand, the fifth shot from the “Long Tom” slewed so it sighted over the port bow, smashed fairly into the side of the chase amidships, and a cheer went up from the pirates as the white splinters flew. The next moment saw her topsails aback and her fore and aft canvas shivering as she fell off her course and, somewhat uncertainly, came into the wind, the flag that had been flying so proudly coming down the halyards by jerks.

It was Billy’s flag, the stripes and stars of America, and he clenched his fists as it descended. A blow caught him on the side of the head and he went staggering back.

“You flame-headed young cub,” said Lafitte; “what is that flag to you? Get forward and tell the quartermaster to send the longboat. Tell Regnier to bring back the captain with his first load. I wish to hear the news. The schooner is from Bristol.”

Billy darted forward to give his message, resentful at the blow that still made him dizzy. He always hoped that some Yankee trader would outfight Lafitte and that he would be rescued, unless, as seemed possible, he should be hanged for having sailed under the sign of the skull. Lafitte watched his boat through his telescope. It was rowed by eight men and packed to its limits with a motley crew that included Creoles, Indians, negroes and renegade Americans, seeking safety on sea from the penalty for crimes committed on land. Many of them were naked to the waist, bronzed with the sun almost to the color of mahogany. They were dressed according to their garish fancy, in gay cloth and velvet, with silken sashes under their belts, gold earrings in their tanned ears, a devil-take-the-hindmost gang, who feared neither God nor man and knew no laws but their own.

Presently the boat came back again. Billy had eyes only for the lugubrious figure of the captive skipper, perched awkwardly on a great pile of his own merchandise, a scowl on his lean face, clean-shaven save for a tuft of black beard.

“Cap’n Amos Farnam of the trading-schooner Sarah, out of Boston to Jamaica, and be hanged to ye!” he said in answer to Lafitte’s query. “Cargo of provisions, and may they choke every mother’s son of ye!” He stood defiantly, for all his roped arms, and Billy looked at him admiringly.

“We’ll take a chance on that, skipper,” said Lafitte, with a grin. “They are welcome, your provisions. Come, be amiable. Promise not to use your Yankee fists and force us to kill you, and you and I will share a bottle while you tell us the news from the mainland.”

“The United States Navy is going to send Commodore Perry to the Caribbean to wipe out a maraudin’, long-haired pirate called Lafitte, with all his band of robbers,” said Farnam, “Mebbe he’s started.”

Lafitte laughed out loud.

“I like a man of humor,” he said. “And Perry is a good fighter. But if he comes to Barataria Bay he will have a warmer welcome than he cares for, if he once gets through the passes. News of the war, skipper. News of the war! Who wins? England or America?”

“What do you care?” asked Farnam. “You have no country and no flag save that villainous rag.”

Lafitte’s fingers twitched above the butt of a pistol and his face grew dark with rage. But he controlled himself.

“I want the news,” he said. “Be civil and I’ll leave you your schooner. If not, I’ll burn her. Take your choice.”

Billy saw the muscles ball on the jaws of the Yankee captain. Then the fire in his eyes died down.

“She’s all I have,” he said. “You leave me a poor man as it is when you gut my hold. Cast me loose.”

At a nod from Lafitte, Billy hurried below to serve. The pirates who were not occupied with the transfer of the cargo packed the cabin, according to their right, and Billy was kept busy answering their demands.

The captured skipper seemed to have acquired a certain grim philosophy, but his opinion of his captors was not entirely submerged by his situation. His American spirit was still in arms, even if his weapons had been taken from him.

“All the news may not please you,” he said, “if gossip is true and you are allied with the British.”

“Ha! Who says that?” demanded Lafitte.

“General Jackson denounces the British for abandoning the rites of honorable warfare by allying themselves with ‘buccaneers, murderers and butchers,’” said the skipper boldly, regardless of the mixture of sneers, jests, laughter and threats that followed his statement. “It is also proclaimed that the British sent an envoy to you at Barataria Bay and that Lafitte and all those pirate captains that meet at that rendezvous have agreed to aid the British in assaults against the Americans, being won over by British gold, by King’s pardons and many inducements of loot.”

