FORTY-NINE

JUST BEFORE CURFEW IN ALGIERS THE PRISONERS FROM THE WORK crew on the quay were led the short distance to the bagnio and the holding pens where they were housed. Visser had been thinking all day of Little Eddy, as the boy called himself, and the fantastic tale he’d begun telling last night before the exhausted boy had fallen asleep in mid-sentence. Could it be true that Caleb had come to ransom him and was aboard a privateer in Gibraltar? It was almost too much to believe but here was Little Eddy and the boy clearly knew his son. To think of Caleb so close made the longing to see him inexpressibly painful, but he dared not be overly optimistic. The Algerians were not to be trusted to negotiate in good faith.

As he stepped inside his pen, Visser’s eyes widened in fear as he saw Little Eddy talking to two new prisoners whom he recognized as the two men he’d seen on the quay earlier in the day dressed as Bedouins. They hadn’t fooled him and, apparently, they hadn’t fooled the janissaries who patrolled the city either.

“Who are you?” he asked suspiciously in lingua franca. The new prisoners’ robes were gone and they were in ship’s slops now.

“I am Captain Nicholas Fallon,” said Fallon in English. “And this is my second mate Ajani. Would you by chance be Wilhelm Visser?”

Visser was momentarily stunned at being found and recognized. Fallon watched him closely and could see surprise give way to comprehension.

“I am, by God!” said Visser.

“Then we are in the right place,” said Fallon with a smile. “Everyone we’re looking for is here.”

Visser, Little Eddy, Aja, and Fallon began talking excitedly, each contributing to the narrative of how they came to be together. Rascal’s rescue of Caleb Visser’s ship tumbled out, and Wilhelm nodded in appreciation of the seamanship required to take a ship in tow in a gale, for he had certainly faced storms aplenty fishing off the banks.

“There were two ships from Boston in that storm, Wilhelm,” said Fallon solemnly. “The other carried the gold for your ransom. I’m sorry to have to tell you that your other son, Alwin, commanded the second ship which foundered on the north shore of Bermuda. I expect with the loss of all hands.”

Visser looked stunned. It was a part of the story that Little Eddy had omitted. Tears shot from his eyes as he pictured his oldest son cast upon the shoals, dying in a vain attempt to rescue his father. Fallon let him be, motioning Little Eddy and Aja to the far corner of the cell while the old man worked through his grief. When the elder Visser’s chest had stopped heaving, Fallon approached him softly and placed a hand upon his shoulder.

“I know you are grieving for your son, Wilhelm,” he said, “and you are no doubt taking all the guilt for his death upon yourself. But it is only what any son would have done. Or any father, come to that. It is what you would have done for Alwin. He delivered the gold to Bermuda, and Caleb found it, and at this moment it is aboard my ship in Gibraltar. And if Alwin were here to know it he would be pleased that he had helped, believe me. I know that is small recompense for the loss of a son, but it is the truth.”

Fallon backed away and left Wilhelm Visser alone with his memories and his sadness. He had said all that he thought to say and it would be up to Visser to work through it and come back to this time, this moment and what would come next.

Later that night, Wilhelm Visser called out to Fallon and the others to come closer to talk. He was still immensely sad, but he had found pride in his son and determination to escape to be with his other son, Caleb. He wasn’t through grieving, but he was at least looking forward.

Now Fallon told him about Caleb’s wounding in the battle with Zabana, assuring him that Caleb was in no current danger. Visser stiffened at the mention of Zabana, for he had witnessed the corsair admiral’s ruthlessness first hand.

Suddenly, the door opened to their pen and one of the guards entered and put food down on the ground while a second guard stood by. Their dinner consisted of stale bread and vinegar and water. Just enough to sustain life, more or less.

“I am feeling overwhelmed that you both are here,” Visser said solemnly after the guards had left. They were all four crowded together on the floor looking at their pitiful dinners. “First, because you have brought my son, Caleb, to try to rescue me. There is no more generous and selfless act I could imagine. And second, because you are now a prisoner just as I am, and for that I hate myself for bringing you here. It is the end of the story for you, I’m afraid. They will work you hard until they auction you, and then you will work like a dog for the rest of your lives for someone else. Or the dey might buy you and send you to the mines. If you are most fortunate you will be ransomed, but as you can see that can take a very long time. I am beyond grateful that you have come so far and risked so much for me. But I am beyond sad that it has been for nothing. I fear I am not worth the price you will pay. Or that Alwin has already paid.”

