YUNIS TOOK ON THE LAST OF HER VOLUNTEERS AND TURNED AWAY south-southwest for Cap Falcon. The wind was steady, a mild Levanter, just enough to tease up whitecaps from the tourmaline-colored water. Under courses, Enterprise recovered the blue cutter and set off to the east, pitching in a moderate swell. Aboard Yunis Curran paced the quarterdeck, walking with measured steps from binnacle to taffrail. As the moon coasted into the western sky he could see the frigate’s gun ports lit in a display of self-conscious innocence. Curran knew that by the end of the first watch, Pelles would douse his lights and steer the darkened ship downwind into the Baie des Andaluces west of Arzeou.
As their courses opened, Curran would occasionally fix his glass on the frigate, scanning her closely. He wondered whether was he looking for a signal of recall, or even hoping for one. Along the larboard side, Orion wheeled up from the sea, his arching bow aimed into the blackness at the top of the sky. South-southwest, directly marking his course, Curran could see Venus and Jupiter together in the sky just above the horizon. It was less than thirty leagues to the mouth of the harbor, an easy, even languid day and night’s sail for a vessel as handy as Yunis. Curran would time his arrival with the setting of the moon, a few minutes before midnight, tomorrow. It would be too much to hope for a rain squall, but a hazy night was likely, and after the setting of the moon the sea-darkness would be nearly opaque. If all went to plan, Enterprise would complete a slow, semicircular approach and appear within gunshot of the fortress three hours after Yunis’ arrival. By then, one way or another, Curran’s mission would be decided. The frigate would be offshore to either welcome the victors or gather up survivors.
Curran settled with his arm wrapped through the mizzen shrouds, looking back into the long, luminous wake. He listened as the sounds of supper came up from below. He’d ordered a whole bullock to be served out, having learned long ago that a full belly was as important as dry powder for men going into combat. As dinner was consumed (and with it, a twenty-two-pound jelly roll) the noise below changed to the rattle of mess cranks gathering and scrubbing wooden kids, leather mugs, pewter spoons, and copper kettles. The watch changed, the sentries intoned “All’s well,” and Curran saw to it that the lookouts took night glasses up with them. As the last Dog Watch was being piped down, Curran had Padeen order divisions.
Seventy-five men had come from Enterprise; every man aboard the frigate had volunteered, and Curran had the pick of the best hands. Soon they were on deck, thoroughly counted and roughly toeing the seams inboard of the hidden guns. Mister Nordhoff and Mister Hall climbed to the quarterdeck and lifted their hats, “All present and accounted for, sir.”
Curran looked out at the faces. Even in the pale moonlight they looked eager. “Padeen, will you go into the forepeak?” Curran asked quietly. “There is a coil of line and a bolt of painted canvas. Look under it and ask Mister Nolan to join us.”
Padeen gave back a knowing smile, and Hall gagged like a boy discovered with a pocket full of stolen candy. “In the forepeak, sir?” Hall spluttered.
“What makes you think he’s in there?” blinked Nordhoff.
“Because it’s the only place I haven’t looked,” Curran said. “Run along and bring him to divisions.”
Hall went forward and returned with Nolan in tow. As they passed through the assembled crew there were murmurs of welcome and approval, but none really of surprise. Nolan walked up the ladder to the poop and joined Curran by the rail.
“Good evening, Mister Nolan,” Curran said. “Thank you for joining us.”
“I hope you will forgive me for taking the liberty,” Nolan said.
“I would be disappointed, sir, if you had not.”
Nordhoff and Hall stood like wooden posts—both had helped Nolan stow away. The midshipmen stepped back as Curran put his hands on the quarterdeck railing. His voice carried easily to the assembled crew: “Tomorrow night we will fetch the Barbary Coast. Until then it is imperative that you stay hidden. For the crowding belowdecks I apologize, but your discomfort now will become the enemy’s nightmare. You all know what needs to be done. The bashaw has made slaves of more than a hundred of our brothers, whalermen from McKendrie Evans and men o’war from USS Torch. We will restore them to their liberty and take back Torch to bring them home. If we cannot take back the sloop, then we will burn her to the waterline. I do not intend to leave Arzeou without the captives or the ship. We will have to be quick about our work, for I am sure the bashaw will see things differently.”
“So what?” Kanoa grunted. He swung his pāhoa overhead and there was a ripple of laughter.
Curran went on: “When we have made the harbor, boarders—get onto Torch quick as you can. Topmen, do not wait to be told, get aloft and let loose her sails. Those noted to go below, quickly see to the safety of the prisoners and cut the anchor cables. You all know your duty. We are depending on surprise and audacity. We may not count on the laziness of the enemy. I do not have to remind you that the Arab sails and fights as well as any man. With luck, we will sneak into their harbor, but it is sure we shall have to fight our way out.”
A moment passed.
“Does anyone want to speak?”
Nolan said, “I would like to say something.” He stepped to the rail and took off his hat. “When we go in, I can promise you that the fortress will appear to be as big as a mountain. More than a score of the batteries are dug into the cliffs above and behind the citadel. I can also tell you that it is the habit of elevated gunners to overshoot their targets for the first several salvos. You may be sure that they will improve their aim and fight until the last ounce of powder. But they are fighting for their bashaw and are compelled to battle in fear of their lives. We are fighting as volunteers and for the freedom of our own people. That will tell the evening’s business.”
Nolan paused for a moment. Behind him the mizzen sail rumbled in a short gust, and he said, “I am proud . . . I am honored to sail with you.”
“Hear him!” someone said. Applause swept the decks and then cheers. “Huzzah, Mister Nolan! Huzzah!” The crew’s affection was plain, and Curran joined in the applause.
“All right, all hands back into the hold,” Curran said. “Turn in and get what sleep you can. We will be about this business soon enough.”
As the hands went below, Fante touched Nolan on the shoulder. His filed teeth flashed in the moonlight. “You speak well,” Fante said. “One day you will be a prince. Like me.”
Nolan smiled. “I’d be happy to be half of you, Fante.”
DAWN CAME AS A HALFHEARTED SMUDGE OF GRAY. A DULL GLOW CLUNG TO the eastern horizon, spreading toward the south and gradually ascending in hazy shades of maroon. During the first watch the wind had veered and sputtered out. Now the sea was flat save for a long, uneven swell from the east. Yunis slowed and rolled, sails flapping, until she would barely answer the helm. Throughout the night watches Curran had three or four good sights, and had worked out their position as fifty miles north and a dozen miles east of Arzeou. Despite the tranquil dawn it would be a hard-won fifty miles to the coast. The perverse combination of a rapidly falling glass and a building swell presaged a savage blow. Over the larboard rail, the eastern sky was furrowed in the color of blood.
To the south could be seen a solid, rust-colored band of cloud: a sirocco. It is one of the characteristics of this fierce Mediterranean wind that it is preceded by a clock calm, almost as though the wind has been gathered and held like a giant breath. Curran knew that the deadliest of the gale would be felt out to sea. After the tomb-stillness of the dawn, the first gusts of hot air were already whispering over the bow.
