Isla de Muerto

[Snarlin]

It had been a long three months.  The men were tired, argumentative, sore, and fairly unruly.  They'd eaten their last sea rations two days earlier...and even those weren't much.  Their ships had left in the middle of the night.  Their home, which for most was the only...

Arrrrggghhh...what the devil is this?  This tale's been told already.  Move on, ye lubber.

Lafitte got out of the longboat.  "Hmmph", he grumbled.  "Beastly little island.  Smells o' death, but it'll have t' do."  His brother, Pierre, and the other two crewmen who had survived the shipwrecks stepped out onto the sand.  The one chest of gold they'd manage to save would be enough to buy their way into this weary community.  Soon they might even be running this place.  Time would tell.

[Snarlin]

And with little fanfare, the embassy at Isla de Muerto was opened.

Lafitte had built a fine, two-story brick haven called Maison Rouge after the color he painted it. Half home, half fort, it offered excellent living quarters and rooms in which to entertain business partners, as well as a barracks for his men. Cannon barrels protruded from its upper portholes and around it sprang the warehouses of trade, a slave quarters, cattle pens, taverns and frame cottages of his crew.

Campeche was gone, but Jean Lafitte was back in business.