“Then they lie,” said Lafitte. “Colonel Nichols did send an officer to the rendezvous, but we gave no satisfaction to his request. I have no love for the English, neither have my men. The King’s pardon is naught to us, nor their good opinion. Go on.”

“The British, aided by the Spaniards, allied with the Indians of Florida, took Pensacola. Then they attacked Fort Bowyer on Mobile Point. There Major Lawrence flung them back with a loss of two hundred men. The commodore’s ship was so disabled that the British set fire to her and she blew up. Their other three ships, badly shattered, returned to Pensacola filled with wounded men.

“Then General Jackson, at the head of four thousand men, marched to Pensacola and summoned the town to surrender. His flag of truce was fired upon from beneath the British and Spanish flags, flying side by side. But ‘Old Hickory’ ordered the charge. One battery was taken by storm, the governor surrendered, the English retired aboard their ships and put out to sea. Now it is known that the British are preparing to invade Louisiana and especially attack New Orleans. And there you have it, Captain Lafitte. Old Hickory is at New Orleans, lashing them up for defense, and has proclaimed the city under martial law. There is my budget. Now let me go with my empty vessel and be hanged to all of ye.”

“Your phrases are not polite after drinking wine with us,” said Lafitte, “yet we will excuse you—as soon as our quartermaster is through with the transhipment.”

Long after the Yankee skipper had departed, Lafitte sat alone in the cabin sipping moodily at his glass, his head upon the hand that he was so vain of, covered with rings, kept white by salves and gloves. Billy stayed, afraid to leave, watching the play of emotions on the sullen face of Lafitte.

“Go tell the quartermaster to call a general meeting, boy,” he said. “Then tell Regnier to come here.”

The quartermaster was the one appointed by the men, according to universal pirate custom, to represent them at any council or in the division of spoils. Next to the captain he was the most important man aboard. He came presently, a broad-shouldered, hairy man, with a beard that fanned across his chest; a beak of a nose, slashed across the bridge, and dark eyes that seemed to Billy to light up only at the prospect of crime.

In all there were six men in the cabin. Lafitte, Regnier, Bourdon, the chief gunner, the ship’s carpenter and the surgeon.

“This is a preliminary council,” said Lafitte shortly. “If you approve we can take it up with the men and, later, with the rest at the rendezvous. Look you, we must ally ourselves with one side or the other. Trade is none too good on account of the war. After the war, if America wins, that talk of Perry coming down to sweep us out of existence is not all wind, It may not be Perry, but that idea has been brewing for some time. The merchants are getting their petitions before Congress.

“We voted against aiding Britain once, and they are not liking us overmuch for our refusal. If they win they will, without doubt, seek reprisal. But I do not think they will win. They are fighting far from their base, their army is vexed at home with Napoleon, who seems to be the master of all the generals of Europe. America is no longer a weakling. She will hold what she has got and take more.

“That is my opinion. But the British are in superior force. The city guard of New Orleans, the militia bodies, are poor cattle, with neither stomach for the fight, nor knowledge of war. I will venture to say that whichever side we throw ourselves upon will win. What is wanted is men who can shoot straight and fight hard, ask for no quarter, never think of surrender. That is the kind of bully boys we are. Tie up with America, and America will win. What think ye?”

“That General Jackson will not be apt to welcome us with open arms,” said Regnier. “He has denounced us as buccaneers, murderers and butchers, issued proclamations against the British for trying to ally themselves with us. The government wishes to see us destroyed, now or later. What will General Jackson offer? Will he not incline to regard us as spies for the British, sent in to turn the battle in their favor? Will he not rather hold us as hostages? Who is going to go to him as our messenger? Not I. I have no fancy to run my neck into a noose.”

“You have pointed out the fly in the ointment,” said Lafitte. “But it seems plain to me that we should take one side or the other. Is it your will we put it to the general vote?”

Before answer could be made a cry sounded on deck and a sailor, thrusting his head in the companion entrance, echoed it.

“Sail-ho! On the loo’ard bow! Three ships of the line, comin’ up fast.”