“Padeen, pipe all hands. We will delay breakfast until we have recovered the boat.” Curran said this as calmly and cheerfully as he could, but both men expected the day to get ugly. He had not wished to recover the cutter towing astern—he would need it to board Torch—but now he felt that it must be taken aboard or lost. The old Mediterranean hands knew what was up; by now the sky had taken on a copper color and spray was peeling aft from the cutwater. They were in for a beating.
Kanoa touched his hat and came forward. “Beggin’ your pardon sir,” he said, “I’m not so sure these old booms will handle some bad tacks. Specially like they been groaning.”
The xebec gave a skip, and a sheet of spray came hissing back as far as the waist. The horizon was wavering under an ochre-colored band. The wind was already coming at them. “How long would it take to strike the yards and rig courses?”
“About as long as we got,” Kanoa said.
“Then get about it.”
By the time the cutter was made to the stern davits and the yards were lashed down, the wind had risen to a half gale; stronger winds were to come. Curran placed three men at the tiller, all of them holding fast as the ship rushed forward on a larboard tack. Roiling, the dark band on the horizon hurried toward them.
The sky turned pewter and then impenetrably thick as the dust came, and soon even the coppery sunlight was snuffed out. In abrupt darkness the sea changed from blue to black and the air was filled with stinging, then slashing gusts of sand. The wind in the rigging rose a tone and gradually transformed into a howling shriek. As the dust came the visibility went to half a mile, then four hundred yards, then finally to less than a hundred feet. The men at the tiller wrapped bandanas around their faces, their fanciful Arab costumes now put into real service.
The binnacle was lit and the helmsmen steered by compass, southwest by south, as they would on a moonless night. Curran had Hall toss the log—they were making better than ten knots under a scrap of trysail and a double-reefed main course. Sand hissed off the sails, and the water that came over the deck was mixed with blowing grit; it made a red slurry that stuck to everything.
“How long will this last?” Nolan shouted over the wind.
“Three hours or three days,” Curran answered. “If it lasts beyond sundown it will likely go on for seventy-two hours.”
Nolan lurched forward as the ship staggered. A cross swell came over the larboard bow and sent a knee-deep torrent as far aft as the quarterdeck break. The forecastle was buried almost to the heads and then came up, scuppers streaming mud-colored water.
“A slapper,” Curran grunted. “This is not even the worst of it.”
Nolan held his scarf up over his nose and peered around in the artificial darkness. “By God, it’s unbelievable that we are at sea and not in the middle of some vile desert.”
“The desert has come to us.”
So it went, tack upon tack, watch after watch. Sometimes a rift would open in the blowing sand, but never was the sun revealed, and only once could they see as far as a mile. Curran spent most of his time on the quarterdeck, now and again ducking into the cabin to update and check Nordhoff’s plotting. It was merely dead reckoning, course and speed, glorified guesswork, and at the start of the second dogwatch Curran tacked again and reduced sail. The reckoning put them within two leagues of the fortress, a distance well within the error of so rough an estimation, and Curran was painfully aware of the several rock ledges scattered to the east of Cap Falcon. It was on one of these that Torch had come to grief.
There was so much sand in the air that sundown came on in an instant. The night was stubbornly dark, but the wind began to lift and veer, several times gusting round sharp enough to backwind the trysail and send the jib club banging wildly against the mast. Curran gave orders to run preventer stays to the main and mizzen, and to bring the kedge aft to the quarterdeck and bend a cable to it.
Nolan stood for most of this time on the leeward side of quarterdeck, respecting the custom that granted the skipper the windward rail as a holy sanctuary. Nolan had a long while to watch his friend and observe the isolation of command. Curran was part of the ship, a vital part of it, but as captain he was separated completely from the crew. No one spoke to him unless spoken to, and no one approached him as he paced the windward rail, peering at the sails, testing the tension of lines and sheets, and staring into the sky at the slightest break in the blowing sand. Sometimes as he passed he would nod to Nolan, sometimes he would order the log to be thrown, and when he was told the speed he would stand with his arms crossed and his eyes narrowed, calculating time and distance, which could be estimated, and the leeway of the ship, which had to be foretold by a divine sort of sailor’s magic.
The mess fires had been put out at dawn, and supper was cold: ship’s biscuit, a sharp Roncal cheese, and cold leftover beef slathered with Old Chick’s chili catsup. After supper the swell diminished, though the wind remained strong and the sandstorm continued without respite. Curran tacked ship and cocked his ear into the wind, listening for the dreaded roar of breaking surf. He heard nothing but the high howl of the wind.
The leadsman in the bow heaved and took in his line, whispering back to his mates who relayed, “No bottom with this line.” Nolan watched as Curran took the tiller, feeling the living pressure strong against his hand. Eyes fixed on the binnacle Curran put the helm up. The lubber’s line turned over the compass card: southwest, west by south, and finally dead west.
Curran stepped back and returned the tiller to Padeen and his mates. “Steady on,” he said. “Steady as you go.” Curran walked to the larboard rail and squinted into the musty blackness.
After a few moments he said to Nolan, “I believe we are past Pointe de l’Aiguille. Oran should be to the south, maybe five miles.”
“Is it not a major port?”
“It is, but we are not likely to meet anyone coming out of it, not on a night like this.” Curran looked away into the inky, swirling darkness. “And it would be foolishness for anyone to approach the coast blinded.” Curran did not mention that they, too, were blinded, and that they not only had approached the coast but were now turned parallel to it, groping west and hoping to sight Cap Falcon before they ran upon an uncharted reef. If it was foolishness to try to make the harbor of Oran on a night like this, it was lunacy to try to make Arzeou. Oran was a city, a seat of commerce, and its approaches were straightforward and well known; Arzeou was a smaller place, its approaches strewn with reefs, ledges, and rocks, and both the town and the harbor were enclosed by high walls and batteries. Of all the city-states of the Barbary Coast, Arzeou had the least enviable situation. Behind its well-manned bastions, five thousand people and twice that many slaves existed in what was really not much more than a fortified sheikdom. The city and its surrounds were ruled by a particularly uncompromising form of Sharia law, administered by stern-hearted mullahs. The fact that Arzeou’s rulers and people were Shia isolated it, as did a long history of violence, piracy, and slave trading dating back to the blood-drenched epoch of Genseric and the Vandals.
Curran leaned into the binnacle light and opened his watch. Curran knew the moon must have set by now or would be concealed against the tops of the Jebel Murdadjo. Nolan had detected a slight drop in the wind (more southwest than south now), though perhaps he had only imagined it, as they were on a larboard tack. His impression seem confirmed when a messenger came scurrying back from the forecastle hissing, “Where is the skipper?”
“Here,” Curran said. A shadow came up the quarterdeck ladder: one of the Bannons. “Sir, bow lookout thinks he sees land, off the larboard bow.”
“Where away?” Curran asked, already starting forward.
“Maybe a mile, sir. He says the sand stopped for a moment. He’s pretty sure.”
Curran made his way to the forecastle and climbed up into the fore chains. It was Kanoa who had glimpsed the land, and he was still adamant, though the sand had closed back over the night. Kanoa lifted his hand and said quietly, “One point to starboard, Mister Curran. Maybe about a mile off. A point, steep to, with a kind of low beach in front of it.”
