Earlier he and Rork had had a subdued reunion. Officers and enlisted men, even senior enlisted men such as Rork, did not fraternize aboard ship and very seldom ashore. Naval discipline demanded that, and the two friends understood it. A heartfelt greeting, a strong handshake, and brief summary of how Wake’s family was doing, was all that could be done at the time.
They both agreed that ashore would be another matter, and that rum would definitely be in order at that time. Decent rum. Wake added that it was his turn to buy the first. Rork replied with a grin that that was just fine, but it would have to wait for their return to Europe, since they were headed into Muslim lands, where possession of hard spirits could get your head lopped off.
Wake gazed around the horizon and took in a deep breath of salt air. It was good to be back at sea on a real naval vessel and breathe clean air. And good to have a real mission to accomplish. Especially with Sean Rork close by.
Lieutenant William Standing, the officer of the watch, who had served in the Med twice before, pointed out a headland to Wake. “There’s the fabled isle of Napoleon Bonaparte. And around that cape there is Ajaccio, where the little devil grew up.”
Wake was still getting used to being a passenger on a warship. He had offered his services as a watchstander, but Captain Donald Bunt declined. Bunt understood why Wake was aboard and offered no resentment, but wanted to retain his command’s “integrity of operations,” as he put it. Wake thought Bunt was entirely within his rights, and probably would have done the same. He surveyed the distant craggy landscape and wondered what Bonaparte would do in Bunt’s place.
“Napoleon’s name still gets people’s attention around this part of the world, doesn’t it, William?”
“Aye, that it does, Peter. That it does. And it keeps on in others, too. His namesake’s only been dead a year, you know.”
Standing was referring to Louis Napoleon III, emperor of France, who had lost to the Germans in the Franco-Prussian War three years earlier. And what would your uncle, the first and only real Napoleon, think of that particular humiliation, Wake speculated.
“I think they’re better off without him, William. All he got ’em was trouble,” observed Wake.
“Aye on that—a ton of trouble and misery. Speaking of that, I heard that you’re the man who’ll go ashore when we find this place. What’re you going do if they’ve taken the friggin’ kittle cargo of sin bosuns off to their kasbah, or wherever?”
Wake laughed at Standing’s use of the old sailor term for a preacher. Sailors didn’t trust clergymen and thought them very bad luck on a ship—“kittle” meant dangerous.
“Not sure, William. Guess I’m going to have to talk some sense into them.”
Standing guffawed at that notion. “An eleven-inch shell fused to properly explode at twenty feet above ’em would be a hellova lot more effective, Peter.”
“Yes. You’re probably right on that.” Wake gestured toward the town of Ajaccio, just becoming visible on the coast. “And I think old Boney would agree completely with you. Heavy artillery has the most wonderful ability to make a potential enemy focus on what you’re trying to say. Just might come to that, but I hope not.”
“Kill just a couple of the bastards and the rest will get real friendly, real fast.”
Wake smiled, for Standing had just paraphrased a famous quip of Napoleon Bonaparte pretty well. It was a tactic that usually worked—with most cultures. But would the Mohammedan fanatics of North Africa be cowed by a threat of force, or even the use of it? Wake had heard stories about their fearlessness. He sighed, realizing the outcome rested on his decisions and that he didn’t have much time before he would have to make them. Not far ahead of them was the western hook of Sardinia.
And beyond that was the mysterious continent of Africa.
***
Wake looked at his watch in the eerie light of the gyrating lamp overhead in the wardroom, where he, as a supernumerary, was stretched out to sleep on the deck. It read six a.m., which should have been dawn, but there was no light through the deadlight in the deck above. The motion of the ship had increased through the night, the wind coming from forward and the deck heeling over as the canvas strained. Wake hadn’t given it another thought when he shut his eyes five hours earlier—just one more rough night at sea in a lifetime of them. But where was the dawn? Was a storm covering the sky? The evening had been crystal clear.
Emerging carefully from the after hatch onto the main deck Wake was greeted with a sight he had never seen. The duty watch was huddled under the lee of any item on the deck, and those that couldn’t hide were leaning forward into the wind with heads swathed in rags, hands shielding their eyes. The sky was as black as a storm in the tropics and visibility wasn’t even to the bow of the ship. The wind howled and shrieked up and down the scale in the rigging, the hull plunging and rising thirty feet at a time. All this looked like a storm, except for one thing.
There wasn’t any rain. Instead, there was something in the hot wind, something tiny and hard, stinging Wake’s exposed flesh to the point of pain, intense pain. He reflexively ducked back down below the hatch and caught his breath—a man could barely breathe up there—and saw that sand covered the lower deck, piled in drifts against
