the water gleamed.
A lantern appeared behind as the gondolas in pursuit followed us. We could hear the furious thrashing of their oars. I fired my rifle again at the lead boat and its light danced, but didn’t go out. Someone fell into the water, and more guns fired back. Bullets pinged off the stonework and we involuntarily flinched. “Wish I could see to aim for their gondolier,” I muttered as I reloaded.
“Please leave us out of this, signor,” our own said with quavering voice. Realizing he was a logical target, our gondolier was driving us with more ambition than customary. Dark buildings zipped by as if he were powered by Fulton’s steam. Shutters were banging open as occupants leaned out to see what was going on, but everything was in shadow. What they observed was a parade of racing phantoms, our nearest pursuer less than fifty yards behind. The occasional twist or low bridge prevented either of us from getting a clear shot.
Bells began ringing, but no authorities came to our aid.
“I’ve got an idea,” said Fulton. He was eyeing a gondola unwittingly coming the other way, beginning to drift as its gondolier paused in confusion at the echo of shots and our own maddened pace. As we passed them the inventor reached out and neatly snatched the scull from the confused boatman, leaving him to drift into the path of our pursuers. Fulton clambered to the bow of our boat.
“What’s your plan?”
“Wait for me on the far side of this bridge.”
The bridge was a low arched stone one, typical for the city. As we came to it, the American suddenly thrust the oar down, planted it on the bottom of the shallow canal, and vaulted himself onto the roadbed above. We slid under him, and I ordered the gondolier to halt on the bridge’s far side. The boat skewed as we stopped and then slowly backed toward Fulton. Meanwhile the inventor had jammed the pole of his captured oar into the stone railing he had just jumped over, and was prying. “I wish I had a fulcrum.” Then there was a grunt and a crack.
We heard curses in three languages as the lead gondola of our pursuers collided with the one we’d left drifting. There was a cry and another splash. Then our assailants came toward us again, and Smith, Cuvier, and I readied to give a volley.
“Wait for my command!” whispered Fulton, who had hidden behind the balustrade.
The enemy boat was speeding for the bridge, pistols and swords pointed at us in a bristling hedge that just caught the starlight.
Then, with a groan, the stone railing gave way. Blocks as heavy as anvils were levered off the bridge lip by Fulton and fell just as the gondola was passing underneath, crashing into the vessel and snapping it to pieces. The occupants tumbled into the water.
The inventor, oar still in hand, leaped from the other side of the bridge to a water-washed porch and scrambled toward our boat. “Fire at the next one!” he ordered.
I liked his cool head.
So when the second attacking gondola came out of the gloom, slowing at the sight of comrades thrashing in the water, we let loose a volley: Cuvier’s two pistols, my rifle, and Smith’s blunderbuss all went off at once. There were screams, more oaths, and the second pursuing boat tipped as dead and wounded spilled into the canal.
“Now, now, go for the harbor!” Fulton cried as he jumped aboard. Our gondolier sculled as if he were on fire.
“Nice work, Robert,” I congratulated.
“It’s all in the leverage. Archimedes showed how it could be done. ‘Give me a lever and a place to stand and I will move the earth,’ the old Greek said.”
“Clever bastard, wasn’t he?”
At the next bridge, where the canal narrowed because of the structure’s abutments, Fulton had us stop while he wedged the extra oar at an angle widthwise across the canal behind us, just at water level where it could catch a gondola’s bow. “That will block the rest until they chop it away,” he said. “It may give us enough time.”
Then we hurried on, our gondolier panting.
“Being with you is proving to be consistently dramatic, Monsieur Gage,” Cuvier said, in order to say something. He was getting quicker, I noticed, at reloading.
“Bloody exciting,” Smith agreed. “Who are those devils?”
“Egyptian Rite, I assume. Or their hired mercenaries. Anxious, persistent, and hostile. Lucky they didn’t cut us off.”
Finally we broke from the narrow canal and glided out into the broader lagoon. The domes of the Basilica were a geometric symphony against the sky, and moored gondolas bobbed in the light chop. But how to find a ship in the middle of the night?
Then a lantern glowed in the stern of a xebec.
“Here, here! This is the one you want!”
CHAPTER TEN
Its Muslim captain, brown as leather and whip-quick, beckoned us closer. His sleeveless vest revealed muscle worthy of a skilled topman, and his dark eyes were lively as a rug merchant’s. “Row to the other side of my vessel, away from the city! Yes, come to Hamidou! I heard shots and suspect you need quick passage, my new friends!”
We rounded the stern and drifted close to the other side. Half a dozen other sailors with close-cropped beards lined the gunwale, dressed in bloused trousers, bright sashes, and in some cases, turbans.
“Gage, these are Muhammadans,” Cuvier objected.
“And we need to go to Ottoman waters.”
“Yes! I will take you where you wish to go for half what these Christians would charge you,” the entrepreneur promised. “No ship is swifter, no passage cheaper, than my
“Yes, and we need to leave now.”
“Then you need Hamidou! Dragut is the best sailor on the Adriatic and the Aegean. Look at my little arrow here. Fifty feet long, narrow and shallow, able to slip anywhere. My sails are black, so we move like a phantom.”
“Do you know the island of Thira?”
“Of course! I was almost born there! And for two hundred francs, we leave at this moment. For three hundred, we leave an hour ago!” He laughed. “The Christians will charge you three times that to go to Turkish waters. They are afraid of pirates. But I have nothing but friends!”
“And why are you quite so cheap?” asked Fulton, with Yankee skepticism.
“Because I go to the Aegean anyway. I take you to Thira, trade at nearby islands, and then pick you up to bring you back.” He nodded. “I, Hamidou Dragut, vow it!”
“You’re a Turk?”
“I am Greek, I am a Turk, I am whatever you want me to be. I sail with all faiths. Do not hesitate! Look—do you see the gondolas? They are looking.”
I climbed the side of the hull and looked across the deck of his ship at Venice. Craft had emerged from the same canal we had and were sculling toward the moored gondolas, searching.
“There are more of them than there are of you,” the captain said.
“We’re hoping to slip in and out of Thira before anyone much notices.”
“Then Hamidou is the man for you! I am a ghost. Invisible. A good smuggler.”
“Not smuggle. Simply arrive and depart without official interference.”
“Thira is a small island, with small bureaucrats. A word, a coin, and you will be secret enough. I know everyone. All are my friends.”
His gaze flashed from one to the other of us looking for belief with the energy of a man who is used to doubt,
