The Barbary Pirates

There was a flash and a ray of light pulsed across the rooftops and hit our terrace. The heat was instantaneous and terrifying. Astiza twisted away to shield Harry with her back, wincing, my son waking with a start. “Now, now, pick up the beam and use the shield!”

Grunting, we lifted our crude reflector into the path of the death ray, the head of the Gorgon flaming in the light. Immediately there was another flare of illumination, a counterbeam bouncing back as we struggled to aim, and then we tilted the shield just enough to run the reflection across the Egyptian Rite technicians at the mirror.

They screamed. Two robes burst into flames. Men began running from the controls.

“Now, now, the mine!” Fulton ordered.

Carefully tilting, we deflected the mirror’s ray onto the torpedo we’d hurled. In seconds it began to smoke again. Flame curled. We waited, praying.

And at last a roar!

The mine and its hundred pounds of gunpowder blew up in a great gout of fire, smoke, and stone, the wall just beneath the mirror blown to pieces. The platform the wall had supported tilted and sagged, and the mirror lost focus and abruptly dimmed, as if there were an eclipse of the sun. Several soldiers and technicians on the opposite side had been knocked down by the blast, and one or two controlling ropes snapped.

But that was it. The mirror was tilted, not destroyed. Hurled chunks of rock clattered down on the city’s rooftops, the smoke blew away, and our failure was plain. There was a gaping hole in the wall beneath the mirror and small fires burning inside the fort, but no serious damage.

“I should have brought a second torpedo,” Fulton groaned.

“No,” I said, “it’s enough to keep them from roasting us and the Enterprise while we escape, if we go quickly enough. Let’s run, and maybe we still have a chance!”

“A fulcrum of Archimedes can prop up that damaged rooftop in seconds,” the inventor insisted. “Look, they’re already running to fix it. Not only are we doomed, but so is Sterett.”

“I’ll go down fighting before I go into that pit with that lizard,” Pierre muttered.

“As will I before I lose my wife and son to slavery,” I vowed, realizing I’d said wife again without thinking. By the eye patch of Odin, was I making a commitment? Ethan Gage, rootless adventurer, tireless womanizer, who thought too often only of me?

“Ethan?” Astiza asked. Women do like to know. Yet what could we say when there was so much unsaid, because we hadn’t had time to say anything yet?

And then there was a truly titanic explosion, a thunderclap that knocked us over and sent mirror, Rite, and the top half of Yussef’s fort skyward in a monstrous fountain of fire and smoke. Glittering golden shards of an ancient weapon flew apart as if a rock had been hurled into a glass mirror, and they glinted like stars as they radiated. Bits of rock and metal and human beings flew in all directions, raining down on Tripoli. There was a rattle as bronze fell like hail. Our ears ached from the punch of air.

Fulton swayed to his feet, looking in stupefaction at the smoking stump of ruins where the mirror had been. “They stockpiled powder and guns to protect it,” he said dazedly. “Our fires reached the magazine, and it went off.” He looked at our shield, bent by the heat. “Medusa turned them to rubble.”

CHAPTER FORTY

We escaped through chaos. The dungeon was empty, gates hanging wide, and in the streets escaped slaves and prisoners had fanned out in a frantic riot to try to break free of Tripoli before janissaries caught them again. A huge pillar of smoke was roiling up from where the mirror had been, and secondary explosions were still going off as kegs of gunpowder ignited. We ran in our Arab robes through confused, milling crowds without drawing fire. There were sharpshooters boiling on the roof of Yussef’s palace and I thought I saw Karamanli himself, head bare of his jeweled turban as he shook his arms and furiously shouted orders. But he didn’t spy us, or recognize yet what I must be carrying away in my pocket.

Just as we dashed through a water gate onto the harbor quay, there was another roar and a docked pirate corsair blew up. A geyser of water shot up from the vessel’s bow and then it began to sink at its moorings. Its rigging and that of pirate craft nearby caught fire. Sailors spilled off the boats in fear and confusion, not knowing where the attack was coming from. As they did so, some of the escaped prisoners began stealing smaller feluccas.

“Splendid,” Pierre said, marveling at the havoc. “Donkey, you’ve done it again.”

We spied a ripple and shadow in the water as Cuvier and Smith steered the Nautilus away from the ship they’d stalked. For a moment I feared they were steering straight for sea, leaving us, but then the shadow slowed and Fulton’s little windowed tower broke the surface. The submariners paused, no doubt peering out, and then the hatch popped open and fell back and Cuvier appeared. He waved cheerfully.

“Don’t call attention to yourself!” I warned.

And indeed, muskets began to crack and bullets began to kick up spouts near the submarine. Cuvier ducked back down and the vessel turned hard to starboard and made for where we were standing. I longed for a rifle to answer back, but my piece belonged to a well-fed dragon. I felt naked.

Harry, whose moods flickered with each calamity, was looking around the harbor with bright interest. Apparently he was getting used to cacophony. People were running in all directions, smoke roiled up, and cannon balls were making splashes in the water. “Fire, Papa!”

“Bad men,” I said. “You’ll never play with fire, will you, Harry?”

“Can you play with it?” The idea intrigued him.

“Certainly not!” said his mother.

“Fire hot!” He held up his little fingers.

“Very hot,” I said. “Very dangerous.”

“No danger!” he said. He thought. “Bad big dog.”

“The big dog is dead.”

“Good.”

“You give every indication that you are brighter than your father,” Pierre observed. “Must be your mother’s side.”

And then with a bang and a clunk the Nautilus was at the quay. Astiza handed a squirming Harry to Cuvier to drop inside and then we four adults followed, filling the little craft to bursting. Harry began crying again at this confinement, quite reasonably, and the palace gunfire coming our way was increasing. A couple of musket balls pinged off the tower.

“We’ll have to go underwater until we get out of range,” Cuvier said. “How far will the mirror reach?”

“We destroyed it,” Fulton said. “It was Astiza who figured it out.” He seemed as impressed with her as he’d been dissatisfied with me, and was good-looking enough that his compliment made me feel a little jealous.

“My congratulations, madame,” Cuvier said. “And allow me to apologize for the discomfort. Our American inventor here seems to have forgotten any amenities.”

“Escape will be amenity enough.” She looked uncertainly about the metal tube, sweating with moisture and stinking of confined men, but smiled bravely. “I’m sure this is just the first draft of his experiments.”

“And the next few minutes will determine if it is to be his very last.” Cuvier winked.

“I have a new design that will hold twenty men!”

“Let’s finish with this one, first.”

We submerged and Pierre and I took over from the winded Smith to crank the propeller. All too clearly we could hear the eerie whoosh of cannon balls as they plunged into the sea nearby. The garrison of Tripoli seemed to be firing at everything and nothing.

“Have you seen Sterett and the Enterprise?” Cuvier asked.

“Not yet,” I replied. “We have to get clear of these reefs and surface.”

We had no way to gauge our progress except by studying the compass and counting minutes, which Fulton