The cabin was emptied in a trice. Billy followed the men on deck, where Lafitte had his telescope trained and focussed on the three vessels.

He thought he caught the flash of something red, for his eyes were as good as any one’s aboard, and younger. Then Lafitte turned with an oath.

“British! We are to wind’ard, and we have the heels of ’em. Shall we outsail them, lads, or shall we come closer and see just what the disposition of our would-be allies now is?”

The black flag had been hauled down with the capture of the trader, but there was little doubt that the description of Lafittes own flagship was well enough known to render the flying of the pirate banner superfluous. There was no doubt at all about the disposition of the pirates. While the ships had been nearing, the crew had gathered the gist of the cabin talk from their officers, and the present seemed an excellent opportunity of finding out how they stood with the British. If they were allowed to pass unmolested, Lafitte’s argument would be weakened, that of Regnier strengthened. They held no fear of not being able to outsail, outfight and outwit the approaching warships sufficiently to leave their company whenever they pleased.

Lafitte gave orders to come to quarters, and swiftly; grape and canister and powder were brought up for the eight guns with which the schooner was provided, three to each broadside, besides the front and rear chasers. Heavy nettings were raised above the rail to impede any attempt at boarding; racks around the mast were set with pikes, cutlasses and axes. Hand-grenades were given out, pistols primed carefully, long before the British ships were near enough to observe what was happening on the low deck of the schooner.

“A frigate and two corvettes,” Lafitte announced as the hulls of the vessels showed. Billy had climbed up the main shrouds for a little distance, and could plainly see the double-tier of gun ports on the frigate, painted white. The corvettes were flush-decked, with but one tier, and they were brig-rigged. All three sailed well, though without great speed, their yards hauled close against the wind, their bluff bows sending up great bursts of spray. The schooner seemed to skim the seas, her sheets well out, main and fore set wing-and-wing, the better to hide the appearance of her decks, most of her men lying flat on the planks in the scuppers.

The red ensign of England, with its small jack of crosses, flamed from the trucks as the flotilla advanced. According to Lafitte, there was little doubt but that this was a part of the British fleet that had escaped to sea after the loss of Pensacola. The corvettes flanked the frigate, each a half mile to starboard and larboard of the larger ship. The schooner held a course a little to starboard of the frigate.

Suddenly, without warning, when the frigate was yet three-quarters of a mile away, she yawed, and two puffs of white smoke showed as she fired her bow guns. The solid shot came skipping across the waves and plumped into the water short of the range and aft. Immediately signal flags fluttered to the frigate’s truck, and her consorts began to sail off the wind, angling out so that the attack represented the slowly widening forks of a trident.

The maneuver was well planned: to get the schooner well within range of their cannon and force her to come about and sail close-hauled, on which point she lost much of her natural speed advantage; then, as she fled before them, they hoped to bring down some of her rigging by concentrated cross and direct fire. To prevent her tacking with the wind abeam, the corvettes, sailing at tangents, were widening the flanks and, with every fathom, presenting more and more of their broadsides, with the advantage that they could at any moment luff into the wind and present only their bows to the schooner’s side guns, while she would have to present her full length as target or accept the first position.

As a duel in point of armament it was ridiculous. Eight guns against at least thirty on the frigate and fourteen each on the corvettes. The frigate’s gun-deck metal would be eighteen pounders and her carronades thirty-two. But Lafitte laughed.

“They have fired a little too soon,” he said. “Did you ever see a bee put a bear to flight? Watch us sting and fiy while they lumber.”

La Cygne had the speed and the wonderful advantage of a crew trained to a hair; experts in every detail of sailing or fighting and battling for their lives. Seeing he was recognized, Lafitte ordered his flag aloft, and the men cheered as they sailed.

The charge was rammed home. The hairy gunner sighted, waiting for the schooner to lift and hang on the crest of a wave. Then he pulled the lanyard and the long gun coughed. The fore topmast of the frigate trailed in a mess of rigging. But at the same moment a flying charge of canister came aboard, and two men went down, weltering in their own blood.

The quartermaster grabbed Billy by the arm.

