“Tenez! Here is a brave fellow, but would you care to have his reputation, Monsieur?” And they shook their heads, shrugged their shoulders, and looked the other way when they saw him coming.
The privateersman, slaver, and pirate was not going to be long with them, however, for he soon fitted out a brigantine, mounted twenty guns on her, and with one hundred and fifty men, sailed for Guadaloupe, among the West Indies. He took several valuable prizes, but, during his absence upon a cruise, the island was captured by the British, so he started for a more congenial clime. He roved about for some months, to settle at last at Barrataria, near New Orleans, Louisiana. He was rich; he had amassed great quantities of booty; and he was a man of property. Lafitte, in fact, was a potentate.
“Now,” said the privateer and pirate, “I will settle down and found a colony.”
But can a man of action keep still?
It is true that Lafitte was not as bold and audacious as before, for he was now obliged to have dealings with merchants of the United States and the West Indies who frequently owed him large sums of money, and the cautious transactions necessary to found and to conduct a colony of pirates and smugglers in the very teeth of civilization, made the black-haired Frenchman cloak his real character under a veneer of supposed gentility. Hundreds of privateers, pirates, and smugglers gathered around the banner of this robber of the high seas.
But what is Barrataria?
Part of the coast of Louisiana is called by that name: that part lying between Bastien Bay on the east, and the mouth of the wide river, or bayou of La Fourche, on the west. Not far from the rolling, sun-baked Atlantic are the lakes of Barrataria, connecting with one another by several large bayous and a great number of branches. In one of these is the Island of Barrataria, while this sweet-sounding name is also given to a large basin which extends the entire length of the cypress swamps, from the Gulf of Mexico, to a point three miles above New Orleans. The waters from this lake slowly empty into the Gulf by two passages through the Bayou Barrataria, between which lies an island called Grand Terre: six miles in length, and three in breadth, running parallel with the coast. To the West of this is the great pass of Barrataria, where is about nine to ten feet of water: enough to float the ordinary pirate or privateersman’s vessel. Within this pass—about two miles from the open sea—lies the only safe harbor upon the coast, and this is where the cut-throats, pirates, and smugglers gathered under Lafitte. They called themselves Barratarians, and they were a godless crew.
At a place called Grand Terre, the privateers would often make public sale of their cargoes and prizes by auction. And the most respectable inhabitants of the State were accustomed to journey there in order to purchase the goods which the Barratarians had to offer. They would smile, and say,
“We are going to get some of the treasure of Captain Kidd.”
But the Government of the United States did not take so kindly to the idea of a privateer and pirate colony within its borders. And—with malice aforethought—one Commodore Patterson was sent to disperse these marauders at Barrataria, who, confident of their strength and fighting ability, defiantly flaunted their flag in the faces of the officers of the Government. “We can lick the whole earth,” chuckled the piratical followers of Lafitte.