God above, not lambent! Don Rubio chid himself. He'd sound lame and prissy as a dancing master! No true gentleman wasted time on such limp tripe!. Like a born Creole grandee, he had no time for poetry or books, though girls did put a deal of stock in such-

A series of thuds alongside brought Rubio back from his fancies as the launch butted the schooner's hull below the entry-port and was hooked onto the chains. A moment later, Capitaine Boudreaux Balfa was clambering up the battens on his large and gnarly bare feet.

L 'Affame… more hungry for hog meat than booty/ Rubio thought.

Boudreaux Balfa was typical of the shoddy, run-of-the-mill Louisiana Acadian, dressed in a homegrown rough cotton ecru shirt, homemade and indigo-dyed knee breeches of the same cotonnade material. Shoes, or stockings, well… if nagged, rustics such as Balfa might don cowhide moccasins to attend church, knee-high moccasins to wade after his lost pigs in the swamps. Shoes and stockings Balfa might possess, for weddings or funerals… if at all! And, like most Acadians, the man was so abstemious that he wore his clothes

until they were halfway between mauvaises and usees; meaning "tattered" or "threadbare." Atop his crown, Balfa wore a plaited palmetto-frond tricorne hat so old its wide brims sagged down nearly to horizontal… and looked as if rats had been at it.

"Ohe, Lanxade," Balfa gravelled in glum greeting to his old-time partner, sweeping off that shabby tricorne to bare a fierce and wiry thicket of unruly iron-grey hair, and studiously ignoring his employers. "See dat sky, dis choppy water? Feel dat wind? It'll be a good half a gale by sundown, by Gar. Let's get dis over wit', cher."