Curran put his telescope to his eye. “How high? How much did you see?”
“Only about a cable’s length,” Kanoa said, “and the mountain behind it goin’ mostly straight up.”
“How tall was it? A hundred feet? Five hundred?”
“More like a thousand, sir. It went into the sky.”
Curran handed the glass to Nolan. He pointed it into the blackness; whatever Kanoa had seen was not there now. The Hawaiian was one of the best seamen aboard and Curran did not doubt what he said, but a moonless night and sheets of blowing sand could play deadly tricks.
“Did you see breakers, Kanoa?”
“None, sir.”
Nolan handed Curran back the glass. They stood quietly, listening to the bow wave splash in front of the cutwater. Then there was a glimmer of light off to the right.
“Could that be a village?” Nolan asked.
Curran and Kanoa stared off to starboard. Again the sand parted, revealing four or five lights; stationary. Might they be fishermen? But who would be out on a night like this? Curran looked back to larboard—there was nothing to be seen there, not a scrap of anything, just a black void.
Kanoa seemed to be reading his commander’s mind. “I saw a mountain, sir. Damn sure. With a flat cape in front of it.”
The ship was heading west. If Oran was to the south, and if these lights were not fishermen, this little village could only be Ain et Turk, three miles below Cap Falcon. They would have to tack to clear the headland, and they would have to do so quickly, before they were embayed. Cap Falcon must be to starboard; that is, if Kanoa had sighted Mers el-Kebir and not some other nameless cape.
Curran turned these deductions over in his mind. All navigation, even celestial navigation, is mere theory. Any position plotted on a chart is a guess, informed more or less by things that can be seen. Curran could see nothing except half a dozen small, hazy, winking lights. He had to assume they had penetrated the Gulf of Oran, that they had made their way to the western part of it. If he believed that, he should immediately turn north, keep an eye to larboard, and round Cap Falcon and then south into Arzeou. That is what he believed. They might have indeed seen the lights of Ain et Turk, or they might have seen boats. When there are consequences attached to a belief, opinion is transformed into a higher concept called faith. For Curran, having faith now meant believing in himself and trusting his dead reckoning. He had checked and rechecked Nordhoff’s plotting. Now in the balance rode not only his ship and all of the men aboard her, but also his mission and the 150 captives kept at Arzeou.
Nolan watched as Curran pushed the telescope closed against his chest and put his jaw forward. A splash came up over the bow, pattering them all with big, salty drops, and Curran said, “Prepare to wear ship.” As Curran walked back to the quarterdeck, the hands went to the sheets. Nolan was amazed that the men fell in and found their positions without a word.
They went up the quarterdeck ladder and Curran nodded to Padeen at the tiller. “Tack ship.” Padeen pushed the helm over. Quickly Yunis turned away from the wind, and Curran said in a conversational tone, “Brace about.” Sheets were hauled and made fast, and the xebec settled on a course downwind.
With the wind aft, the ship suddenly became silent, and the wind across the deck seemed stilled. The crew completed making fast the sheets and faking down the lines. As silently as they had worked, the shadow men scuttled below and back out of sight. Curran stood at the larboard rail looking at the lights scattered to the west. A mile away now, perhaps a bit more, it was easier now to see the lights as houses. To the north and south there was nothing, not a glimmer; but now there seemed to be less, much less, sand in the air. Still not a star could be seen, and the darkness above was total. Yunis surged though the blackness, throwing a snowy wake to either side and now pitching slowly rather than rolling as she had done for the last ten hours.
For the first time Curran thought he could make out a cliff” looming to larboard, a firmer sort of darkness sloping up and into the murk. It was impossible to determine how far offshore they were. As they sailed north, he watched as the lights of the houses were occulted one by one. Nolan thought the village might have disappeared behind a promontory, and as he turned toward Curran, he saw only a silhouette against a less firm darkness. Now that the ship was on a stern reach, Curran could sense the swell change; the lift was no longer grand and gradual but steeper and more abrupt. A cross swell had also developed—this variation became bigger and more pronounced.
“Finch,” Curran said, “take up the twenty-fathom line and man the chains for sounding.” As the lead and line were readied, Curran considered the vagaries of steering a dead-reckoning course in conditions of reduced visibility; never a star, not even Orion, and the effect of current and tide this close to an unknown shore could only be guessed at. And though it was improbable, there was a nagging thought that Yunis had made more progress to the west than had been chalked onto the log board.
There was a splash forward and then the cry, “No bottom with this line.”
“Carry on, Finch. Arm your lead.”
The line was recovered and a piece of tallow put into the recess of the plummet to catch particles off the bottom. Again a splash, and then a call, “By the deep, twelve.”
Twelve fathoms; that was the reason the swell had steepened. For much of the last watch the wind had been out of the east, dead astern, and combined with Yunis’ slight tendency to steer wide, their south-by-southwest heading may have placed them closer to Cap Falcon than was either prudent or desirable.
Curran called to Finch, “What is your bottom?”
Finch took up the lead and examined it. “Shell, sir, and gravel.”
The swirling littoral current had put Yunis very much closer to Cap Falcon’s deadly reefs than any of them knew; very much closer. Again the splash of the lead, and again the call, “No bottom with this line.”
Deep water. Had they passed over a reef, or were they still approaching an invisible coast? Now through the sandy darkness Curran watched as a wave broke over the starboard rail, throwing white spray as high as the tops.
Curran said to himself, We shall put about. And then aloud: “All hands, clap on. Prepare to about ship.”
From Kanoa: “Ready, sir.”
“Bear up,” cried Curran. “Ready about.” Before he could order “helm alee” the ship seemed to skip, checked for an instant by an unexpected blow, and Curran’s posture changed instantly. Nolan stood back as Curran took a single bounding step across the quarterdeck toward Padeen and clapped his hands on the tiller. Curran detected a pulse in it, a pressure more forceful than he expected.
“Did you feel it?” Curran said to the astounded helmsman. “Padeen, did you feel it?”
Another jolt went through the ship. The darkness in front of the ship became suddenly more opaque, and Yunis lifted up and then struck through the trough of a wave that made the entire ship ring like a wooden bell.
“Jesus,” Padeen gasped. “We have touched!”
Cap Falcon, thought to be a league to the west, now loomed up before them, terrifying and black. To larboard Nolan watched as Curran and Padeen shoved over the helm, running it all the way to the larboard rail. Nolan was bowled over as the xebec turned forcefully to starboard, her deck inclined like a steeply pitched roof. As the sails flogged, Nolan saw what Curran and Padeen had comprehended just a second before: a solid, vertical wall of rock looming a hundred yards in front of the ship. At its base was a booming line of whitewater surging and retreating.
“Let go the sheets!” Curran shouted. “Foresail sheets and aft! Let go!”
There were a handful of seconds and an even smaller number of yards in which to save the ship. As the forecastle heaved upward, Yunis was struck on the bow by a monstrous swell, a wave reflected back by the rock wall. Green water broke over the prow, surging back along the decks, sweeping men from their feet.
