FORTY-TWO

RASCAL WEIGHED AND LEFT GIBRALTAR UNDER LOWERING CLOUDS. THE dark, heavy sky looked troubled enough to moan or perhaps cry soon. It was still early and there was very little wind and the air was humid and heavy. Several crewmen looked astern at Gibraltar, and safety, receding into a blur of masts and mist and mountain.

Fallon watched Aja put the ship’s boys to work polishing the brass and copper fittings about the binnacle and deck. Little Eddy fit right in and seeing him at tasks with the other youngsters was a natural thing not to be wondered at. He was recovering from the falling block and had only purplish bruises to show for it. He seemed to be back to his old self.

His old self meant tricks and pranks; yet somehow whatever mischief he caused, and there was believed to be a lot of it, never led back to him. A rat in a sea chest, a loose tie on a swinging cot that mysteriously came undone, a wet nightshirt. These incidents and more amused the crew and kept them guessing what would come next. Fallon thought back to his own beginning as a ship’s boy but couldn’t remember being as clever as Little Eddy, particularly at not getting caught.

Beauty had all sails up and drawing as best they could in the light airs and the ship crept along through the desultory morning. The crew was edgy with the knowledge that they would be sailing to a land exotic and mysterious and dangerous, the very home of the corsairs who’d attacked their ship.

There were no other ships to be seen under the low horizon as Rascal sailed slowly into the Mediterranean. It was not lost on Fallon that the great navies of the world, and the great naval commanders, had sailed into these very waters for hundreds of years. Nelson had entered the Mediterranean several years before and gained fame at the Battle of the Nile, defeating the French navy and Bonaparte’s aspirations in Egypt while being wounded. Davies had said Nelson was outraged that Great Britain paid a yearly tribute to sail in the very sea he had conquered.

As Fallon stood at the taffrail he could hear Beauty’s wooden peg thumping towards him and he imagined the gist of the conversation they were about to have. He’d heard rumors and concerns among the crew and guessed what was on Beauty’s mind. He was not wrong.

Beauty looked at their slight wake, no more than a trifle really in the light breeze from the west, and then at the dark sky that seemed to engulf the world. She wasn’t concerned for the weather, for she saw no thunderheads that could come crashing down on them. The ship was fine, but she wasn’t.

“Nico,” she began tentatively, “the men know that the Muslims want white Christians as slaves in Algeria. And they’ve heard they can be perverse with their slaves, if you know what I mean. No one wants that, Nico, and the men would rather die fighting than be taken. They wanted me to tell you.”

Fallon was about to respond when there was the sound of the sky moaning in the distance. Or was that a cannon?

The American packet Mary of Dundee had cleared the Strait without incident and was plodding along towards the east. She had enough in her holds to make the year for the captain and crew and their excitement at selling their cargo was only tempered by the wild stories they’d heard about Barbary pirates. Everyone was on edge and anxious for a slant of wind.

It was late in the afternoon when the lookout reported what they all feared: a big xebec to the southeast crawling towards them. In the light air it couldn’t be told if she would reach them before dark, however. The xebec was sailing northwest, Mary sailing east with the light and fickle wind behind her. Captain Silas McDonald paced the deck deep in concern, but not outright panic, though he repeatedly asked his first mate when it would begin to grow dark.

Perhaps it wouldn’t matter. Even now the lookout reported the xebec’s sweeps had turned their ship’s head directly towards Mary of Dundee and she was gathering speed.

Zabana paced the deck of Serpent in anticipation of the coming battle. His sweeps were rowing powerfully, the janissaries were massed along the railings and at the bows of the galley and he could see no reason for failure. At a mile he ordered the gun crew to load the bow chaser and fire a shot across the American trader’s bow, the signal to heave-to. It was a massive blast, landing well off the merchant ship’s bows, but it apparently lacked the desired effect for the ship sailed slowly on. That put Zabana in a quiet rage, and he urged the helmsman to bring the big xebec to the side of the prize.

He intended to board her.

