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There was a crash, and the rank of prisoners reeled. Bullets thwacked home, flesh and droplets flying. So what saved me?
My Negro giant, arms lifted in supplication, ran after Najac as if the villain might grant reprieve, which put him between me and the muskets just as the volley went off. The bullets hurled him backward, but he formed a momentary shield. A line of prisoners collapsed, screaming, and I was spattered with so much blood that initially I feared some might be my own. Of those of us still standing, some fell to their knees, and some rushed at the ranks of the French. But most, including me, fled instinctively into the sea.
“Fire!” Another rank blasted and prisoners spun, toppled, tripped.
One next to me gave an awful, bloody cough; another lost the crown of his head in a spray of red mist. The water splashed upward in blinding sheets as hundreds of us ran into it, trying to escape a nightmare too horrific to seem real. Some stumbled, crawling and bawling in the shallows. Others clutched wounded arms and legs. Pleas to Allah rang out hopelessly.
“Fire!”
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As bullets whined over me, I dove and struck out, realizing as I did so that most of the Turks around me didn’t know how to swim.
They were paralyzed, chest deep in water. I went several yards and looked back. The pace of firing had slackened as the soldiers rushed forward with bayonets. The wounded and those frozen by fear were being stuck like pigs. Other French soldiers were calmly reloading and aiming at those of us farther out in the water, calling to each other and pointing targets. The volleys had dissolved into a general maelstrom of shooting.
Drowning men clutched at me. I pushed them off and kept going.
About fifty yards offshore was a flat reef. Waves rolled over its top, leaving shallows one or two feet in depth. Scores of us reached this jagged table, pulling ourselves up on it and staggering toward the deeper blue on the seaward side. As we did so we drew fire; men jerked, spun, and fell into froth that was turning pink. Behind me the sea was thick with the bobbing heads and backs of Ottomans shot or drowned, as French waded in with sabers and axes.
This was madness! I still was as miraculously unhurt as Napoleon, watching from the dunes. The reef ended and I plunged into deeper water with a wild hopelessness. Where could I go? I drifted, paddling feebly, down the outer edge of the reef, watching as men huddled until bullets finally found them. Was that Najac running up and down the sand, furiously looking for my corpse? There was a higher out-cropping of reef that rose above the waves nearer Jaffa itself. Could I find some kind of hiding place?
Bonaparte, I saw, had disappeared, not caring to watch the massacre to its end.
I came to the rock where men clung, as pitifully exposed as flies on paper. The French were putting out in small boats to finish off survivors.
Not knowing what else to do, I put my head underwater and opened my eyes. I saw the thrashing legs of the prisoners clinging to our refuge, and the muted hues of blue as the edifice descended into the depths. And there, a hole, like a small underwater cave. If nothing else, it looked blessedly removed from the horrible clamor at the 1 2 0
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surface. I dove, entered, and felt with my arm. The rock was sharp and slimy. And then at my farthest reach my hand thrashed in empty air.
I pulled myself forward and surfaced.
I could breathe! I was in an inner air pocket in an underwater cave, the only illumination a shaft of light from a narrow crack overhead.
I could hear the screams and shots again, but they were muffled. I dared not call out my discovery, lest the French find me. There was only room for one, anyway. So I waited, trembling, while wooden hulls ground against the rocks, shots rang out, and the last blubber-ing prisoners were put to the sword or bayonet. The soldiers were methodical; they wanted no witnesses.
“There! Get that one!”
“Look at the vermin squirm.”
“Here’s another to finish off!”
Finally, it was quiet.
I was the only survivor.
So I existed, shivering with growing cold, as the curses and pleas faded. The Mediterranean has almost no tide, so I was in little danger of drowning. It was morning when we were marched to the beach and nightfall by the time I dared emerge, my skin as corrupted as a cadaver’s from the long soaking. My clothes were in shreds, my teeth chattering.
Now what?
I numbly treaded water, bobbing out to sea. A corpse or two floated by. I could see that Jaffa was still burning, banked coals against the sky. The stars were bright enough to silhouette the line of vegetation along the beach. I spied the flicker of French campfires and heard the occasional shot, or shout, or ring of bitter laughter.
Something dark floated by that wasn’t a corpse and I grabbed it: an empty powder keg, discarded by one side or the other during the battle. Hour followed hour, the stars wheeling overhead, and Jaffa grew dimmer. My strength was being leached by the chill.
And then in the glimmer of predawn, almost twenty-four hours since the executions had begun, I spied a boat.