“You serve the powder,” he shouted as a shrill whistle sounded and thirty men raced for the sheets as the schooner’s helm went up, hauling hard as they sailed on and the sheets came in. Now, with the wind abeam, the schooner raced along the line, the frigate falling off to give her one broadside, the farther corvette heading up to give her another, the third ship out of the fight, blanked by the frigate.

The rear-chaser spoke, and the shot plunged into the bows of the frigate. Billy, handling the bags of powder in their flannel jackets, heard the stentorian voice of Lafitte.

“Aim for her spars!”

The gun was elevated and the next shot plumped through a royal without further injury. The side guns of the schooner had been loaded with grape, ready to rake the corvette that yawed for a broadside as the two ships approached each other. Out of the smoke clouds and the roar of the discharge grape came whistling, cutting shrouds and severing halyards. The foresail of the schooner hung at the peak, and two men scrambled up the mast like monkeys to reeve another line while her guns, the charge now changed to canister, swept the foredeck of the corvette and sent splinters flying from her bows as she came up again into the wind and prepared to fall off and let loose her port broadside. But the canister of the pirate had been well sped, the corvette’s headsails failed to fill, and she hung in irons while La Cygnesped safely past, her crew shouting, her rearchaser firing viciously,

Every moment increased their chances of escape. The enemy had changed courses after a last attempt to rake from the corvette, and now came lumbering after, firing their bow guns in the hope of crippling the chase. But the fight was over. Reaching fast, the fore-and-aft canvas of La Cygne soon left the square-rigged war vessels hopelessly astern, steering north for Barataria Bay.

The meeting of the men was called. Their vote was unanimous. The assault of the British swung them toward revenge which could best be accomplished by aligning themselves with the American forces. It was very plain that the British had tried to put them out of the reckoning altogether, since they could not count upon their aid. It looked as if this squadron had been especially despatched to intercept them.

But the question of whom to send to deal with General Jackson vexed them. of The disposition of Old Hickory was well known to be inflammable. He might string up the messenger without giving him a chance to speak, or set him before a firing squad. They were still discussing it when Billy spoke to Lafitte.

“Why not send me?” he asked.

“Send you? Where? By the way, where did you hide in the fight?”

“I did not hide,” said Billy indignantly. “I served the bow-gun. Ask Bourdon. I meant sent me to General Jackson with your message, asking for his terms.” Lafitte laughed and Billy flushed, but went on stoutly.

“He will not suspect a boy. I am an American. I can tell him of the fight today. I know all the bayous north of Barataria Bay. Give me a canoe and I can make as good time as any man.” Lafitte looked at him curiously.

“You are looking for a chance to desert?” he challenged.

“I am looking for a chance to serve my country,” replied Billy.

Lafitte caught his chin and looked deeply go into his eyes.

“If you could get through to Jackson?” he said as if to himself. “If I could trust you?”

“They wouldn’t hang a boy like they might a man,” Billy urged. “You could write a letter, and I wouldn’t give it to any one but the general. I could tell him my story and he could write an answer.”

Lafitte ripped out one of the oathes he used so frequently.

“May I be hanged for the crows to peck,” he closed, “but I believe you’ve hit upon a feasible plan. It was not for love of me, though.”

“It was for love of my own flag,” said Billy. Lafitte ordered him out abruptly.

“You hold to a good rope, lad,” he muttered shading his eyes. “Get gone now, I’ll send for you presently.”

It was a week later when Billy, dressed more smartly than he had ever been in the clothes made over for him by Lafitte’s own impressed tailor, worked his way to General Jackson’s headquarters on the left bank of the Mississippi River, between New Orleans and Chalmette, asking his way by questions shrewdly thought of that passed him through where a grown man could never have gone, and finally he won through to his objective.

A militia officer grabbed him as he tried to enter the tent.

“No loitering or peeping here, my lad;” he said. “Get along home with you.”

“I want to see General Jackson.”

“Then stand back, my boy,” said the officer, not unkindly, “and by and by you may have a peep at him.”

“I come from Lafitte,” said Billy, for the first time since he had entered camp.