A second reflected wave struck them, passing under the bow and lifting the forecastle high into the darkness. She fell quickly and for a desperate moment Yunis pearled under, her stern nearly vertical, her rudder exposed, biting air. The ship wrenched to starboard, the masts groaning. The trysail blew out of its boltrope with the sound of a whip crack, and the sails flogged wildly, filling the night with the sound of a thousand galloping horses.
Curran and Padeen wrestled with the tiller to try to get the wind onto Yunis’ beam. “We have to get the stern anchor down,” Curran shouted. There was another staggering lurch and the sound of a deep, resonating thud belowdecks. The ship was still beam-on to the gale, rolling dangerously and drifting toward the cliff.
By now the entire crew was on deck, grave but not panicked. Above them in the murk they could make out the sheer face of the cliff, and others farther forward on the bow could see that there was a huge, pyramidal rock to leeward, a rock the size of a frigate. Beyond the great, jagged islet was another void, one less solidly dark and flicked through with whitecaps: open water.
Curran saw the pyramidal rock and realized instantly that it was Ras al-Qaria, the islet directly east of Arzeou. Incredibly, they had not been merely to windward of Cap Falcon but south of it as well. There was a narrow channel between the headland and Ras al-Qaria, a surging reach of water called al-Humazah, “the Slanderer.” The name was apt. What Curran could see in the darkness was a treacherous, doglegged channel between Ras al-Qaria and the cliff that formed the east side of the cape. They had only one chance: to sail into the chasm and the headland.
Curran shouted to Nolan, “Get the kedge over! We’ll try to warp into the channel!”
The kedge anchor was stored under the taffrail knee, aft of the sternpost—the most exposed part of the ship. Crawling on hands and knees, Nolan and Kanoa made it to the stern. Kanoa threw himself on top of the anchor and had Nolan cut away the gripes that held it fast. Another wave crashed across the deck, burying them in dark water and then in swirling foam. Clawing to his feet Kanoa pulled an ax from the stern locker and smashed it down on the taffrail; the wood was mere fancywork and shattered at the first blow. Together they crawled back to the kedge and dragged it across the lurching deck.
“Get back!” Kanoa bellowed. He put his feet against the shank and kicked. The anchor plunged off the stern, and the stock clanged against the broken rail. Curran looked back from the tiller in time to see the anchor drop free. The hawser screamed after it, spiraling up from the Flemish coil on the deck.
“Brace!” he shouted.
Five fathoms deep the anchor took to the bottom and the line went tight against the stern bits. Nolan could see it rip through the surface in a straight line behind the sternpost. The ship was checked, momentarily, and the cable wound toward the starboard side, chewing off the remaining bits of taffrail as it went. The line was stretched iron tight, but held. The kedge had bought the ship maybe twenty-five seconds of life.
Held like a dog on a leash, Yunis struggled into a starboard turn, the swells bashing her quarter and throwing whitewater over the stern. A hundred yards off the bow, the foot of the cliff exploded in luminous foam. Scattered around the base of Ras al-Qaria the tops of a dozen rocks showed like teeth. The sails strained against the sheets, the spars bowing. The anchor line slackened and then jerked tight. As long as the kedge held, they had a chance to get her head around to starboard, away from the cliff and toward the slender hope of the al-Humazah channel. Curran and Padeen put the helm on the larboard rail, and the ship continued a laborious, wallowing turn to starboard.
“Grab hold!” Curran shouted to Nolan. “Lay hold!”
Nolan rushed to the tiller and applied all his weight. The ship continued to pitch and roll, and the sails thundered as the stern came again through the eye of the wind. Pushing at the tiller with all his strength, Padeen cursed, damning the wind and goddamning all of Africa too. The anchor line crunched over to larboard, sheering through the stern locker at the base. Fifty yards remained until the knifelike tower of Ras al-Qaria. Turning, turning, the xebec was within sixty yards of the base of the cliff, and then the blackness opened at the ship’s waist: the channel.
“Hoist the main!” Curran bellowed. “Haul away!”
On deck, the men stood transfixed, gaping up at the thunderous tumult of the whitewater against the rocks—as spellbound as the crew of Odysseus. Finally Nordhoff waded into them pushing and shouting. “Lay hold! Lay hold!” The midshipman’s orders could barely be heard over the deafening crash of the flogging sails. “Backwind the jib,” he screamed. “Heave it round!” Hall uncleated the jib sheet and was quickly joined on it by Fante. “Pull!” he shrilled. “Pull for your lives!”
The huge triangular main went up, filling as it went, rumbling and billowing. At the tiller, Nolan could feel the ship surge under his feet. The deck flinched, and the anchor line parted with a searing bang. The bits were jerked up from the deck and whizzed through the air. Yunis lurched forward, gathering way obliquely toward the maw of Ras al-Qaria.
“Now back!” Curran boomed.
Padeen ducked under the helm and popped up on the other side, pushing hard. The sails rumbled again, the sound of the world shaking apart, and the broken jib club banged against the beakhead, but the ship gathered speed. They were now heading diagonally toward the western face of the rock. Curran and Padeen dipped the tiller back and forth, putting the ship into a series of shallow upwind turns, shivering the sails and letting her fall off and fill, nursing every inch out of her.
There was a staggering crash; the deck jerked up and then went sharply down. Yunis had struck again. On deck, men went down like tenpins, but not one went over the side. Time seemed suspended, all hands holding their breath, but then the ship settled and surged forward. The impact had jerked the bow sharply to starboard, and she entered the channel, her main filling and pulling her forward.
Padeen mutely pulled on the tiller; the ship jinked in response—they had water under them. “She steers, sir.” It was a miracle the rudder had not been shorn off.
Between the headland and the rock, the wind was again firmly out of the south. Nolan pulled himself up onto the mizzen shrouds to look ahead. They would pass through the channel—but to where?
Finch came up onto the quarterdeck. “Been below, sir; can’t even believe it.”
“What is the damage?”
“Can’t hope for better, sir. There’s a hole forward, big as man—got a rock jammed in it like a plug. Chips is getting it shored, and just two feet of water in the well.”
“Nothing else?”
Finch shrugged. “Not yet, sir.”
Nolan would not have been surprised if her back had been broken. He walked to the rail and looked up into the swirling black. The cliff directly to the east rose in a steep curve. Below them, to larboard, was a short stretch of beach ringed by nearly vertical stone. As they moved northeast up the channel the rock face became increasingly smooth, and it was only after a moment that Curran could see that the impressive height was composed of blocks of stone. They were sailing now not under a cliff but a rampart.
In the swirling, opaque sandstorm they had blundered under Arzeou itself. Nolan cupped his hands around his eyes. There were lights high above, and against their dim glow could be seen the right angles of towers and turrets. The channel opened as they went north, and on the larboard side what had been a wild rock face became more ordered and lower. There was a flicker of yellow light, then it became steady, swinging, swinging and descending a stairway cut into the rock. Just off the larboard beam, looming above them in the sand-blown darkness were the walls of the bashaw’s palace.
“There are sentries on the breakwater,” Nolan whispered.
“A merchant ship would pay them no heed.” Curran tried to believe his own words. “Keep us two hundred yards off, Padeen,” he said quietly.
