Swords From the Sea (70 page)

"Your month's leave will have expired."

"Aye, sir."

Eaton studied the boy, curiously. "Lieutenant, you've had two tries at the Barbary coast, and you want to go on with a third? I understand about your brother. If we fail this time, you'll be in hot water with Commodore Barron. If we succeed-"

Instinctively the older man reached for the wine. His long jaw thrust out. "Barron's lying up in hospital. Some dysentery. God knows where our ships are."

Paul did not explain that he himself was supposed to be on sick leave. Older men, veterans of the last war, would give consent easier after they had said their say.

"In their offices," exclaimed Eaton, "they can't know what we face along the Barbary coast. If only we had not lost the Patriarch, in his tomb."

"Aye, sir," nodded Paul hopefully, wondering who they might be.

"Time was, a year ago, I tried to tell them in Washington that we must meet the aggressions of the Barbary savages and pirates by retaliation." The New Englander raised his voice as if defying his political opponents. "The Secretary held that we'd better pay tribute. We should not commit an outward act of war. Even Mr. Madison predicted, instead, a political millennium in the United States-arising from the goodness and integrity of mind of Mr. Jefferson, who was to move all nations by his persuasive virtue and mastery skill in diplomacy." His hot blue eyes focused again on the boy. "To hell with diplomacy! If I succeed, and William Bainbridge is freed, I do not know what will happen to me. If I fail, I haven't a doubt the blame will be mine alone."

When he paused, Paul put in quickly: "Aye, sir. May I have a horse to start at once for the rendezvous with Hull?"

Eaton nodded, and looked at his watch. With shrewd caution he added: "Lieutenant, you'd better keep your-family name."

On returning to the council, Eaton explained that Paul, who was actually a lieutenant in the American Navy, would be the one to go ahead to the ships. To Paul's surprise, Eugene accepted this after a second's thought. "Bien," he said.

He was more surprised when, after a musket and powder-flask, with a bag of dry meat and rice, had been handed over to him, Eugene appeared, leading his powerful gray, saddled. A good horse.

When he mounted the gray, Marie was not to be seen. Selim, who had been deep in talk with the Tyrolese, also swung himself into a saddle, flinging his cloak behind it. The janizary had a musket slung over his broad back. "Your eyes, younker," explained Eugene, his mustache lifting in a grin. "I have told him of the landmarks."

Eaton nodded. "It's a task for more than one."

A moment later Eugene said: "Your tongue-to communicate with Selim." By the rein he led a wiry Arab pony on which Marie Anne perched sidewise. She had her scarf over her head, her bundle roped behind her.

To Paul, Eugene whispered: "Now you will take care, younker. Do not separate. Do not let your woman out of your sight." For an instant he stared up at them. "Kinder!" he exclaimed. "Children!"

And he led them through the camp, shouting out something in a language unknown to Paul. Farquhar waved his hat to Marie, calling out: "Bonne chance!"

"Marie," Paul said, "you're a fool."

Apparently she had not heard him. She was humming, "Mironton, miron- ton. Malbrouk s'en va t'en guerre-You think, Lieutenant, that the camp is safer for me? Have you forgotten that I once asked to go on a ship?"

He thought about that, while she hummed softly.

Chapter Seven

Early in the afternoon when they were climbing the shallow ravine that opened up the heights, he thought about something else. In the shadow, keeping out of the glare of the sun, Selim reined in and held up his hand. Paul had been following where the broad back of the janizary led.

"He wants you to listen," Marie interpreted, "to his drum."

With the horses quiet, Paul could catch the faint tapping of the saddle drum. Going to where he had a sight of the half-moon bay and the rubble of ruins far below, he saw something that made him whistle.

Sunlight flickered on the brass of the field gun in motion. A dark queue of human beings strung out behind the gun, and tawny camels brought up the rear. A tiny animated spot on the gray sweep of the coast below him. Something had started Eaton's force forward again.

After a while he asked Marie: "What was he calling out when he led you through the camp?"

She squirmed in the saddle before answering. "'Maggots get up from your dungheaps and look. This-this girl child is riding ahead of you to Derna.' And then he told me to sing something gay."

