As the days passed, Lew often had his hired rivermen in their sleek, fast boat row him across the Mississippi to the dry-docks of Algiers. While the oarsmen lounged in the shade waiting for a ship to appear on the river, Lew worked with the skilled craftsmen under the guidance of the master builder, Sorensen, and watched the clipper ship take form. Sometimes he would accompany Sorensen and they would talk about shipbuilding as they inspected the timbers and joints before the decks and passageways were closed in.
He learned much from the sailmaker about the shaping of the sails. He had thought that the canvas was simply cut into rectangles or triangles, depending upon where the sail was to be used. Instead, there was an art to the shaping of the thousands of square feet of sail. The sailmaker would unroll the bolts of material on his wide table. Then, as he cut the canvas, he told Lew what sail he was making, and his reasoning for the particular shape and size.
The day arrived when Sorensen sent a special messenger to Lew and had him cross the river to the shipyard. When Lew arrived, he found Sorensen had mounted a tall tripod of stout timbers to bridge the ship. The main mast had been hoisted up on the tripod by a block and tackle hooked to a windlass. The butt of the mast hung directly over the strongly reinforced well that extended to the keel of the ship.
Sorensen called down from the deck of the ship. “Tim, come aboard. The main mast is ready to be stepped.”
“Thank you, Sorensen,” Lew called back. He climbed the gangway and crossed to the mast. He put his hands on the long, slender timber that had once been a living tree and now was about to become part of a clipper ship, the fastest vessel in the world. It would be even faster than the noisy, smoky steamships.
“Stand ready to lower,” Sorensen directed the workers at the windlass. “Tim, give your orders to the men.”
“Lower away slowly,” Lew called. He gripped the thick butt of the mast and clasped it firmly against his chest. He twisted so that the mast rotated a fraction of a turn and came into perfect alignment with the opening of the well.
“Down! Keep it coming down,” Lew shouted to the men cranking the windlass.
The mast entered the well, slid downward with a heavy rasp of wood on wood, and stopped abruptly with a thump on the keel of the ship.
“Mast stepped,” Lew shouted. He continued to stand by the great wooden spar. It still had to be wedged tightly into place and shrouds, stays, and sails rigged to it. Yet the placement of the mast sent a chill through him. He felt as if he had helped put the heart into the clipper ship.
He stared upward. From his angle of view, the tall mast appeared infinitely long, reaching to punch a hole in the sky, where the strong winds of the earth blew never-ending. Soon the wide white sails would be set and would fill with those robust winds. The sails would hum under the power of the wind. The ship would be truly alive then.
Sorensen drew close and spoke to Lew. “The owner of a ship, or the captain, should always be the man to have his hands and shoulder on the main mast when it drops into its final resting place. That makes a bond between man and ship. It brings good luck.”
“A man can always use good luck,” Lew said.
“Do you want to help set the remaining two masts?”
“No. I have several things that I must do in New Orleans before it gets dark.”
“Then come again when you can.”
“I’ll surely do that.”
Lew rail his hands up the smooth wood of the mast. At that moment he decided that he would go to sea when the Honest Traveler made its maiden voyage. In the meantime, he would watch the construction of the beautiful clipper ship. He wondered if Albert Wollfolk had decided to build a sailing ship rather than a squat, ungainly steamship merely for the beauty of the ore over the other.
* * *
The rainwater lay in broad pools where it had fallen. The pools were warming as the clouds parted and the sun shone through to strike the ground. A green scum that looked like velvet and stank dreadfully covered the surface of the water. The slops and garbage of the past day added their fermenting ugliness, for the slave brigade of street cleaners had not yet come by this extreme end of Decatur Street.
Mosquitoes rose up by the thousands from the foul liquid mixture on the ground. They swarmed about Lew and Baudoin as the two men traveled in the dueling master’s buggy east toward his private shooting range.
“Someday I shall have a baire, a netting you would call It, sewed and fitted to my carriage to keep the pesky things away,” Baudoin said as he slapped at the mosquitoes.
“Sounds like a great idea to me,” Lew said. He had been constantly battling the blood-sucking insects since leaving Exchange Alley. Everywhere around New Orleans, netting was coming out of storage and being hung. Spandling had enclosed all the desks at the company office. Cécile had covered the windows of the cottage and hung a large envelope of netting over their bed.