Every sail aboard Rascal was up and she was sailing wing on wing, with the main out to starboard and the foresail out to larboard. Nothing could be seen yet from the deck, but the lookout had reported an American trader under fire from a large rowed ship flying Algerian colors.

Fallon walked to Rascal’s stern and looked out to the west for wind. There might be something on the water in the distance, but he couldn’t be sure. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a guinea, gave it a quick kiss and threw it overboard. Bring me a flaw of wind, he said under his breath. Barclay watched him and smiled to himself, for he had done the same thing many times in his life. It was an old sailor’s superstition.

Fallon turned back to the binnacle where Beauty and Aja waited for orders. As he opened his mouth to speak he felt something on his neck, just a little something to move the hairs, and he quickly turned around to see cat’s paws creeping across the sea in Rascal’s direction. Wind!

“I swear, Nico,” exclaimed Beauty. “You are the luckiest fucker in the world.”

“Better lucky than smart,” said Fallon with a grin. “Let’s ride this for all its worth! Aja, have the colors sent up and ask Cully to stand by the long nine.”

Rascal rode the leading edge of the small breeze, making just a few knots as the wind pushed the ship along to the east. Fallon was just reaching for his telescope to see what could be seen from the deck when the lookout’s call came.

“Deck there! The Arab is going to cut her off!”

Yes, Fallon could see the big xebec rowing on a converging course to the slow moving American. In his telescope he could see the xebec had a large, protruding bowsprit that seemed to be… he adjusted his telescope, yes, it had a snake wrapped around it.

So, Serpent !

Now Cully signaled he was ready, and Rascal’s bow chaser thundered out its nine 9-lb. ball just wide of the xebec. Rascal was coming down towards the big merchantman and bringing the breeze with her, but Fallon knew Serpent would get there first.

Two minutes. Whump! went the long nine again and all hands looked for the fall of the shot. Fallon and Beauty both shrugged at not seeing a splash, when suddenly Serpent’s larboard oars stopped momentarily. The ball had come aboard in the center of the sweeps and several oars were out of commission. But just as quickly the rest began rowing and Serpent drew ever closer to the American.

“Good shooting, Cully! By God!” yelled Fallon. “Reload!” He was in a fever to join the battle now, oblivious of the odds that awaited him not a cable’s distance away.

But something new.

Fallon could hear wild shouting and banging and a trumpet blowing across the water as the janissaries beat on the side of the their ship, a tactic that no doubt scared the wits out of Mary’s crew. But Mary fired her small 6-pounders as rapidly as she could and kept it up until the xebec was expertly brought alongside the merchantman. Janissaries carrying muskets and swords were over the side in an instant but the Americans were fighting back and the sound of musket pops could be heard across the water.

“Beauty!” yelled Fallon. “Lay us along the xebec’s starboard side! Boarders ready!”

And then a quick thought.

“Cully!” called Fallon. “Load the larboard battery with grapeshot and run out! Fire when we’re alongside!”

Beauty deftly brought Rascal up towards Serpent’s side as Fallon had ordered and the grappling hooks were about to be thrown out.

Suddenly, Rascal’s larboard battery thundered its nine guns in unison and the janissaries that seconds ago had massed along Serpent’s starboard railing went down like pins in a child’s game, their bodies punctured by hundreds of iron balls at point blank range. Fallon saw red hats blown away and bodies fly backwards and swords and muskets tossed in the air. For a moment he thought he saw a guillotine on the xebec’s deck behind the janissaries—was he mistaken?—but in the smoke it was impossible to tell.

Now the ships were lashed together but before Fallon’s crew could leap aboard the xebec the janissaries were on Rascal’s deck and taking the fight to them. Fallon jumped into the fighting and cleaved a janissary’s head almost in half, his hat falling away in two pieces. Above Rascal on the American ship’s deck the fighting was hand to hand, as well, but Fallon had his own men to worry about. Blood and bodies caused both sides to trip and fall as they lunged and hacked at each other. Cully’s broadside had decimated the dey’s elite fighters but pride and fury drove them to attack and attack again.