Paul grinned. Eugene, after all, had produced a sign of his own, to get the column going again. He had played a trick. He had shamed the men by the sight of the girl riding off ahead of them.

On the bare shoulders of the mountain, Selim the janizary took command without a word. Out of sight of the sea, he forced the horses cruelly, heading into the glare of sunset, squinting at landmarks Paul could not make out: stagnant water lying in a pit of a red rock gorge; a dark ridge where wild fennel grew, to stay the hunger of the beasts.

He served as their eyes. When gray wisps floated away on the skyline beside them, Selim's sun-darkened head turned to inspect the running gazelles. A moment, and they had vanished in a fold of the earth. But when something tawny stirred against gray rocks ahead of them, the soldier slid from his saddle. Throwing his rein to Marie, he ran on crouching, priming the pan of the musket he took from its sling.

When Paul joined him, thinking that he had sighted enemies, the janizary gripped the boy's arm, scowling. Dropping to his knees, he laid his musket across a standing stone and sighted carefully. At the shot, wings threshed in the nest of boulders beyond them. Drawing his long curved knife Selim dashed forward and threw himself on a great bird, slashing off its head.

It was a bustard. They managed to eat some of its flesh-Selim chewing avidly at his portion. Then for the first time he lingered, allowing the horses to breathe. Going away a few steps, he spread out the cloak that also served him for a blanket.

On his cloak the giant of a man acted strangely. Facing away from the sun, he laid down his short sword and knife. From his belly he unwrapped a length of white felt which he folded and set upon his shaven head, to hang down behind like an empty bag. Making a motion as if washing his hands, he raised his voice in a cry that Paul had heard often: "God the merciful, the all-powerful-"

With his evening prayer finished to his satisfaction, the janizary swaggered over to talk cheerfully to Marie.

"His heart is good now," she explained, "because he has on his kalpak, which is his hat. He could not wear it until now, because the Turks might have seen it and beaten him to death as a deserter. Now, when the Tripolitans see it, they will know he is a janizary, which is an old infantry soldier, like the Guards."

"Has he seen any sign of a Barbary force?"

Laughing, Selim shook his head.

"He says no. If they saw him now, ten Tripolitans would run away from him. He called them dog-born dogs."

She translated dutifully, word for word. Silent, she rode beside Paul under the half-moon that gave only a fitful light. When the exhausted horses stopped to crop at green growth, Marie's head dropped in a stupor of sleep. As long as the janizary wanted to push on, Paul could not halt to sleep.

At need, he reflected, he could not force obedience from the soldier. At most, he might persuade Selim, by Marie's help, to carry out an order. And he began to understand that Selim was careless of danger. The man, Marie made clear, was trying to find a way to his home somewhere in the Serbian mountains across the sea. "He has not seen it for six years."

It was strange to think that the janizary with the scarred animal-like head actually had a home. Marie managed to find out things like that ...

Paul had his first sight of an enemy the next noon, when they halted on a headland, and he searched the horizon for any sign of the American ships.

Pointing down beneath them, Selim said: "Tobruk."

A strip of the coast showed, where a mud-walled village circled a tiny harbor. Among the smacks moored there Paul recognized the lines of a slender vessel with its yard lowered to the deck-the xebec that had followed Eaton's command.

"Lieutenant, you are seeing ghosts," Marie retorted. "I see only harmless fishermen."

Paul shook his head, wondering if the scout vessel had cut in to escape observation by the Argus. From this haven of Tobruk to the very rock of Gibraltar, the Barbary powers lay sheltered by their landlocked ports, hidden and insatiable, drawing sustenance from Africa behind them, and levying tribute on the commerce of the sea. The xebec, which looked to the casual eye like a fishing craft, could strike like a serpent.

"Well, it can do us no harm now," said Marie.

By sunset it seemed as if they had escaped any harm. Ahead of them rose the pyramid peak that Paul remembered as towering over the gulf of Bomba. Selim, too, picked out his last landmark-a miracle of green, an island of foliage in the waste. He chanted its name, the Well of the Ga zelles. He described its water, bubbling up from the rocks and flowing in a stream.

The stumbling horses scented moisture on the wind and thrust out sweat-flecked heads. Not for six weeks had beast or man come upon a flowing spring. The ache and fever of thirst sharpened in them, as they rode into a stand of poplars, with high grass underfoot.