Without a word the men went down into the hatchways. Padeen, Curran, Nolan, and Fante remained on the quarterdeck. First the deadly cliffs and then Ras al-Qaria had appeared out of darkness, and now the same fateful hand had conjured a fortress out of nothing.
For the first time in twelve hours Curran had the consolation of knowing his position exactly. It was cold comfort. He could see that they were outside the eastern breakwater of the Arzeou harbor, closer than musket shot. Near aboard he made out the stone causeway, half a mile long and topped with crenellated embrasures. Curran knew that at the end of it there would be a Martello tower—and a dozen cannon.
“Fante, go below and tell the boarders to be ready. Keep them silent and have Kanoa report to me.”
Kanoa’s head poked through the skylight. “Here, sir,” he whispered.
“Kanoa, light the pilot lights and take a white lantern into the maintop,” Curran said quietly.
“Light the pilots and a white light into the tops, aye, aye.”
By their shabby appearance and by the audacity of their course they would certainly be taken for a local vessel. Now everything depended on it. Yunis would do what any merchant would do on entering the fortress at night—she would light her masts and pilots. The breakwater slid past to larboard. As they rounded, Nolan could see a watch fire flickering through a brazier in a stone sentry box.
Now under the lee of the fortress, Yunis sailed in peace and silence. Nolan pulled his scarf around his neck and unconsciously hunched his shoulders. He had a second to wonder if the bellowed commands that put them through the channel had been heard in the fortress. Kanoa appeared from the main hatchway and lit the starboard and then the larboard pilot lights in the waist. He put a pair of tapers into a brass lantern, clamped the handle in his teeth, and then went up the shrouds into the mainmast.
The mainsail rattled and luffed. “Don’t trim her, Padeen,” Curran whispered. “Make us look like a slug.”
Nolan looked ahead. The battery was close to larboard, and he could just see across the mouth of the harbor to the tower on the other side. A burst of laughter floated down from the ramparts to the deck of the ship. The mirth seemed pointed, derisive. “Ohe o barco!”
Curran cocked his head. The words were not Arabic or Turkic. “Ohe!” came the voice again. They were being hailed in Portuguese. Curran put his hand on Nolan’s shoulder.
“They ask if we are bringing cannon,” Nolan muttered.
“Tell them we are carrying the sultan’s dispatches.”
“Viemos de Tunis,” Nolan shouted. “Nós transportar escravos do sultão.”
A lantern swept a feeble light at their shattered stern. Another voice called out an insult followed by laughter.
Yunis went past the hulking eastern tower, came about, and ghosted across the harbor. The wind was unsteady below the headland, and wide breaks began to open in the blowing sand. A mile southeast, a series of dark terraces and then a highwalled citadel soared over the central and inner parts of the harbor: the bashaw’s palace. A quartet of minarets crowned the center of the complex.
All hands waited in silence, jaws clenched, expecting any second for the night to rip open and the hundred guns of the citadel to fire and smother them with shot. But nothing happened. Arzeou’s defenders were not interested in a battered tub like Yunis. The anchorage behind the eastern battery was full of galleys and French-built calliope cannoniéres, the latter proof of the late Emperor Napoleon’s affection (or perhaps respect) for the bashaw. Fast and maneuverable, each of these gun sloops carried a 32-pound carronade. A single round from one of them would cripple Yunis; mercifully, their decks were dark and their sails furled.
Yunis ghosted on, groping toward the western tower. Off the starboard bow they could see the mile-long causeway that linked the Bastille Nord and the mainland. There were a dozen more feluccas moored in a basin under the lee of the west battery, as well as a trio of canted masts, each crowned by a crooked crow’s nest, sticking up from the water. They were the masts of a whale ship; they marked the place where McKendrie Evans, the would-be corsair ship Um Qasim, had settled and sunk at pierside.
“That is the corsair we tangled with,” Nolan whispered.
“We sunk their nasty ass,” Kanoa clucked in surly triumph.
The looming shape of the Bastille Nord soared over the starboard rail. Yunis passed within a hundred feet of the western tower, but there was no hail. Nolan could see sentries outlined on the parapets and heard the sound of music, a tingling maqamat playing from one of the dark structures beyond the demi-bastion. Standing by the broken taffrail, Curran could see one of the sentries shielding his eyes with the palm of his hand. He lifted his lantern and touched his hand to his heart; the sentry on the parapet merely turned away. There was no challenge from the east tower, or from the two Janissary riflemen sitting on the short pier behind the Bastille Nord.
“South-southeast,” Curran whispered to Padeen. “Steady on.”
Where the causeway joined the Bastille Nord was a forest of masts, mostly lateens, moored close together and filling the two basins under the island’s south side. Still there was no sign of Torch. The gray dark walls and the perfect blackness of the sky gave the impression of sailing into a vast box.
Nolan went down from the quarterdeck and stood by the starboard main chains. He was looking forward when he finally saw the American sloop. Torch was moored head and stern to the causeway, her bow made to a finger jetty at right angles to the long quay. She had been hard to spot because her topgallant masts had been struck and her yards were scandalized, tilted at a forty-five-degree angle to the deck. This simple ploy had made the American sloop (normally a square-rigged vessel) nearly impossible to pick out among the hundreds of like rigs, poleacres, feluccas, and barca longas. A wide, heavy gangway had been put over her starboard side to the causeway.
Two vessels were moored under Torch’s stern, forming a sort of floating barricade—a narrow galliot of 70 feet and an ornate, gilded row galley—tied up perpendicular to the quay. The larger galley was moored outboard, toward the citadel. To judge from the carving, it was likely the bashaw’s own. The galleys had their long ramming bows resting in steps cut into the causeway, and their sterns were tied to buoys in the channel basin. Guns and trucks were lined up neatly on the causeway in front of the inboard galley, as were piles of cordage, lumber, sails, and cooperage; Torch was obviously being refitted.
The larger galley was bigger than any Curran had ever seen, more than sixty oars; a tapering, oblong canopy was laid fore-and-aft over her decks—perhaps living quarters. It gave the craft the appearance of a hump-backed, reptilian creature. Smoke wafted from a stovepipe forward of the mainmast, and the long lateen yards made the ship seem even more like a dragon in repose. Curran could see a pair of wide-mouthed stern chasers mounted on the galley’s aft deck. The gilded dragon was not merely a pet.
Holding his robe about his throat, Nolan walked back to the quarterdeck. Even in the darkness he could see Curran’s thin, tight frown. Although Torch was moored away from the guns of the citadel, she was hemmed in by a pair of very awkwardly placed consorts. And without her topmasts Torch would be difficult to maneuver; assuming, that is, that they managed to get close enough to board, and were then lucky enough to cut her out.
Curran knelt by the skylight and looked down into a ring of darkened faces, the boarders assembled in the great cabin. “We are within a biscuit toss,” he said. “I am going to lay us alongside. When you feel us touch, get quickly over the starboard rail. Then it’s up and take her.”
“Damn me if we don’t,” someone whispered.
“Your armbands now. Starboard side, above the elbow. The word is ‘Halloween.’ ”
Curran could see smiles as he lowered the skylight. Nolan handed him a pistol wrapped in a strip of white cloth. Curran put the pistol into his waist, and Nolan helped him tie the cloth around his left arm. The water in the harbor seemed flat, embraced by the causeways and loomed over by the Bastille Nord on one side and the citadel on the other. It was easy to imagine that the fortress had swallowed them alive.