“This is my training hall,” Baudoin said. He halted the horse beside a long building with open sides. It was the only structure on the rather large lot. Immediately adjacent to the rear of the plot of ground, the swamp began, with its tangle of brush and streets.
“I have never enclosed the building. I want the students to practice by the natural light, whether it be bright sunlight or the dim grayness of a storm. A duel will in almost all cases be fought outside. But we need the roof because of the frequent rains. Come let us sharpen our skill with pistols.”
Baudoin gathered up a wooden box containing his dueling pistols from the buggy seat. Lew took the pouch holding his powder, balls, and caps and followed Baudoin. The structure, some sixty feet long, was narrow and had a dirt floor. Targets hung on thick wooden backstops at one end. The opposite end had a crudely made table.
“We shall shoot from behind the table,” Baudoin said. “You begin.”
“If I do something that can be changed to improve my accuracy don’t hesitate to tell me,” Lew said to the dueling master. “I’m not used to a shoulder holster,” he remarked as he drew his pistol. “Usually I have carried my gun in a hip holster.”
“I was not aware that men in Ohio commonly carried guns on their sides.”
“Some do,” Lew replied. He must be more careful of speaking of past things. Texas was a place far different from Ohio.
Baudoin watched the young Wollfolk raise his pistol and shoot. The movement was smooth and the shot was squeezed off without a flinch at the very moment it came level. Wollfolk’s strong arm controlled the kick of the revolver to but a slight upward bounce. The second shot came instantly upon the sound of the first. Both bullets had struck the center of one of the smallest bull’s-eyes.
“Well done. Well done,” Baudoin said. The pistol seemed to be a natural appendage of Wollfolk’s arm. He was one of the very rare instinctive shooters.
“The range seems short,” Lew said. “Why is that?”
“This distance is the approximate range two opponents would stand during a duel. But we can set targets at other ranges. What would you like?”
“Twice that distance, or even longer. If a man can hit , a distant target, then surely he can hit a close one.”
“Come, let us set one up outside,” Baudoin said. “Step off the paces you would like. I’ll bring a target.”
The two men practiced for more than an hour, until nearly all of their powder and balls were spent. Then » they sat together at the table and, while meticulously cleaning the handguns, discussed the finer points of shooting.
* * *
The throng of people blocked Decatur Street in front of the Cabildo. Vehicles were backed up. Drivers and passengers were climbing down and walking forward.
“What’s happening?” Lew asked.
Baudoin stood up in the buggy and looked over the heads of the people on the ground. “Looks like a public flogging is being readied. The whipping stand and post have been brought out of the Cabildo and set up, and a policeman is bringing a prisoner toward it.”
“Why a flogging here?” Lew asked.
“The Cabildo, that large building on the right, is the seat of city government. Court is held there. The punishment for certain crimes is to be whipped in public. It appears a fancy-dressed mulatto is the unfortunate person today. Probably a placée that some white woman is taking her revenge on.”
Lew climbed erect and shaded his eyes against the westering sun to look ahead. “What do you mean about revenge?”
“A white woman can swear that she saw a placée flaunting herself before a white man. That brings an immediate arrest of the placée by the police. Then there is a short discussion with a judge. The verdict is always the same, for the judge takes the word of the white woman over that of the Negress. That assumes the white woman is known and reputable. The punishment is ten lashes in public with a whip well laid on. The flogger of the court likes his work and does indeed lay it on very well.”
Lew watched the mulatto woman being dragged upon the whipping stand. She struggled fiercely as they forced her arms up to be tied to the iron ring fastened to the top of the post. For an instant as she fought the policeman, her face was turned toward Lew.
A shiver shook Lew as he recognized the woman. Then rage poured through his veins like molten lead. “Goddamn, it’s Cécile.” He leapt from the buggy and hurtled forward.
Two men walking closer to view the spectacle were knocked apart. Lew hardly saw them for his eyes were locked on Cécile. He drove at the wall of people ringing the whipping post.
The policeman swiftly finished tying Cécile’s hands. He nodded at the flogger and backed away to the edge of the crowd.
The flogger raised the whip, a four-foot leather strap attached to a handle of about the same length. He was smiling as he struck with the whip, a whistling, cutting stroke upon the woman’s back.
Lew saw Cécile cringe under the blow. Then she straightened. She pressed her forehead against the post and stiffened, awaiting the next slash of the whip.
