It was a small Arab lighter of the kind that had taken me from HMS
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I croaked and waved, coughing, and the boat came near, wide eyes peering at me over the gunwale like a watchful animal.
“Help.” It was barely more than a mutter.
Strong arms seized me and hauled me aboard. I lay at the bottom, spineless as a jellyfish, exhausted, blinking at gray sky and not entirely certain if I was alive or dead.
“Effendi?”
I jerked. I knew that voice. “Mohammad?”
“What are you doing in the middle of the sea, when I deposited you in Jerusalem?”
“When did
“When the city fell. I stole this boat and sculled out of the harbor.
Unfortunately, I have no idea how to sail it. I’ve just drifted.” Painfully, I sat up. We were well offshore I saw with relief, out of range of any French. The lighter had a mast and lateen sail, and I’d sailed craft not too dissimilar to this one on the Nile. “You are bread upon the waters,” I croaked. “I can sail. We can go find a friendly ship.”
“But what is happening in Jaffa?”
“Everyone is dead.”
He looked stricken. No doubt he had friends or family that had been caught up in the siege. “Not
Years from now historians will labor to explain the strategic reasoning for Napoleon’s invasions of Egypt and Syria, for the slaughter at Jaffa and the marches with no clear goal. The scholars’ task is futile. War is nothing about reason and everything about emotion. If it has logic, it is the mad logic of hell. All of us have some evil: deep in most, indulged by a few, universally released by war. Men sign away everything for this release, uncapping a pot they scarcely know is boiling, and then are haunted ever after. The French—for all their muddle of republican ideals, alliances with distant pashas, scientific study, and dreams of reform—achieved above all else an awful catharsis, followed by the sure knowledge that what they’d released must eventually consume them too. War is poisoned glory.
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“But do you know a friendly ship?” Mohammad asked.
“The British, perhaps, and I have news I need to bring them.” And some scores to settle, too, I thought. “Do you have water?”
“And bread. Some dates.”
“Then we are shipmates, Mohammad.”
He beamed. “Allah has his ways, does he not? And did you find what you were looking for in Jerusalem?”
“No.”
“Later, I think.” He gave me some water and food, as restorative as a tingle of electricity. “You are meant to find it, or you would not have survived.”
How comforting it would be to have such faith! “Or I shouldn’t have looked, and I’ve been punished by seeing too much.” I turned away from the sad glow from shore. “Now then, help me set this sail.
We’ll set course for Acre and the English ships.”
“Yes, once more I am your guide, effendi, in my new and sturdy boat! I will take you to the English!”
I lay back against a thwart. “Thanks for your rescue, friend.” He nodded, “And for this I will charge only ten shillings!”
