A WAIL WENT up from the drowning men as Panipat closed his mouth to swallow the key.
My hand went to the waistband of my breeches and the knife was in my grasp. I sprang at him.
Throwing my whole weight behind the blow, I stabbed the oarsmaster in the eyeball. He screamed and flung up his hands to protect himself. My fingers tore at his mouth. He tried to clamp it shut but I put my hand over his nose and squeezed as hard as I could until he opened his mouth, screaming curses at me.
I had the key! I had the key!
I turned towards the prow. In one moving mass the remaining slaves strained against their chains as they tried to surge forward. The boat rocked violently.
I stepped back. I saw that if I went close to them they would pull me to pieces.
‘I have the shackle key!’ I shouted above the tumult. ‘But I will only unlock the man who sits still!’ I held the key high above my head. ‘If anyone rushes me or tries to get this key I’ll throw it overboard!’
They stopped then.
‘Sit down!’ I shouted. ‘Sit down!’
This they would not do. But they bent their knees a little to show that they were paying attention. Muttering and moving restlessly, they watched me.
I approached them warily. In keeping my attention fixed on them I forgot about Panipat behind me. I didn’t see him reach for the long harpoon we used to catch fish.
It was one of the slaves, Sebastien, who shouted a warning and pointed behind me.
I turned. Panipat towered over me. His arm was already drawn back and now he launched the harpoon like a javelin straight into my face. I jerked my head sideways and the vicious tip of the point sliced open my cheek before thudding into the wood of the mast behind me. Ducking down, I ran at Panipat to head-butt him in the groin.
He laughed at my feebleness, and grasping a good handful of my hair, he yanked my head up and back. My throat was exposed. He laughed again as he reached for the long knife he kept tucked in his belt.
But I hadn’t been so stupid as to run at Panipat thinking to overcome him with brute strength. I had already pulled his long knife from his belt. I slashed at him wildly and managed to cut open his arm.
He grunted and began to swing me further away from him that he might aim a blow. I held the long knife out in front of me and pointed it at him. Above our heads, we heard a straining shuddering and the sound of breaking wood. The impact of the harpoon, embedding itself in the mast of our boat, had been the last assault it could take. With an explosive crack it split in two and came down upon us both.
Panipat staggered back. The key went scuttering along the deck.
A great moan of despair came from the mouths of the slaves. Two more on the port side went under, and now the last one was in peril. It was Sebastien. The water lapped around his neck.
Panipat sat down heavily. Blood was pouring from his chest. His long knife was buried deep in his ribs, close to his heart. Driven forward by the force of the falling mast upon me I had killed the oarsmaster with his own knife. In a daze I crawled along the deck and picked up the key. I lowered myself into the forward rowing space on the port side. No bubbles came from the place where the other two had gone under. The water was now so high that I had to plunge my head underneath the surface to see the place where the key fitted.
The dead face of Jean-Luc, eyes wide open, bumped against my own. I screamed and stood up, spluttering water. The remaining slave, Sebastien, stared at me, all hope gone. He leaned back wearily into the water, as if longing for respite and the peace of death. I took an enormous gulp of air and plunged back underneath. I turned the key in the lock of Sebastien’s ankle-cuff. When he felt the weight drop away from him, he kicked it free and rose up, water streaming from his hair, tears coursing down his cheeks.
He hugged me, and then we both turned without hesitation to the two Arabs who might be rescued on the other side. Hands clawing in the air, they were sinking quickly. Sebastien came under the water beside me and bore them up as I fumbled the key into the locks. As soon as their chains were loosened, we laid them on the boardwalk and pummelled their backs and chests until they spewed water from their lungs.
We half dragged them past the body of Panipat and hauled them with us up the netting. These two, who had called on the Turks to rescue them, now copied Sebastien: he was shouting as loudly as he could, ‘By the rules of combat at sea I am a free man!
‘I declare for Spain!’
‘For Spain! For Spain!’
‘Long live Queen Isabella of Castile!’
‘Long live King Ferdinand!’
And, as I clambered aboard, I too declared myself a Spanish freeman.