The Well of the Gazelles lay in a natural cistern of eroded rock, flecked by shade. Selim, urging his mount ahead, started to swing down to the pool. Then he paused, motionless.

"Ahai!" he shouted, and turned in the saddle to strike at the head of Marie's pony and turn it back.

In the clear water floated two bodies. Their limbs spread out, their heads bent down as if trying to peer under them. They had been stripped of clothing.

When Marie had drawn away, the janizary pulled out the nearest body, finding it cold to the touch, but not long dead. Attentively he examined the mottled face from which the eyeballs projected. With difficulty he pulled loose a thin silk cord that, knotted under the chin, had strangled the man.

"Pashalik," he growled, pointing from the body back toward the east. The two had been the riders of Hamer Pasha, who had failed to rejoin the command. They had been killed not long since, and left where Eaton would find them, if he got that far.

They drank heavily of the cold water, after piling loose stones on the dead Arabs. As they climbed from the oasis up to the headland overlooking the coast, they saw no signs of human beings near them. The flame of sunset crept higher, lighting the natural towers of rock along their way.

Coming out on the far slope several hundred feet above the sea, Paul examined the line of the horizon slowly. The sea was turning dark as the glow faded to an amber hue on the higher clouds. No ship was visible.

Until the first stars showed, southerly, Paul waited, reckoning that Hull might have taken the Argus far off the shore, with a stiff breeze blowing. The sea had looked choppy. The cautious Hull might not have cared to anchor for the night.

When he set about gathering what wood he could find, Selim came close to peer at him, and then to stand in his way exclaiming.

"He will have no fire lighted," the girl explained wearily. "It will show up and down the coast, and draw the Tripolitans to us. He thinks they are not far away."

Paul knew that to be true. But it was necessary to light a beacon at once, so long as it might possibly be noticed by a lookout at sea.

The beacon also must be clear and bright. When he had struck sparks from the flint and pan of his musket into a sprinkling of powder, and the flames ate into his pile of combustibles, Selim snarled and picked up his musket to strike out the blaze. He had been sullen since he had seen no American vessel awaiting them.

Paul did not try to hold the janizary back. Instead, he stepped between him and the fire, with his musket across his knees. The big man hesitated, and the blaze caught, whirling up from the brittle thorn-bush. In a moment they were framed against its glow.

Shots flashed at them, from near at hand. Sparks flew up as a bullet struck the burning wood. Paul thought the shots came from three or four weapons, from the side behind the screen of darkness.

A glance showed him that the ground around the fire offered no cover. "Uphill!" he called and motioned to Selim.

Keeping Marie between them, they ran from the circle of light, into masses of boulders and rubble. Above them the glow revealed the face of a cliff.

No more shots came out of the night. Paul imagined their unseen adversaries reloading calmly, watching their scrambling climb up the treacherous broken rock. He halted Selim to listen, and heard nothing.

"We can't climb much farther," whispered Marie.

Paul nodded. Below them their beacon flared bright. He thought: They came from the well and waited to close in on us; now they must be waiting for darkness again, to attack here.

Already they had led off the horses, or the beasts had run off, frightened by the shots. While Paul tried to renew the priming of his musket, his hand shaking with excitement, the light began to fade. The fire was burning out.

Selim crouched listening, trusting to his ears, not his eyes. Although the three of them had made a great clatter in their dash up the slope, their enemies had made no sound to disclose their position.

Paul realized that his own position was bad as could be, and that he had only a few moments to remedy it. Marie was sitting passive by him, her face a white blur turned up to him. She had found a long flat stone to sit on. And he noticed the edges of other flat stones ascending like steps behind her.

Instinctively he glanced up. Above the peculiar stones a dark patch showed in the sheer wall of rock. A cleft or cavern it must be-except that it seemed to be square.

When the fire below them dimmed to embers, he touched Selim's arm. Pulling the girl to her feet, he led her up the course of stones, feeling his way around loose rocks. After a moment his foot came down on a level space of stone, and he could make out nothing in front of him, although his shoulder brushed against smooth rock. The cliff seemed to open here in front of them.