Barbarians on an Ancient Sea

by William Westbrook

  “I know you are eager to be away to the south, Jeremiah, but I wanted to wait until we had a chance to hear Captain Fallon’s thoughts,” said Somers tactfully.

  There was silence in the office then, Fallon letting Pence work through his indignation to get to a place where he was ready to listen to reason. He could impose his plan on the man, but it was better to have him welcome it.

  “Cully here has hit on an ingenious idea,” said Fallon after the pause. “His notion takes into account the intent of the privateers to board quickly, with as little damage to the ships as possible.”

  It was on Fallon’s side of the desk that Cully now placed a wine bottle filled with nails and a small packet of gunpowder, to which was attached a short length of fuse that protruded out of the top of the bottle, held in by a bit of cloth.

  “This is a grenado, gentlemen,” said Fallon. “It is a variation of those used by the notorious Captain Thompson when he fought off pirate hunters sent by the Governor of Jamaica over 50 years ago to capture his ship. Thompson used powder flasks, stinkpots, and all manner of grenados.”

  “You can’t fire a bottle, sir!” exclaimed Pence, for he had apparently never heard of such a thing.

  “No, you are very right, sir,” said a patient Fallon. “I propose that, since you can’t outfight the privateers at long range, you let them come close, by letting your sheets fly or heaving-to, appearing to give up. Then when they have grappled on and are preparing to board, your men light the grenados and drop them overboard onto the privateer’s deck. We bomb the bastards, as Cully here would say.”

  Cully grinned broadly at the acknowledgement and nodded his head, Somers leaned back in his chair with his eyes alight, and Pence reacted as if he’d been bombed himself, with the stages of shock, consideration and, finally, acceptance playing out on his face.

  “That is brilliant, Cully!” exclaimed Somers. “The nails and glass should work wonders on those buggers. It’ll be the surprise of their lives, indeed it will!”

  “We have made up 100 grenados for your ship, Captain Pence,” said Fallon. “It really is the only way to beat off the privateers if your guns fail to keep them off your sides, don’t you think? I will be leaving as soon as I can gather up my crew. If you can’t wait until then to leave I suggest you take the grenados on board immediately and sail. I will catch up as quickly as I can or join you in Grand Turk.”

  In the event, a very skeptical Pence ordered the grenados to come aboard late that afternoon, for he planned to sail immediately. Fallon asked Aja to get word to the crew that they would be leaving in two days’ time; it would take that long to locate them all. Beauty would need to get stores aboard quickly and, even if Lucille arrived in Grand Turk ahead of Rascal, it meant less time waiting around until her salt was loaded.

  Then events would unfold as they would from there, for Fallon was a strong believer in the guiding hand of fate.

  The afternoon sun warmed the air as Visser and Little Eddy walked the beach towards North Rock. Visser carried some dried flowers that Little Eddy had somehow found, or scrounged, or stolen for the occasion, for Visser had planned a small service for his lost brother.

  As they approached the cluster of coral where Little Eddy had found part of Jocelyn’s name board the gulls swooped overhead, calling out with their high-pitched screams, their eyes fixed on the sea looking for food. Little Eddy led Visser out onto the coral heads as far as they could go, right to the water’s edge. The waves were inconsequential today and the tide was on its way out as they both stared at the water.

  “I’m very sorry, Caleb sir,” said Little Eddy. “I wish I had never found that ‘J’.”

  “No, no, Little Eddy,” said Visser sadly. “I would rather know the truth than tell myself a lie that Alwin might still be alive. You didn’t do anything wrong. But tell me, do you come here often to look for wreckage?”

  “Well, not wrecks so much but things wash up on shore, particularly after a storm and the waves get high. Mostly it’s something to do.”

  “Why aren’t you in school?” asked Visser. “Does your mother know what you’re up to?”

  “Right here’s where I always come,” said Little Eddy, ignoring Visser’s question. “I sometimes bring bread to feed the gulls, which is why they’re making such a racket.”

  Visser looked closely at Little Eddy and saw a momentary sadness about him to match his own. The boy’s hair was dark and unkempt, a hairless face with freckles and gray eyes.

  “My dad is out there somewhere,” the boy said. “He left when I was born, or near abouts. Mom said he sailed away and never came back. Thinks he’s probably dead, you know. But you can’t say for sure. Maybe he’ll come back.”

  Visser’s heart went out to the boy, for though he’d come to North Rock to bid his brother farewell he knew, in a way, that this was where Little Eddy came to find his father, on the rocks or on the sea. Thoughts of his own father inevitably intruded on the moment and he, too, wondered if he would ever be found.

