By nightfall we were boarded and the battle continued hand-to-hand by torchlight. I followed its slow but irresistible progress by sound and smell only now: the surge of battle cries, the screams of the wounded, the gurgle of rowers crushed at their oarbanks, the pound of feet, the swish of blades, all encloaked with the thick brimstone of fired powder.
Then, as he was taking a final stand against the main mast, the Knights’ captain ran out of powder for his silver pistols and, helpless now as a ten-year-old lad, he cried for quarter. The Turks pretended not to understand and cut him down where he stood with their wild Damascus blades.
The stillness that followed the final knowledge of defeat overwhelmed the ship for several moments and seemed about to sink her of its own oppressive weight, sorely battered as she was. I heard the Turks round up their booty—that with legs first, as it was most likely to jump overboard and escape.
Then, endlessly later, the hatch was thrown open so that the nonliving merchandise could be inspected.
A blazing torch was thrust down into the hold and I was blinded by the light. The torchbearer, too, must not have seen clearly, for he called out, “I say, my young friend? Are you in there?”
The words were Venetian, but it was Venetian with an accent, however faint, that I could not fail to recognize.
“Husayn, old man. What the devil are you doing here?”
XI
I was brought up, cleaned off, and allowed a change of clothes and some warm food. We had chicken, fresh-killed from the galley’s coops, for the Turks had thrown the salt pork overboard as offensive to their taste. I got no wine, either, for all the kegs had turned the sea purple and the fish drunk in our wake. But I soon felt much better than I had ever hoped to again. It was a feeling heightened by contrast to what had gone before, and I sat down with my friend to try and sort out what toss of heaven’s dice had brought us together once more.
“I really thought I’d be joining you in Neptune’s kingdom before this day was out,” I said. “By God, how is it that you are even alive?”
“Thanks to Allah, this small fleet of Believers sighted the Knights’ carrack before she sank. Rescuing me and finding me to be one of their own, they determined upon immediate revenge. It was Allah’s will, however, to send that storm, during which we had to seek shelter in a cove near the Italian Gallipoli, and subsequently lost you for several days. Late yesterday we finally sighted you again, and so it was.”
My friend was much changed since I’d seen him last. His Venetian merchant’s clothes he had traded for the long, full robes and turban of the man he really was. He was, no doubt at the core, still the same person, but I could not help but be struck by a seeming change in character that he had put on as easily as new clothes. The heavy blue velvet of his robes seemed to soften him considerably. He seemed tender and compassionate in a way that might have appeared effeminate to others, but which to me seemed easy, natural, and at the same time almost saintly. The color became him, but emphasized the gray in his beard and made him seem older than I remembered. His turban, neat and somber, gave him a look of great and hoary wisdom, while the wide bands of flowered silk sash tight about his midriff made him seem stouter.
Although his sash was stuck now with a silver-hilted dagger and a pistol which was probably still warm, it gave him a look of well-fed bourgeois comfort that put me at ease. I remembered the day I’d first met him in our orchards on the Brenta River. I remembered how his brown eyes had sparkled with mirth and kindness under thick brows that grew together in the middle. I remembered his square-cut beard, grayer now than then, under a broad, slightly hooked nose. And those gold teeth when he laughed—that was something to hold a child’s fascination!
I remembered what a day it was, a beautiful summer’s day in the luminous Paduan sunshine, and we’d known at once we would be friends. He had sung me songs from his boyhood, songs I did not understand, but I had not hesitated to leave the nurse and take his hand to hear more. With a sort of sixth sense like an inward sun tan, that glow returned to me now, though it was night and the Brentan land had long ago gone to pay debts. The feeling came to me that it was the Syrian part of Husayn I liked best. The Venetian man spoke my language, but I never could quite trust him in the same way, perhaps because he did not quite trust himself— or trust his God to be with him—in such a guise.
Some of the same feeling, I think, touched Husayn, too, that night. I heard it in his voice as he spoke his thanks to me for risking my life in his defense. His words were rather stilted and formalized—how else does one pay such thanks, especially one who feels debt like a physical stamp upon his soul?—but I heard the feeling nonetheless. Perhaps there were lines of those old songs in it.
“It was nothing, my friend,” I said, and “You would have done the same for me.”
“No,” Husayn said. “I cannot say that I would have.