Lew yanked people roughly out of his path. He heard their curses. A man hit him. He felt the sting of the fist. But he ignored everything, except the hateful fall of the second cut of the whip on Cécile’s back. Then he was through the press of people and rushing across the opening at the man with the whip.
The whip rose and fell. A silent sob shook Cécile’s body. The arm drew back again.
The flogger found his hand caught abruptly in midswing. A powerful grip crushed his fingers against the wooden handle of the whip. A face with gray eyes hard as granite was thrust within a foot of his own. “If you hit her again, I’ll kill you,” the man growled at him in a ferocious voice.
The flogger tried to wrench free. But the man held him solid as iron.
“Did you hear me?” Lew squeezed harder.
The man winced. “I’m an officer of the court. The judge ordered me to give the wench ten lashes. I’m going to do exactly that. You’d better let me go.”
“I don’t give a damn who ordered you to whip this woman. I know her, and she would do nothing to warrant such punishment.”
“Mister, she may be your nigger, but a white woman saw her showing herself to tempt a white man. That means she gets a whipping.”
“What woman? Whoever she is, she’s a liar. Show me.”
“There. Standing over there at the edge of the crowd.” The man pointed with his free hand.
Annette Grivot smiled wickedly at Lew when his eyes fell upon her. Damn you, Lew thought.
“She’s a crazy woman,” Lew said. “You can’t believe what she says.”
“I don’t give a fart about that. Let me go or you’ll be up here and I’ll be laying this whip on your hide. Here comes the policeman now.”
Lew saw the lawman hurrying toward him. He turned back to the man with the whip. He leaned very close. “If you hit her again, I’ll call you out on the dueling ground and shoot out both of your eyes. Believe me, I can do it. Now go ahead and give the rest of your licks. Make it look good, but damn you, don’t you hit her.”
Lew released his grip on the man’s hand and stepped down from the platform. The policeman moved straight at him. Lew held up his left palm to the lawman.
“Hold it,” Lew said. “It’s all over. Just a little discussion to find out what was happening.” If it was necessary, he would fight the whole town to protect Cécile.
The policeman waited for the flogger to voice a complaint against the man who had stopped the punishment. But the man said nothing. He raised his arm and struck at Cécile.
The swift air current thrown out by the speeding end of the whip rippled the cloth covering Cécile’s back. Lew saw the leather itself had not touched her flesh. The man was very practiced. He struck six times more, rapidly, one after the other.
The flogger hung the whip over his shoulder. “Turn her loose,” he ordered the policeman in a curt tone.
The policeman stepped close to Cécile and hastily released the thongs that bound her to the iron ring of the post. “You may go,” he said.
Cécile lowered her arms. She turned, her black eyes snapping with anger, and stared directly at Annette. Then Cécile’s head came up, and she walked toward the entrance of the Cabildo.
“Where are you going?” asked Lew, taking up a position beside her.
“They have my purchases inside the Cabildo. I’ll not leave without them.”
The crowd gave way before Lew and Cécile as they entered the building. She gathered up her possessions from the desk in the front office of the judge’s chambers. Hugging them to her breasts, she pivoted around and left.
“I’ll hire a carriage,” Lew said.
“No. Don’t do that. A placée can’t ride in a carriage in the streets of New Orleans. She must always walk wherever she goes.”
Lew saw the three splotches of blood, each large as his hand and growing, on the cloth covering her back. The whip had cut lasting marks. “Are you all right?” he asked.
“They can’t hurt me,” Cécile said.
She looked at Lew.
His eyes were filled with pain for her. And there too was an anger like she had never seen before in a human.
Lew’s jaws clenched at the unfairness of a law that allowed an innocent dark-skinned woman to be whipped merely on the word of a white woman. “If the Grivot woman was a man, I’d kill him before nightfall,” he said.
“But you can’t.” She was worried about him. He was taking her whipping harder than she did. And that was very bad. Revenge would not do, for it would only bring trouble.
Cécile reached out and touched Lew’s arm. She had to chase the hot hate from him. Her lips bowed upward in a bright smile. “Truly, I’m not hurt.”
Lew knew she was trying to draw him away from his thoughts of revenge for her public flogging. He looked into the depths of her black eyes. She was not only a beautiful mistress, but an excellent companion. A man could travel a very long journey with this woman and never become disappointed or grow weary of her.