  Clouds obscured the sun as boy and man stood at the edge of the sea. The warm air was gone, replaced by a gray coldness that seemed to confirm their sense of loss. Visser held the flowers aloft a moment and then tossed them into the sea. The gulls swept down, pecked at the dried colors and then, deciding there was nothing to eat, lifted off the water to soar away.

  NINE

  OVER 3000 MILES FROM BERMUDA, ACHILLE ZABANA SAT ON HIS haunches on a hill overlooking the rabble village below him. The sun was just coming up in the east and already a few villagers were creeping about, building cooking fires, and fetching water from the well located in the center of the small courtyard. It was there that he would call the villagers together to bear witness to the power of the dey of Algiers to deal with infidelity and rebellious behavior.

  Zabana was a Frenchman whose mother was Turkish, his father unknown. The cruelties against a mixed race in Marseilles molded a young man in obvious and hidden ways, and he became unmoored, seeking revenge for the indignities heaped upon him by school mates, society and a religion taught but not accepted.

  At twelve, he stowed away on a ship that was captured by corsairs sailing for the dey of Algiers. He was sold as a slave but offered freedom if he would convert to Islam. He accepted the offer, for Muslims could not be slaves. He quickly rose to become a clerk of sorts to the dey, speaking French as well as Turkish, and exercised the soft power of his office broadly, assuming authority he did not really have. He was despised for it, naturally, by those both above and beneath him.

  At twenty-one he volunteered to quash a rebellion in a village in a far province, was granted the chance, and adopted the powerful strategy he had witnessed in Revolutionary France. Zabana had a portable beheading cart, or guillotine, built to be carried on his ship and landed ashore near the village. Then it was pulled by slaves away from the harbor and finally rolled into the village to the most public area he could find. He then sent spies to bring forth the wealthiest and most influential among the villagers; and they came, bewildered and trembling. Each of these unfortunates was forced to kneel before the cart and place his head on its cradle. Then the victim’s arms were put through holes in the lower base of the cradle to hold his head. Next, Zabana ordered the terrible blade raised as all in the square looked on in horror. The victims’ heads were cut off and fell into their hands, which surprisingly retained a momentary ability to hold them. Within a half hour the rebellion and disquiet were effectively over. Zabana loaded the beheading cart back onto his ship and sailed for home to an exultant dey.

  Thereafter, Zabana was the man for the most difficult jobs, the most dangerous jobs, and he sailed with his beheading cart to many fractious villages, bringing them all under control easily. Finally, after so much success, he was named head of the dey’s corsairs, those pirates who took any ships venturing into the Mediterranean from countries who did not pay a tribute to the dey for safe passage.

  In this, too, Zabana was inordinately successful�
��and merciless. Hundreds of ships fell to his corsairs. Though they seized the ships and cargoes, of course, the most valuable cargo of all was human, the captain and crew and passengers who could be sold as slaves.

  Today, as he looked at the awakening village below, Zabana felt strong and righteous. He would teach the lessons of power again, as he had so many times before. The village was fully alive now, and Zabana rose to signal to his men to roll the cart down the hill.

  At that moment, Wilhelm Visser was awakening to another working day in Algiers, a day on the docks unloading lading from a recently captured prize with a handful of other slaves. He was 70 and had been in fair health when his ship had been captured. But the labor he endured and food he was given had reduced him and he’d physically shrunk under the weight of captivity.

  Zabana had ordered his men to torture him into giving up his name and home; after three days of burning his skin with hot irons he would have given up his mother and God. Now he was a broken man, physically and emotionally, with no hope of escape.

  Yet he knew his lot was better than most. He was being held for ransom and given lighter work than others faced each day. Most captives were sold in the bedestan, or slave market, and he’d seen Danes and Russians and Germans there, as well as Americans like himself. Apparently the dey’s raiding parties extended to land as well as sea as his corsairs roamed Europe’s coastline in search of slaves from all nations. Some of the slaves went to households, others to the quarries to break rocks for breakwaters around the harbor. The women and young children were pawed and leered at by old men who bid against one other to stock their harems or purchase companions. For many, rape was worse than death. It was disgusting and barbaric and Wilhelm Visser was totally incapable of preventing it.

  He was lucky to be alive himself. He had been assured by other American merchants that, as long as the U.S. paid tribute to the Barbary rulers, it was safe to pass by Gibraltar to the Mediterranean. Either the dey had changed his mind, or the tribute hadn’t been paid, or both. The explanation depended on whose lie you believed.

  As he looked at the prize he was unloading—the ship appeared to be Venetian—he thought back briefly to his own ship’s capture. His crew had fought valiantly but there was very little wind and the sweeps of the xebecs had brought the pirates right up to the side of his ship quickly. The heathens had climbed aboard, screaming and shouting and, in an instant, the ship was theirs.