“Lafitte? Who in the name of the nation is Lafitte?” Then he caught some of the steady quality of Billy’s gaze and looked at him more earnestly. “You don’t mean the pirate?” he asked. “You know where he is? What is your name?”

“Billy of the Bayous,” said Billy, coloring as the man laughed.

“Well, Billy of the Swamps and Rivers, give me your news,” he said.

“I have a message for General Jackson only,” Billy insisted, “and it is important. He will get it later if you detain me, and he will not thank you for delaying it.”

“Of all the impudence,” commenced the officer, then stopped. There was something about this lad, he thought. He had an air beyond his years. And he knew the temper of Old Hickory. Better to risk a reprimand now than sterner trouble later.

“Come with me,” he said. “But if you’ve lied to me, I’ll take your skin off.”

A man stood by the one table in the tent pointing out some details on a great map to a group of officers. He was over six feet tall, straight and spare, with dark blue eyes under slightly projecting brows, sparklng with animation. To Billy he did not seem such a martinet.

The next thing he realized he had delivered his papers and was answering questions put to him with kindness, but keenly to the point, going back over the same ground more than once in searching cross-examination, concealed by varying forms of speech. After he had described the battle and Lafitte’s arguments with his officers, there was a silence.

With his eyes lustrous, Jackson spoke:

“These privateers and gentlemen-adventurers offer to join us en masse,” he said. “We need such gunners. I shall accept their proposition. The lad’s description convinces me. We will give them good terms of pardon and reward. It is a patriotic thing to restore such men to decent citizenship or, at the least, offer them a chance to die for their country. The lad shall take back the answer with an officer.”

“Gentlemen,” he said, “the redcoats will find out whom they have to deal with. I will smash them, so help me God! Our watchword is Victory or Death. We will enjoy our liberty or perish.”

On the eighth of January, eighteen hundred and fifteen, Billy stood with Bourdon beside a carronade that was one of a long line protruding their muzzles between ramparts of cotton bales. Not far away was Lafitte himself, with all the men from Barataria Bay, eager for sight of the enemy. Flanking them were regular troops, frontiersmen and militia.

A thick fog that had obscured all but certain ominous sounds, lifted and showed the British main force advancing with firm, quick, steady pace, in column, with a front of sixty deep. Instantly the American troops gave three cheers, and the whole line became one sheet of flame, with a burst of artillery and small arms aimed with perfect precision and frightful coolness. The British wavered but came on, carnage decimating their files, which closed up once more. The commander, Sir Edward Pakenham, was shot near the very crest of the embankment, his second and third in command mortally wounded and borne away. The troops turned and fled, yet rallied under the last surviving general, and tried desperately to retrieve the day, but the American batteries had never ceased their fire of grape and canister, with the fatal aim of the musketry, mowing down the columns as they reformed like grass rows before the scythe. The British in a panic left the field covered with the ghastly bodies of their countrymen.

Six thousand men, mostly militia, had vanquished twice their number. Two thousand of the British were killed outright upon the field without counting the wounded borne away. The American total loss was seven killed and six wounded.

When General Jackson came riding proudly down behind the cotton-bales that had done such service, the riflemen and gunners yelled themselves hoarse. Reaching the pirate contingent, he reined up.

“What crime you have committed you have purged in the smoke and fire of your cannon,” he said aloud. “The thanks of the nation are due you.”

Catching sight of Billy, he beckoned him out. Billy advanced, grimed with powder.

“I shall see you set in the way of an education and a career, my lad,” said Jackson. “You are not to leave the camp without reminding me of that. What do you wish to be and what is your name?”

The affability of the man who was to be styled “the conqueror of the conquerors of Napoleon,” heartened Billy.

“A soldier, sir. My name is Billy of the Bayous. I do not know any other.”

“Spoken bravely, my lad. And we must find you a name. You must choose one that is American. What is it?”

For Billy had started to speak, and then his courage failed him.

“Speak up.”

“If you would not mind, I should like to be called Billy Jackson, sir.”

The laughter that followed was friendly, General Jackson patted him upon the head,

“It is a compliment,” he said, “not presumption. Come to my quarters tomorrow morning, Billy Jackson, and we’ll go into your affair.”