“Down helm, Padeen,” Curran whispered. “Loose the sheets.”
Yunis’ head came into the wind and her sails luffed. They were a hundred yards away, and after a tense, silent span of three minutes, fifty yards.
A voice barked at them from the bashaw’s galley. This was Arabic, harshly intoned: “What are you doing, you wetness? Stay off my buoy!”
Padeen’s hands gripped the tiller and Curran said quietly, “Lay me for his quarter.” Curran went to the rail and put his hands to his face. “Masaa al-khair! We are from Damur with dispatches from Beyrut!”
“I don’t give a turd!” the sentry in the galley barked. “Sheer off!”
“We lost our anchors in the storm,” Curran called out. “Allow us moor to your buoy.”
Another figure joined him—a tall, white-turbaned man who wore a scimitar at his hip. “What are you doing, piss stain?”
“I am carrying tobacco,” Curran called, “and will pay for mooring.”
Nolan stood by the starboard rail, willing the ships closer. Under his cloak his hand was tight around the butt of a pistol. The turbaned man called back, “Then take the buoy and send over the tobacco, but do not come alongside.”
Padeen slyly eased the tiller. “They will soon run out of patience or disbelief,” Curran said softly to Nolan. “When you see that they intend to raise an alarm, give them a grenado.”
“I will, too.”
Nolan bent down by the lantern and lit a piece of slow match. Cupping the burning end, he wrapped the fuse around his left hand. Yunis’ bow was coming around. From the helm, Curran looked forward to see a dozen hostile faces lining Torch’s stern. A light came across Torch’s deck, there was a sudden shout, the blast of a trumpet, and then from the quarterdeck of the sloop a rifleman fired at them.
“Now!” Curran barked. Nolan stood and windmilled the grenado at the galley. The fuse crackled orange and yellow, and as it arced through the air, a second sentry on Torch fired down at Yunis. The bullet ripped a long spark off the binnacle in front of Padeen.
“Boarders away!” Curran yelled.
Padeen shoved the helm over and Yunis’ head thumped against Torch’s quarter. Nolan’s second grenade exploded on the sloop’s stern; a dirty puff of smoke and fire scythed through the densely packed men. Kanoa lit a pair of fuses and hurled both at the galley, the first bounding off the canopy and into the stern, the second tumbling into the thwart, where they both exploded with a pair of muffled thumps.
Yunis’ hatches came up and the crew burst from their hiding places. Nolan ripped the canvas off the larboard swivel gun and thumbed a powder quill into the touchhole. He trained the muzzle forward and shoved his match at the vent. The gun went off with a blinding crash, spattering the galliot and the bashaw’s galley with a cloud of canister. The smoke blew away to reveal a pair of floating shambles. On the quarterdeck, Curran took up a cutlass and handed the tiller to Hall.
“You have the ship, sir. When the boarders are over, throw us a line and tow her stern out.” Hall took the tiller and clung to it. “Can you do it?” Curran asked.
A bullet hissed between them. The boy did not flinch. “I will do my best, sir.”
“I know you will, Mister Hall. Watch for our signal.”
Curran swung his foot onto the mizzen chains. “Second division,” he yelled, “follow me!” Twenty men surged over the rail and up the sides.
Nolan tossed a grenado through Torch’s quarter galley. The glass shattered and a second later a flash ripped through the aft cabin, lifting the skylight and blowing the deadlights off the windows. Nolan waved his pistol and jumped across through Torch’s shattered stern; a dozen men followed shouting, “Halloween! Halloween!”
Curran pulled himself up the sloop’s starboard side next to the gangway. Incredibly, the manropes were shipped, as if Torch had been expecting visitors. Half a dozen men were already above him, climbing the shrouds and straight into the tops. To Curran’s left there was a flash and a soul-shattering boom. Torch had fired one of her outboard guns at Yunis. The muzzle was within three feet of his head, and as it went off the explosion seemed to suck the life out of him. Blind and deaf, Curran nearly missed his handhold as he tumbled across the hammock netting onto Torch’s deck. Kanoa went past, his blanket headdress askew and his pahoa hissing through the air. The shark’s teeth ripped through a lunging figure, and a pistol went off close behind. Curran was aware of a blur going by his head and a pike was shoved at his face. He parried and then from the darkness a huge hand grabbed him by the hair. Curran turned and slashed; the hand was gone.
The clang of steel and shouts of “Halloween” rang fore and aft, and within a minute the defenders were being driven back to the quarterdeck break.
“Topmen! Cut clues and gaskets!” Curran shouted. Already there was rustling overhead and the foretopsail was dropping like a curtain. Torch’s deck was a violent darkness shot through with muzzle flashes and bayonets. A musket went off, and Nolan saw Gerrity stumble in a cloud of smoke. Another cannon went off on Torch’s deck—the gun had been depressed, aimed down at Yunis, but the carronade had been set off before it could be properly secured. As the weapon recoiled, the carriage spun around its train tackle and turned over like a market cart, scattering the gun crew.
The aft hatch came up, and the first of Torch’s prisoners surged out on deck. A dozen more followed, ragged and filthy, and a score after that. Curran saw an officer’s coat among the mob. Curran called out, “Commander Penniman!”
A small, ragged lieutenant shoved toward Curran. Despite the Enterprisers’ costumes, the Torches saw at once what was up. “Penniman is dead,” the officer said. “I am Amick, third lieutenant.”
A mortar shell burst overhead, a red-orange blast and a tearing sound like close thunder. “Mister Amick, we are from Enterprise and mean to cut you out,” Curran shouted.
“I am for it, sir.” Amick grinned and picked up a Mameluk sword from the deck. A 50-pound ball whistled overhead, fluttering the sails and rattling the stays. It landed with a resounding clang at the foot of the Bastille Nord.
“Have your men cut the moorings,” Curran said. “I’d like not to linger.”
A hundred ragged prisoners surged across the deck, hallooing and shouting. There was not much more to be done. The corsairs were beaten into a pocket on the forecastle and a diminishing heap in front of the gangway. Two more cannonballs passed close, growling over the sloop and smashing into the causeway, shattering paving stones and sending splinters skittering through the sails. As Nolan had predicted, the first shots were going long. Several smashed into the wall on the far side of the causeway, shooting sparks and dust into the darkness.
“Torches! Torches! Hear me!” Curran bawled. “Over the side and into the boat! Get under way and pull our stern out!” Directed by Amick, Torch’s crew dropped off onto the stern and into the xebec. Nordhoff coolly ordered them into the tops, and Yunis made sail.
Torch was taken: well enough. Curran climbed the quarterdeck ladder. There were a dozen white armbands around the ship’s wheel, pulling at the chain that had wrapped around the wheel, fouling the barrel and spindles. The blow of an ax and a link was shattered. As the wheel was freed, Curran saw Nolan emerge from the companionway dragging a red-bearded sayyid by the arm. As the ship was being taken, the Moor had fired a blunderbuss through the door of his cabin, killing half a dozen of the boarders as they came down the passageway. When Nolan and his prisoner reached the deck, Fante plucked up red beard, broke him over his knee like a stick, and tossed the corpse over the rail.
