The Barbary Pirates

So we staked our prize on the deck to dry, determined to keep an eye on it. I had some food, famished enough to gobble, and resolved to stand sentry while the others slept.

When I woke, it was dark again. I’d slept the entire day away.

A moon was up, lighting the sea, and the tops of the waves were silver. It was still warm, pleasantly so, and the rigging creaked as the xebec cut through the sea. I looked at the horizon but land had fallen away in all directions. I felt for the parchment. To my relief it was where I’d left it, so I rolled it into my ragged jacket. Then I drank to slake my thirst and crawled over my companions to find Dragut.

Our captain was standing by the bowsprit, studying the stars. I’m a poor celestial navigator and admire people who can make sense of the spangle.

“Where are we?” I asked quietly.

He turned, the whites of his eyes the most visible thing in his dark face. “On our way home,” he said. “Look —the sea is as soft as a mother this night. The sail is billowed like a breast, and the moon is milk. A good sign, I think.”

“Of what?”

“That we are all finding what we’re looking for. You’re a man who is always searching, no?”

“It seems so. And others always seem to be searching for me.”

“Yes, in Venice and the island. Why is that?”

I shook my head. “I know nothing worth knowing.”

Now a flash of teeth. “Yet you have things worth knowing, perhaps? Yes, I have seen your parchment, and noticed your urgency of escape. What is so important about it?”

“I don’t know. I haven’t read it. I don’t even know if I can read it.”

“Which is why you swim to my ship and climb aboard, sword unsheathed, guns displayed, wet and bloody? Well, I am a simple sailor, grateful for a calm night. Go get more rest, American, and tell me someday if our little adventure was worth it.”

Cuvier helped me decipher the parchment the next day. It was medieval Latin, as might be expected from a Templar document, and badly aged and smudged. Hamidou gave us paper and pen to write down our translation. I feared the seawater had ruined it, but we made out just enough to come to a disappointing conclusion.

“This has nothing to do with Atlantis, ancient weapons, or Archimedes,” the French savant murmured.

It in fact appeared to be an account of a Roman Catholic monk’s pilgrimage to the Holy Land, as well as a series of standard prayers from the Roman church. There was nothing about secrets, Knights Templar, or underground tunnels.

“Perhaps it’s a code,” I suggested. “I seem to stumble across them all the time.”

“Hail Mary is a code?” Cuvier replied. “I’m afraid, Ethan Gage, that you led us through the gate of Hades for a book of prayer.” He gave me back the parchment. “Of interest to historians and theologians, perhaps, but no more remarkable than a hymnal.”

I turned the parchment sideways and upside down, inspected the back, and held it up to the sun. Nothing. “But why would they seal this in plaster?” I asked in frustration. “That portion of the wall was newer, I’m certain of it!”

“Perhaps to reinforce their mud. There may have been something of real value down there they had removed and were patching. It was an interesting rumor, but we’ve investigated it and found nothing. Fini! That’s how science works—the experiments that do not succeed are often as important as those that do. We’ve discharged our obligation to Napoleon and escaped with our lives, which itself is a miracle. Now we go home.”

Empty-handed again! By the beard of the dwarf, I hate underground places. People dig them to squirrel away things all the time, but I rarely seem to emerge with anything valuable. Nor had I discovered anything on Thira that provided a clue to the fate of Astiza, which I’d been hoping for, given Osiris’s wager in Paris. The entire expedition had proved pointless. All four of us were disappointed.

Fulton grew bored when Cuvier started translating the Apostles’ Creed, and instead stood at the stern, looking about at the sea and then curiously at the sun. “What time do you think it is?” he finally asked us.

“Midmorning.”

“And the sun rises in the east, does it not?”

“I’m hardly certain of anything anymore, but I’ll hazard that,” I said.

“And so our solar orb should be on our starboard side as we sail north, should it not? To our right?”

“Aye.”

“Which by my reckoning means we are sailing due south, directly away from Venice instead of toward it.”

We leaped up. “What?”

“I think our doughty captain is going entirely the wrong way.”

“Hamidou!” I called to the bow. “Which way are we going?”

“Home, I told you!” he called cheerfully.

“Whose home? You’ve got us pointed south, you idiot! Don’t you have a compass?”

Dragut looked at the sky in amazement and then shouted at one of his crewmen. An argument broke out. Finally, with a push, the man was driven to scamper up the mast like a monkey, bare feet climbing on the rings that held the sail, to scan the horizon as if looking for an alternate sun. No new course was set. He released a cord and a narrow white banner unfurled to wave in the breeze. What was that for? At last the man pointed excitedly and began shouting in Arabic. Then a chorus of shouts went up from all the crew, and they stood on the gunwales to peer at the horizon.

“What’s going on?” Smith asked.

Dragut pointed off our bow and stern. “Pirates.” And indeed, we now noticed dark sails cresting the horizon. “Many men, I think, very dangerous.”

“What? Where the devil have you brought us?”

“Wait, I put about.” He snapped orders and the helmsman turned, but then another crewman shouted and the wheel spun back. An argument broke out. The bow slid into the teeth of the breeze, and sails began to luff, and we coasted to a stop, wallowing in the waves. Now the crew was shouting at each other even more, while breaking out guns, swords, and pikes. Meanwhile we drifted, rigging creaking and banging.

My companions and I looked at each other, hope evaporating like dew.

“Look to your guns,” I said resignedly.

Enemy sail were bearing down on us like boulders accelerating downhill.

Our own weapons had been dried and cleaned that morning and so we loaded, even as our crew seemed impossibly clumsy at swinging the booms and turning the rudder to get out of irons. At the time we needed them most they’d panicked into incompetence!

“I thought you were the best sailor in the Mediterranean!”

“It seems I am cursed by an incompetent crew,” Dragut muttered.

“I thought you had fooled them with your Barbary banner!”

He looked aloft. “Maybe we still can.”

“Do you think that’s the bunch that was after us at Thira?” Fulton asked.

“How would they know to chase us here?” Smith said.

“My friends, I think it is wisest if we surrender,” Dragut suddenly counseled. “They are drawing within artillery range, and we have no long-range guns to reply. My ship is swift and light, but it is small and can’t stand up to a pounding.”

“I thought you could outsail any ship out here!”

“Not a Barbary corsair. We’re a Muslim crew. Perhaps they will have mercy?”

“But we’re not Muslim! We’re Christian! We’ll be enslaved!”

“True. But we can save your lives. Thus does Hamidou look after his passengers!”

Smoke bloomed from the hull of one of the corsairs, there was a shriek of shot, and a waterspout erupted where a cannon ball dropped, just fifty yards off our stern. My heart began to hammer. The trouble with sea fights is that there’s nowhere to hide.

“No,” Cuvier declared, looking more like a determined grenadier than a zoologist. “We’re going to fight.