The Barbary Pirates

was doing under his breath. With so many people and the hard exertion of the crankers, the air was quickly getting stale. Horus has solved the problem by nodding off to sleep again, and we all looked at him with envy.

“How about some of your compressed air, Robert?”

“I’m saving that for an emergency.”

“Seven people crammed into an underwater craft designed for three, and being bombarded with cannon balls, is not an emergency?”

“I think we’re already out of range.” The plonk of the falling cannon balls had ceased. “Let’s come up to reconnoiter and crack the hatch. Gage, I’ll spell you on the propeller. Take a look when the tower breaks free of the water.” We squeezed past each other while Cuvier pumped some of the water out of our buoyancy tanks. Our chamber lightened as we neared the surface, illumination glowing as the thick windows broke above the waves.

I looked behind us through the glass. A haze of smoke hung over Tripoli and several xebecs and feluccas had caught fire. The quay and walls were boiling with men, but the gunfire had stopped. We were either too far away or they’d lost sight of our shadow passing underwater. Fulton’s submarine had promise after all.

So, could we see the Enterprise? I turned around to look toward open sea. And almost yelped! A Barbary ship was bearing down on us, sails bellied, spray dancing at the bow, and Hamidou Dragut balanced on the bowsprit, face bloody, pointing frantically at our form.

Pointing precisely at me! He was directing his ship to ram us.

A bow cannon was being run out to say hello with another cannon ball, and sailors were aiming muskets as well. “Down, down, down!” I cried. “It’s Dragut, heading straight for us and trying to ride over the top of us!”

Fulton and Cuvier slammed levers and spun cranks and our tanks began to fill. The windows filmed with water as we dove, but now the brighter light of the surface was agony, suggesting we weren’t descending fast enough. A shadow loomed, the Barbary pirate ship casting darkness like a thundercloud, and then we could hear the hiss as it sailed over us. There was a screech as it briefly scraped our conning tower with its keel, pushing us down. Then we kept sinking on our own, gaining acceleration as the light dimmed, and with a bump struck the harbor bottom, forty feet deep.

Harry woke up. “Where, Mama?”

“Safe.” Her voice trembled.

A hiss of thin water streamed from one of the bolt holes.

“Wet!”

“Yes,” she said coolly. “It is.” Her eyes were wide.

“Can we wait Hamidou out?” Cuvier asked, looking upward.

“He’ll luff and drift over us,” I predicted.

“We’re running out of air,” Smith warned.

“Not if we uncork the container I brought,” said Fulton. “I told you we should wait for a real emergency. Now it should buy us an hour, at least.” He worked the stopper partly free and a new hiss joined that of the leaks. Fulton worked a pump a few times to keep the water streaming into the hull from deepening too quickly. Then he lit another candle. “We could use some cheer.”

“Our rendezvous was to have been at dawn,” I said. “Sterett will see the smoke and know we’ve done something, but how long dare he wait?”

“Let’s use the screw to try to finish our journey out of the harbor. How far did we have to go, Gage?”

“I didn’t have time to judge the reef.”

“So we’ll have to try it blind.”

We pumped, and lifted off the bottom. Then there was a splash overhead, a few seconds silence, and then a clunk.

“Is Dragut anchoring?”

“Maybe he’s dropping cannon balls on us.”

“Blind?”

There was a boom and the Nautilus lurched, as if kicked from behind. We were all thrown forward and our candles went out, and then water began gushing through the packing around the propeller shaft as well, a cold jet that soaked us all. Harry began whimpering, climbing up his mother’s bosom.

“The pirates dropped a fused keg of powder on the bottom,” Fulton guessed. “Man all the pumps! We’ve got to surface before we sink!”

“I knew I should have stuck to a canoe,” Pierre muttered. “Did God make us fish, to go about underwater? No, he said, ‘Stay where you can breathe, Adam.’”

“Georges and William, do we still have that last mine?” Fulton asked.

“Aye, but it’s not rigged.”

“Can we turn the propeller?” I asked.

“It’s bent, but it turns a little,” the inventor reported.

Water was swirling around our ankles.

“I think we’re going to have to swim for it,” Fulton said. He glanced around his little cylinder, looking stricken. “I don’t think Nautilus will make it back to Enterprise.”

“The pirates will simply pick us off if we leave this boat,” Smith said. “Or pick us up for prison.”

“Not if we destroy them first,” I said. “We’ve got that mine at the bow, even if it’s not ready. How do you set it off?”

“The usual plan is to screw the charge into the ship’s wooden bottom, back off with a long line, and trigger the torpedo with a lanyard,” Fulton reminded.

“What if we just nuzzle up and blow?”

“It will sink both ships, and whoever is in them.”

“Then that’s what I’m going to do, after your companions are off the Nautilus and swimming for safety. I’m tired of this son of a bitch Dragut.”

“Ethan!” Astiza cried. “You can’t kill yourself now!”

“Quite right,” Smith put in. “You’re a father, man.”

“With a boy I’m not putting back into slavery. Look, I got us into this mess. None of this would have happened if I hadn’t been caught up with the Egyptian Rite, Aurora Somerset, and Napoleon Bonaparte. I’ve escorted all of you into Hades, because you’ve had the pluck and ill fortune to come with me. Now I’d like to buy you some time.”

“By committing suicide?” the Englishman protested.

“Robert,” I asked Fulton, “if I tied a line to the mine’s lanyard and led it through the hatch, could I set it off in here where I’d have your metal hull between me and the bomb?”

“Well, yes, but the nose of the Nautilus is going to be crushed like a snuff tin. My plunging boat is going to sink like a rock.”

“Maybe I can hold my breath and then swim free.”

“Ethan, no!” Astiza pleaded. “Horus needs a father!”

“He needs to live first, which requires the sinking of Dragut’s ship. This is what I get for not finishing that pirate off in the harem. Every time I fail to kill people, I regret it. Now”—I addressed them all like a lieutenant briefing a sortie—“when we get to the surface you have to get out before the pirates have time to see us and start shooting. Swim and scatter. Dive when you can, to make it harder for them to hit you. Meanwhile, I’ll drive the submarine under their hull, trigger the mine, and swim away after the explosion. Make for the reefs, and maybe you can stand on the shallowest ledges and signal Sterett for rescue.”

“That’s no chance at all,” Cuvier said.

“Which is just how the donkey likes it,” said Pierre. “You forgot one thing, Monsieur Lunatic—how are you going to both drive the submarine and ready your bomb? I, Pierre Radisson, can crank harder and swim better and jump higher than any man, and so I will help in your scheme. I am, after all, in the habit of aiding you in all things ridiculous.”

I bowed. “I take that as a compliment, voyageur.”

“It’s getting light!” Fulton warned. “We’re nearing the surface!”

“Astiza and Harry first! Then the savants, for world knowledge! Men might read about your work someday!”