Padeen appeared from the bow. “The cable’s slipped sir! We’re ready to get under way.”
“Topmen!” Curran shouted. “Let fall!”
Ashore, drums were beating and trumpets sounded from half a dozen points. Nolan could see troops of cavalry galloping down the causeway from the citadel. The big galley’s lines had burned through, and she was drifting into the harbor, fully engulfed in flames. Thick, choking smoke swept across Torch’s deck. Above, the topsails came down from the yards. A flare tore into the sky from the citadel. In its lurching fire Curran could see Yunis’ sails filling, and as she began to make way the cable lifted from the water, tightening and squirting water. Hall was at the tiller, and a dozen Torches were on deck setting main and mizzen. The xebec’s big lateen sails fluttered and shook, the towline wrung itself dry and Torch’s stern came away.
A Mameluk horseman jumped his mount up from the causeway just as the gangplank jerked free. Fante lifted a long sweep from the deck and thrust it like a pike: mount and rider fell screaming and splashed between the quay and the ship. Other Mameluks clambered onto the bulwarks and were stuck by a volley fired from the forecastle.
The cannon in the citadel put down a steady and increasingly accurate fire. At the end of long, stuttering whistles, columns of water exploded up and came spinning down onto Torch’s deck. Curran was amazed to see Nolan climb into the hammock netting and pull an American flag from beneath his cloak. Stitched together from ribbons, linen, and bits of blanket, Nolan’s creation looked like a quilt.
“Where did you get that?”
“I made it,” Nolan said, fixing it to the halyard.
“Made it?” Curran sputtered. “When?”
Nolan pulled the halyard and the flag went rippling into the mizzen tuck. “It’s not as if I lacked the time.”
Another flare floated down out of the dusty gloom, lighting the harbor in a red, cloying glare. When the men aboard Yunis saw the Stars and Stripes rise over Torch they broke into cheers. At the end of the tow rope, the xebec tacked onto a beam reach. At the tiller, Hall steered expertly; the cable connecting the ships groaned, and Torch’s prow swung inboard and ground across the jetty. When it reached the end, the sloop gave a jolt, the bow lifted up and over the rocks, and she went forward.
“She swims, sir,” Kanoa said. “We’re out of the berth.”
“Part the tow!” Curran said, and Finch brought down an ax on the hawser. In three chops it parted. Yunis went quickly away, and Torch, much larger and slower to start, drifted north toward the outer harbor.
The wind gusted again, filling the sails of both ships and thickening the air with sand. The immense darkness of the harbor was now ringed with brilliant flashes. The guns of the bastilles and even the palace itself were now brought into action. Most of them, ranged to protect the port from threats offshore, continued to fire long; but several gun crews had been made wise, and two crashing blows struck Torch. The first shattered the main rail under the bowsprit, and the second, fired obliquely across the harbor, smashed the capstan, sending a cloud of deadly brass and oaken splinters across the waist.
Muskets and miquelets fired randomly from the bastille, a few shots popped off from windows, but as they passed the first basin Curran could see a body of men marching down one of the alleys toward the harbor. Another flare tore into the sky, adding a pitching set of shadows to the red light of the burning galleys. Torch was nearly at the end of the sandbar that divided the basins from the main harbor. A hundred riflemen surged out of the sally port and onto the causeway; they were quickly formed by company, the front rank knelt, and a crashing volley was fired into Torch’s side. The bullets came in a swarm, striking the oaken gunwales, entering the gun ports, and ripping sparks from the guns. Five men went down as the rifle smoke gushed across Torch’s deck.
Another volley of musketry, fired high, ripped through the hammock netting. Climbing down from the mainmast, Nordhoff yelped and whirled around, shot through the foot.
“One through seven!” Nolan called. “Out quinions, depress them as far as they will go!” Torch was now abreast of the sally port. “Fire!” Nolan barked.
The larboard guns went off in a rippling peal of smoke. The salvo was fired point-blank, and its effect on the massed riflemen was horrific. The galleys in the basin were plowed from the water and blown into shreds. The balls struck the edge of the breakwater and caromed up into the packed ranks; the men on the quay were mowed down in rows. The wind blew the smoke back down on Torch’s decks, and when it lifted not a rifleman was left standing. In the flare light Nolan saw a pair of wounded Janissaries stagger back toward the sally port as the ironbound doors pulled closed.
Torch rounded the bagnio, and just as the west tower became visible, six rounds struck her in the span of as many seconds. The bowsprit exploded in a cyclone of wood, line, and block fragments. A second ball struck number two, picked the 1,500-pound carronade from the deck, and sent it spinning end over end down the starboard side. Atop the bagnio tower, Curran saw a rifleman stalking across the parapet; as he watched, the man framed himself between two of the crenels, lifted his weapon, and fired down onto the quarterdeck. The bullet thumped harmlessly into the deck; a second later, Curran felt a pressure against his back and comprehended a searing, blinding light. That brightness enveloped him in silence. A 50-pound shot had struck Torch square on her quarter, there was nothing for an eye-blink—a numb, unpleasant blank—and then Curran felt himself turned upside down, his feet gone over his head, and he landed on the deck in a miasma of smoke and pain.
When he opened his eyes, he saw the shattered wheel and then Kanoa’s empty shirt fluttering across the mizzen jeer bits. In the jerky light he could see the tattooed Hawaiian sprawled on the shattered deck, naked to the waist, unmoving, his arms wrapped around his face. Curran’s head swam, he could not hear or see; the battle and all its crashings lurched round him in a vertiginous spiral. Then, before his eyes, Nolan appeared outlined in flames. Curran saw that he was carrying Pelles’ sword—the tip of it had been sheered off by a bullet. Curran crawled to his hands and knees and then lurched to his feet.
“There you are,” Nolan said in a calm, conversational voice. He placed his hand under Curran’s arm and lifted him. “May I suggest that we transfer to the xebec?”
Nolan’s tone was so nonchalant that Curran had the awful feeling that he was in a nightmare, in a sort of spark-torn hell, and not on earth. Concussed and bleeding, Curran’s head ached, his limbs were numb, and he could scarcely form a thought in his head. For the past seventy-two hours his every nerve had strained in an effort to take back USS Torch: so firm was that intention that even now as it was being shot to pieces under him, it had not occurred to Curran to abandon ship. Nolan knew, as did Padeen, that Torch’s back had been broken and it was time to go.
Another ball slammed into the bow, and splinters went caterwauling into the darkness. Nolan said something Curran could not understand; Curran turned to look forward. The foremast was gone—simply gone—and when his eyes could focus he saw that the main was by the boards, slowly falling over the starboard side. Torch had only a single mast standing.
Nolan put his arm around Curran’s waist and caught him as he passed out. “We shall abandon ship, Padeen,” Nolan said. “Please see to it that Mister Curran and the other wounded are put aboard Yunis.”
Hall had seen the salvo rip into Torch and knew that the wound to the ship was mortal. He quickly clapped the helm over and steered into the sloop’s starboard bow, coming alongside as daintily as though he were picking up a commodore.
