He returned topside in his foul weather oilskins with a galley rag over his face and made his way to the afterdeck, where the captain stood huddled over the binnacle. Bunt looked up, then screamed in Wake’s ear.
“Ever been in a sirocco, Lieutenant Wake?”
Wake shook his head. It was difficult to hear and speak. He could actually hear the sand hitting the ship.
“It’s the hot wind from the Sahara desert, blown up across the Mediterranean. A bitch to navigate in! That damned shore is up there ahead, somewhere.”
“How long do they last?” Wake yelled.
“Sometimes one day. Sometimes more. We’ll heave to if it don’t stop soon. To hell with the damned missionary fools. We’ll wait it out at sea!”
It lasted six excruciating days.
***
When the sky finally cleared they had no idea where they were. The dead reckoning of Captain Bunt put them somewhere to the north and west of Sicily, almost three hundred miles downwind and to the east of their destination.
Lookouts scanned the distance but saw nothing, as if all the ships at sea had been sunk—an apocalyptic sight that left the men aboard nervous. It was an eerie day, the wind light out of the east, the leftover swells from the south rolling Alaska and making the yards creak and the canvas slat as if the ship was groaning in pain at what she had gone through.
They didn’t dare fire up the boilers, they had to clean everything mechanical first, for the sand had penetrated and piled everywhere, fouling everything. The deepest bilges and most secure ammunition magazines were filmed with the stuff. The food and drink tasted gritty, guns were useless, paint was blasted off, clothing was ripped, sails were torn. The crew was exhausted by the exertions in the storm—just hanging on and breathing was an effort—before they started the huge task of cleaning the entire ship. All hands, including the indefatigable Rork, went about their work dazed and silent.
Bunt got a noon sight that first clear day, then a forty-five degree additional sight later on. That was enough to tell him his dead reckoning wasn’t off by much, which impressed Wake. They were east of Sardinia at latitude forty—a lot closer to Rome than Africa—and very very lucky they hadn’t fetched up on the rocky capes of Sardinia’s southern end. With bloodshot eyes, Bunt estimated to Wake that with the current wind they would take another five days to reach Chetaibi.
“They’ve been waiting for us for five months already. What’s another five days?”
***
Chetaibi was totally unlike Wake had pictured beforehand. It was not a tropical coast—they were at the same latitude as Norfolk—and there was no jungle, not even any foliage to speak of among the mud-walled huts lining the shore and stretching away up the slopes. Only a few date palms were scattered around on the hills behind the town. There were no large buildings, and the only breaks in the roof lines were about a dozen tall narrow mud block towers of maybe thirty feet. A lone unintimidating fortress of crumbling walls perched on a low hill. The universal color was brown. It was as alien a place as he had ever seen, and his first thought was to question why in the world a Christian missionary group would send anyone to it.
They anchored amidst a crawling mass of native craft, with no other European vessels in sight. Lieutenant Thomas Fyock, Alaska’s dark-eyed executive officer, had been to North Africa on an earlier cruise in the Med aboard Constellation. Something of an amateur linguist who picked up foreign tongues easily, he wasted no time in giving some unusual orders.
“Rig the boarding nets and have the duty watch armed and set to repel boarders, Mr. Standing! I want no bumboats alongside. Give one warning, then pike their hulls and sink ’em. They can swim to shore.”
The executive officer glanced aft at Bunt, who nodded approvingly, then Fyock strode over to the starboard quarterdeck and yelled “Seer fhalek!” at a harbor bumboat filled with men in rags that was already alongside. His goatee and dark complexion, combined with those deadly eyes, gave off a fiery appearance. Then he picked up a boarding pike and pointed it at the boat, pretending to lunge it at them. Instantly the boat sheered off, the occupants loudly grumbling.
“Set the rules straight away,” Fyock said to Wake as he passed him headed forward.
“Thievery?” asked Wake.
“Hell, Lieutenant. That’d be easy to thwart. No, I’m not worried about their thieves. I’m worried about their typhoid and pox! No one from shore comes about. And only a picked few will go ashore. That would be you.”
The blood drained from Wake’s face. He hadn’t thought of that. No one had told him, warned him. Typhoid or smallpox was as bad or worse than the yellow jack he had seen during the war and known personally in Panama.
“Typhoid? Smallpox? Are you sure?”
“Never sure. That’s the point. They have it on this coast. All over this coast. I saw it in Tripoli, in Algiers, in Tunis. They say that after a sirocco—around here they call it a chergui—typhoid increases. The heat and wind bring it out and spread it around, where it finds weakened people and infects them. The pox is here all the time. You never know, so you assume the worst. You be damned careful ashore. When you come back, you’ll be in quarantine in a ship’s boat for two days at least.”
Seeing Wake’s reaction, Fyock shrugged. “Welcome to Africa, Lieutenant Wake. You’ve just gone back in time.”
***
The boat coxswain had orders to touch the jetty long enough for Wake to jump off, then back away and loiter off in the harbor, taking care to keep all other craft away from it. Wake and two other men had jumped off the bow as a crowd ashore watched with sullen curiosity.
In Bunt’s cabin an hour earlier, the captain had asked if Wake had anyone he wanted to go ashore