There was a sudden silence in the group now. Little Eddy squirmed and looked with wide eyes at Fallon and Aja.

“Do you think we can escape this place?” he blurted out. “I want to go back to the ship.”

It was a child-like, innocent question and Fallon smiled with understanding. He wanted to go back to the ship, too, but at that moment there seemed to be no way that was going to happen.

“Tell me about what your life is like here, Wilhelm,” he said. “Tell me about the guards and when you leave for work and everything you know about the streets and quay.”

Wilhelm Visser had an eye for detail and he poured out everything he knew about Algiers, the janissaries and what it was like to be a slave in that walled city.

“After work they feed us, as you have seen,” he said. “A single guard patrols the pens at night, checking the locks around midnight. I have never heard of an escape. Or even an attempt to escape. In the morning they come for us at first light. I go to the docks to unload ships they have captured or friendly ships who are trading with the Arabs. I don’t know what they will do with you. I hope it will not be too strenuous.”

Visser continued talking while Aja and Fallon listened raptly and absorbed every aspect of his narrative, interrupting occasionally to probe or ask a clarifying question. But the more Visser talked the more Fallon could see no way to escape their fate. They were about to be slaves, worked and used until they were ransomed or they died.

Mustapha Pasha listened to Doruk’s description of the new prisoners with satisfaction, not least because of the possibility to have their gold as well as slaves. Doruk told him that he had ordered Fallon and his second mate to be held in the same pen as Visser and the boy to prove that they were alive. He hoped that would convince Fallon to cooperate, and the dey nodded sagely.

“I believe we might send a note to Fallon’s ship, called Rascal, to make it plain it is safe to enter our harbor,” said Doruk.

“But it must be an excellent message, most convincing, and it would be best if it came from the British captain himself,” said Mustapha. “Have him brought to me tomorrow morning and I will speak with him.”

“I don’t think he will write the message willingly if he smells a trap,” said Doruk delicately.

“He might smell the trap but he will write the message, I assure you,” replied Mustapha. “Did you not say that Fallon seemed anxious about the ship’s boy that we captured?”

“Yes, your highness,” said Doruk, smiling broadly.

“Then have the boy brought to me, as well,” said Mustapha. “I will give the captain something to be anxious about indeed.”

Late that night, after Visser and Little Eddy and Aja were asleep, Fallon lay on his straw mat and stared at the blinking stars in the constellation above him. The ancient sailors of the Mediterranean saw in those stars a great ship gliding silently on an endless voyage across the sky. They called the ship Argo Navis. It appeared low on the horizon in spring skies and seemed to be sailing westward. Fallon looked at this apparition of a ship, seeing her poop deck, sails, keel and even her compass. It did indeed seem to be sailing to the west. He imagined he was aboard, for staring at the ship inevitably put him in mind of sailing home.

His interview with Doruk had unnerved him; his boast about sailing away with the gold had been embarrassingly weak. The question he wrestled with was what would happen next?

The longer he lay awake the more he was sure that the dey would try to lure Rascal into Algiers’ harbor where he would have the ship at his mercy. The dey would have the gold, the ship and some ninety crewmen as slaves for market. Fallon involuntarily clenched his fists at the thought.

He could trust Beauty to be too smart to believe the dey’s promises of safe passage. Unless… unless they used him or Little Eddy for bait somehow.

That thought threw him into a paroxysm of guilt and gripping fear for Beauty and the crew. His mind fought for a way to resist the paralysis that he felt creeping over him; he must think of something. He fingered the sea dog around his neck, unconsciously hoping for luck. He was still hoping for it just before dawn when he closed his eyes, not to sleep, but to wonder if the only plan he’d imagined had any chance of success.

He decided it did not, but it was the only plan he had.