Nolan called down to the boy. “You’re a smart sort of lad, Mister Hall. Now, keep her alongside as we take off the wounded.” Two men took Curran by the shoulders and heels. “Handsome does it,” Nolan said. And then to the crew, “Who are the firing party?”
Finch answered, “Here, yer honor! Stinkpots and pitch bombs, which we have set.”
“Excellent, Finch.” Nolan said. “Below, then, and start her at once. Make sure you have a full muster when you come back on deck. Go now and set her up.”
The boarders crowded onto Torch’s starboard bow. The first few jumped down to Yunis’ deck and lowered down the wounded. Now that Torch was clear of the bastille, fire opened again from all sides of the harbor. As balls hissed past, Nolan paced the quarterdeck. From the inner roads, the low shapes of three galleys were rowing toward them. A swivel gun spat from one of their bows, and a 4-pound ball bounced off the sternpost and rolled across the deck. Nolan trapped the rolling ball under this boot and flicked it toward the scupper. After the barrage of the citadel’s guns, a 4-pound shot seemed like an insult.
“They will likely try boarding,” Nolan said to Fante.
“I doubt it,” the big man said. As the first boat came under the counter, Fante heaved up a 30-pound cannonball. He leaned over the rail and dropped it squarely into the galley. It struck the bow oarsman in his lap and drove him through the bottom of the boat. The galley pitched up at the stern and started to swamp; its oarsmen cast away their sweeps and weapons and dove into the water—not a single one of them tried to come up the side.
Fire was now burning in the waist of the sloop, and thick black bellows of smoke were sweeping high as the maintop. Nolan could see Finch at the bow, waving. “Mister Nolan, she’s afire below!” Already flames could be seen licking through the screens of the forward hatch.
Fante said, “Come now, Nolan.”
“Just one moment, and I am your man,” Nolan answered. He tossed away the stump of his sword, went to the mizzen halyard, and calmly hauled down his flag. Another round struck the larboard side, passed though a gun port, and plowed through the burning hold. There was a small explosion, and then a mounting wall of sparks and fire swept aft. Nolan and Fante crouched behind the wreckage of the helm until the tongues of flame lifted. Fante touched Nolan’s shoulder and found it covered in blood. He lifted him by the collar of his coat. “You are bleeding!”
“So I am. Think little of it,” Nolan rasped. “This is not the first time I have been shot by a bastard.”
“Then maybe you shouldn’t give him another chance. Now, Nolan, if you please, we must go.” Fante dragged Nolan toward the waist of the ship.
The xebec was now making all the sail she could, heeling over on a starboard tack and crunching along the side of the burning ship.
Across the harbor, the bashaw’s galley, all ablaze, drifted wide of the causeway, the flames leaping from her deck putting about a hot, red light. The galley’s magazine took light, there was a towering flash, and then a deep, rumbling detonation shook the harbor. The detonation echoed back from the ramparts, silencing all the guns, stunning attackers and defenders alike into awed silence. Perched on Torch’s bow, Nolan and Fante watched the fire mushroom over the harbor.
On the deck of Yunis, Hall had the Torches ship sweeps; the long oars bristled down the ship’s sides like the legs of an insect, flailing and then falling into rhythm. The starboard side was backing water, and the oars were pulling round to keep the bow in contact. It was a seven-foot drop from the sloop; Fante stepped into the air without a thought and landed like a cat on Yunis’ bow. Cradling his wounded arm in the flag, Nolan swung his legs over the rail and surveyed the deck. He felt the heat at his back; it was almost impossible to judge the distance in the flickering light. He hesitated, considering the distances, and a 32-pound ball whizzed overhead, sucking flames up in its wake. Among the faces on Yunis’ deck Nolan saw Curran’s, freshly bandaged, looking up at him. “Cut along, Philip!”
Around the two vessels, the cannon of the fortress boomed like a concert of drums. Nolan stepped onto the bulwark, stood, and threw himself off the cathead. There was a thunderclap and a crackling hiss, a noise like the flight of a million bees, and a round of canister ripped through Torch’s bow. Nolan was caught by it in midair, lofted skyward, and then cast down at the foot of Yunis’ foremast.
Curran and Fante ran to the place Nolan had fallen. His robe had been blown off, his shirt and waistcoat torn open, and his face pierced twice. As he landed, his right arm had been twisted at the shoulder and broken hideously. As Curran and Fante tried to lift Nolan, riflemen in the bastion let go a volley. As ricochets twittered around them Curran managed to turn Nolan over and Fante dragged him to cover behind one of the carronades.
Nolan wore an expression of unalarmed bafflement. He tried to lift his right hand; two of his fingers were gone, and his broken wrist stuck through a hole torn in the flag. “Damn me,” he grunted.
All aboard saw that Nolan had been hideously wounded. The thundering of guns, the slap of shot hitting the two ships, the crackle of musketry, all seemed to stop. All hands stood frozen in their places, paralyzed and mute.
Finally, at the helm, Hall bawled out, “Turn to, you lubbers! Shove off and man the sweeps! Pull and pull or we’ll die here!”
A mortar shell burst over them, red-orange for a second and then a fleeting gray cloud. The boy’s words galvanized the crew, and the hands turned to with a will. Yunis was soon under way, her sweeps churning.
Curran looked aft as Yunis made her last tack through the jaws of the harbor and into open sea; in the flicker of the battle light he could see that the soot on Hall’s cheeks was streaking with tears. When the boy caught sight of Curran, he wiped his face, shamed by his grief.
Padeen knelt beside Nolan, tore a strip from his own shirt, and started to bind the gaping wound now pumping blood from Nolan’s shoulder. As Curran and Fante elevated Nolan’s shoulders they could see that blood was also dripping from his nose and the corners of his eyes.
Hands trembling, Curran drew back Nolan’s jacket and was distraught to find that he’d been hit by a bullet in the center of his chest. He pressed his hand against Nolan’s wound, the bleeding slowed, but the blood that had spilled around him continued to expand in a malignant black pool.
Sprawled on the deck, Nolan twitched his limbs and tried to sit up—he fell back with a grunt. “I can’t see,” he said calmly. His right eye fluttered closed, and his breathing became shallow.
“Oh, Jaysus, Mister Nolan.” Padeen’s voice broke and he touched Nolan’s forehead, his finger tracing the sign of the cross.
“Hold fast, Philip,” Curran said, the words strangled in his throat. Nolan’s arm moved and his broken and bloody hand closed over Curran’s. Fante knelt beside them and Curran bundled Nolan close. “Hold hard. We will return to the frigate, all of us together.”
“Enterprise,” Nolan whispered. From his chest came a deep, ugly gurgling, and he began to tremble. Curran watched as Nolan drew another breath and his lips moved silently.
“Stay with us, Philip,” Curran choked. “Stay with us.” Curran felt Nolan’s grip tighten, and he pulled him closer.
The xebec was moving out of the harbor now, the wind on her quarter; the guns of the bagnio and the harbor batteries all firing in impotent fury. The sky was lowering, red with the glare of fires and smoke. Curran and Fante cradled Nolan between them and clamped on fiercely—trying, with all their might, to keep his soul from flying free.