Fallon and Aja fought side by side and covered each other’s backs as they hacked and cut their way into the center of the fighting aboard Rascal. The Rascals screamed as loudly as the janissaries and it seemed to give the smaller American crew heart as they fought nearby. Then, a trumpet blew and it appeared to swell the janissaries’ pride for they surged and attacked even more vigorously. But here was Cully swinging a musket in a roundhouse and driving the trumpet through the back of the trumpeter’s throat. Fallon heard Beauty rally the men and he knew he was in danger of losing Rascal if they gave any quarter. He saw Aja stab a janissary in the stomach with his dirk, the man appearing surprised at the pain as he raised his scimitar but Fallon plunged his own sword into the man’s neck. The fighting was vicious and Rascals were flailing and falling and blood was leaking over the sides of all three ships.

Now it was growing darker and starting to rain. Zabana was beside himself with fury but he knew in the logical part of his mind that the tide had turned and he must quit the fight. The British broadside had killed too many janissaries and his own crew were getting hacked to pieces, as well. It was better to escape with some slaves than to lose his ship, and he signaled for the agha to recall his men. The agha screamed for his soldiers to capture anyone they could and get back to the ship. The crowd of red caps fell back, clawing at the Rascals and the American crewmen as they retreated and tried to pull men down into their xebec. Fallon threw himself after them, slashing at first one janissary and then another, swinging his sword so fiercely that he cut off both hands of a big brute of a man who was reaching for Aja. A final push at the last of the boarders and now only one was left to scream in defiance on Rascal’s deck, scream until Beauty thrust a boarding pike through his belly, his eyes opening in astonishment that a woman, a woman! had done this to him.

Zabana watched as several captives were dragged aboard and he ordered the grappling lines cut and the oarsmen pushed off Rascal and Mary to get clear. The xebec began to creep to the east with the wind behind her.

Zabana saw a man he took for the British captain run to the bow of the schooner and look at him as Serpent pulled away. Who was this? he wondered. A few more musket shots into the heavy rain and darkness and Serpent had gathered way downwind towards Algiers.

“Beauty!” A weary Fallon called as he walked back to the stern after getting a good look at the xebec’s captain. “Let’s get alongside Mary so we can get the wounded aboard Rascal. Aja, get a prize crew ready!” It was all he could do to stand.

By the time Rascal had grappled onto Mary of Dundee and the wounded Rascals got aboard and down belowdecks it was dark indeed. The American crew was small, and most were either taken by the janis-saries or dead. Unfortunately, Silas McDonald was found with a bullet hole between his eyes, staring sightless up towards the raining sky. Aja took command, for Mary’s second was dead, as well, and ordered the ship to wear and make for Gibraltar.

At last, Beauty wore ship and settled Rascal on her course back to Gibraltar, as well, her decks littered with heaps of dead janissaries. They would need to be given a decent burial in the morning, though Fallon was not sure what a decent Muslim burial should be. He debated simply throwing them overboard but thought better of it. He looked over his shoulder and could sense, if he couldn’t see, the merchantman behind him, making the best way she could.

It was eerily quiet except for the creaking of blocks and the gurgle of water past the hull. But Fallon knew there would be moaning aplenty below decks as Colquist bent to the wounded and he left the deck to go below and offer what comfort he could. He was met by the surgeon who pulled him aside to give his report.

“Captain, we lost twelve men, though I have no idea how many are on the deck. I have seventeen here wounded, most with lacerations, although one man had an ear shot off. I expect all of them to live. But captain, Caleb Visser is one of the wounded and he has asked to see you repeatedly. I’m afraid it is bad news.”

Fallon found Visser laying on a cot with his left shoulder oozing blood through a bandage. He looked half-mad with pain and anxiety.

“Oh, Captain,” he said through clenched teeth. “Thank God you’ve come. Nicholas, I was fighting the heathens on Rascal’s deck and was slashed to the bone. As I fell I saw Little Eddy…”

“Don’t tell me he’s wounded?” Fallon exclaimed anxiously, fearing the worst. But it was worse than the worst.

“No, he’s gone,” said Visser. “They took him, Nicholas. They took Little Eddy.”