The Barbary Pirates

“On the American frontier. Pierre was my companion when I searched for Norse artifacts and explored the West. He’s the only man I know impervious to bullets.”

“Well, one bullet.” A ball from Aurora Somerset’s gun had been stopped by an Egyptian Rite medallion that Pierre Radisson had stolen from her sadistic brother, Cecil. He’d seemed to have risen from the dead then, but later disappeared from our room in St. Louis. I’d assumed he’d gone back to the wilderness but here he was, thousands of miles from where I’d left him. “I may have used up my luck,” he said.

“But I’ve not used mine, given that I meet you again. What are you doing in Toulon? By Poseidon’s spear, this is sweet chance beyond anything I expected!”

“You made me curious about the world, donkey. It was too late in the season to catch the fur brigades, so I decided to paddle home to Montreal. Then there was a ship that needed a hand, even though depending on sail is a woman’s way. So I found myself in Europe. Peace gave me the chance to get to France, and by the time I learned where you’d gone, you’d already gone there. Ah, I thought, but donkey has a way of drawing attention! I decided that if I got to the Mediterranean coast I’d hear of you soon enough. And indeed, a Barbary ship deposits three ex- slaves in the middle of Toulon, cursing a mixed-up American. And I think to myself, ‘This sounds like the donkey.’ So I go to work for that sorcerer there”—he pointed to Cuvier—“and suspect you’ll be along, too, by and by. And here you are.”

“Why does he call you donkey?” Cuvier asked.

“Because Gage can’t properly paddle, although the great Pierre was beginning to teach him. You’re a donkey, too. All men who can’t paddle a North canoe are donkeys! And this craft! Mon dieu, only sorcerer donkeys would come up with an idea as lunatic as going underwater!”

“And hire a French voyageur to reassemble it,” I said. “If this boat wasn’t a sarcophagus before, it certainly is now.”

“No, I’ve been plugging the holes that the rust has left, and using brass and copper instead of silly iron. Even better would be birch wood, if we had proper trees. Yes, Pierre and his donkeys, out to revolutionize warfare. It makes perfect sense.”

Fulton was walking around his craft. “Actually, his work is not entirely awful. We can finish making it seaworthy on the deck of your Enterprise, Sterett.”

“We’re in a hurry then?” asked Pierre.

“I have a woman in danger,” I said.

He raised his eyebrows. “Of course.”

“And a son, not yet three years old.”

“I told you to think about what you were doing.”

“And we’ve got to stop an ancient machine that could give Aurora Somerset power over all the world’s navies.”

“Aurora Somerset! That harridan is here, too? Is this another Grand Portage rendezvous?”

“She followed me, like you. I am oddly popular.”

“And how long do we have to rescue this new woman and son of yours from that witch?”

“Once we draw close, only before the sun rises, I suspect. For when it does, they can set the Enterprise on fire.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

By the time we repaired and loaded the Nautilus on the American schooner and approached Tripoli, it had been more than a month since Aurora had escaped Sterett in Sicily, taking little Harry with her. Time enough, in other words, for the mirror to have been erected and tested. Could something two thousand years old, possibly inspired by Atlantean designs thousands of years older yet, actually work? We didn’t want to be surprised by a beam sweeping out to sea.

Confirmation came a different way. As we approached the African coast we spied a wisp of smoke in the distance and cautiously closed, realizing that some ship had been burning. What we saw was a small brig low in the water, her rigging gone and her masts blackened like trees from a forest fire. The smoke drifted from a charred hull.

“Fire can start from a hundred reasons,” Cuvier said uneasily.

“And be put out in a hundred ways,” Sterett said, “unless the entire ship ignites at once.”

We lowered a boat and rowed across, confirming what we suspected. There was an awful smell of ash, putrefaction, and roasted flesh emanating from the vessel, with burned bodies on the deck. The name, Blanca, suggested Spanish origin, although jack and staff had been incinerated. On the starboard side was a circular hole, three feet in diameter, where the fire had eaten entirely through the wooden hull and caught the inner decks and timbers. Nothing stirred, inside or out.

“So it’s true then,” Cuvier finally said.

“By Lucifer, the mirror cuts like a cannon ball,” Fulton added.

“Rather than test their infernal machine on a derelict they aimed it at an innocent merchantman, crew still aboard,” I guessed. “It must have gone up like a torch and then drifted out to sea. Look at the helmsman there, welded to the wheel. He died where he stood.”

“This is utterly barbaric,” Smith said. “There’s nothing more painful than to die by fire.”

“So our timing will be critical,” Fulton said. “We must sail my submarine in under cover of darkness, dive, propel ourselves into the harbor, make the rescue, and then retreat underwater to Sterett’s schooner offshore. If the sun rises and we haven’t destroyed the mirror of Archimedes, the Enterprise will ignite like this ship and we’ll all burn, drown, or be enslaved again. Gentlemen, we must assault the most impregnable harbor in the Mediterranean, slip by a cabal of determined fanatics, disable their most closely guarded weapon, rescue a woman and child from the central harem of the ruler’s palace, and slip out like a fish.”

“Jolly good!” said Smith, infused with that mad English enthusiasm that has given them an empire. “I’m for paying that Dungeon Master back, I am.”

“Or we can just sneak about, doing our best,” I amended. I’m all for valor, but cautious about suicide. “My experience is it’s easier not to shake the nest when going for the honey. I’ve had the sailors help in making us some makeshift Muslim garb for disguise.”

“You’re a clever sort, aren’t you, Ethan? But a regular Lion of Acre if it comes down to a fight, correct?”

“Certainly.” I blinked, wishing I still had my longrifle.

“Our small numbers must be our advantage,” Smith went on. “The Barbary scum won’t be expecting an attack from a handful of men, emerging out of nowhere. Little Pierre here may be able to slip into places or unlock gates the rest of us couldn’t hope to.”

“Who are you calling little, Monsieur Beefeater?”

“It is the littlest men who have the greatest hearts. Look at David versus Goliath. Look at the Little Corporal, now first consul of France. We are each blessed in our own way, and must use our skills to advantage.”

“Well put,” Cuvier said. “Ethan, with his head for women, can head for the harem. His voyageur friend can help free helpless prisoners. Smith with his blasting expertise can make a sortie toward the mirror. Fulton will steer and I’ll crank to create chaos in the harbor. Surprise, confusion, and darkness will be our allies, and revenge and disruption our goal!”

He seemed quite the bloodthirsty buccaneer for a biologist, but then the French do have elan. “You agree we have a chance, then?” I clarified. If I was going to lead my friends on a rescue mission of my old paramour and illegitimate son, I wanted success to at least be possible.

“Oh no. But patriotism, love, and your own folly, Ethan, dictate that we must try.”

We hoisted Nautilus off the American schooner’s deck with block and tackle and lowered it over the side. It rocked in the waves like an ungainly copper log, banging against the wooden hull. The vessel seemed about as seaworthy as the bearskin coracle we’d fashioned on the American frontier, and three times less buoyant. But it didn’t immediately sink, and Fulton was brisk as a bunny as he organized our war party.