  The xebecs then took his ship in tow and the sweeps went to work, pulling him towards a future that he could never have imagined.

  TEN

  IT WAS A TIRED CAPTAIN WHO MADE HIS WAY BACK ABOARD RASCAL JUST before dawn. The ship was dark and he dressed in his sea-going outfit by the light of a single candle in his cabin. He didn’t wash himself, for he wanted Elinore’s scent to linger on his body as long as possible.

  The next two days were spent in addressing the endless tasks of getting the ship ready for sea. Fallon worked tirelessly along with the rest of the crew who came aboard in twos and threes. At night he was with Elinore, sometimes talking softly late into the night about their wedding, sometimes about nothing in particular. But, of course, it wasn’t all talk.

  At last, the ship was ready for sea. Rascal weighed in the morning after all the goodbyes had been said and the promises to return safely had been repeated again and again. Elinore and Ezra Somers were at the dock to see the ship off. Elinore had been stoic all morning around her father, with no outward sign that her last night with Fallon in the fisherman’s shack had been memorable. For his part, it was an exhausted Fallon who waved from the taffrail until they were out of sight, his heart heavy as it always was at leaving.

  The day turned into the night which turned into the next day and so on. The sailing was uneventful, the watches changing with regularity and the routine followed exactly by ninety men who knew their business, their ship, and their captain’s ways. It grew warmer on the third afternoon out of Bermuda as Rascal pushed further south, eating up the distance between herself and Lucille. The ship seemed to grow happier as night fell, for the next day should see them in Grand Turk.

  Then the stars.

  Rascal was on a larboard tack, the reliable east wind full in her sails. Fallon and Beauty stood at the binnacle together staring at the magic overhead, aware that theirs was a special world that those who plied a trade on land would never know. The winter constellations, so familiar to them now, were like signs along the road, as reliable as old friends giving directions.

  The talk, what there was, turned to old times and old friends and adventures and, inevitably, to the cruise ahead.

  “Did you manage to set off one of Cully’s grenados before we left, Nico?” asked Beauty. “Do they work as predicted?”

  “Yes, Cully lit one and threw it inside an abandoned shack on St. David’s Road, near the old pond.”

  “And?”

  “And you wouldn’t have wanted to be in that room,” said Fallon. “Between the glass shards and the nails the wallpaper was destroyed. Unless the privateers are wearing armor, I must say I fear for their lives.”

  Beauty could see Fallon’s teeth as he smiled, for he was an ardent foe of Frenchmen and could be counted on, in fact, not to care about their lives. Too many of his crew and friends had been taken down by French cannon and swords. Even if the war with France ended tomorrow he would be a long time caring about French lives.

  Aja appeared out of the darkness and it was the three of them together, as it had so often been, standing at the binnacle balancing against the roll and heave of the ship without giving it a thought.

  “Captain, sir,” said Aja. “I think Lucille would have been safer if she’d waited to sail with us.”

  “Yes,” said Fallon, “but I didn’t insist. First, because it would only have frustrated Captain Pence to the point of unreasonableness. But, secondly, I believe the grenados will work—they must work if our ships are to protect themselves. Perhaps we’ll find out.”

  “Aja,” said Beauty, “you must know how ants go out in search of food. The colony sends soldier ants out to find food and, once they find it, they return to the colony to let the other ants know where the food is and lead them back to it.”

  “Yes,” said Aja. “I have seen this many times.”

  “We’re operating like the ants,” said Beauty, winking at Fallon. “If Pence is attacked we want our pirate to go back where he came from with an ass full of glass and tell the rest of the bastards the food isn’t worth it.”

  Ah, Beauty.

  The morning began with a surprise.

  “Beauty!” called Fallon. “All hands, all hands!” The lookout’s report of a ship in the offing had brought Fallon out of his morning routine of walking the windward deck.

  “Where away?” Fallon called as the ever-present Aja handed him his telescope.

  “Southeast!” called the lookout. “A schooner, I make! Now two ships!”

  Every member of the crew was now in action, and Cully’s gun crews received shot and powder for the great guns. The decks were wetted and sanded so that the crew would not slip on bloody planks. In very little time slow match sparked to life in the sand tubs next to each one of 12-pounders and the long nine.

  “Mr. Barclay,” Fallon called to the sailing master, “take us down to those ships,” and Barclay issued the orders that would bring Rascal into action as soon as possible. Here was Aja at Fallon’s right hand waiting for orders as a hush descended on the ship and all eyes strained to see southward, into the future.

  “Aja, have Cully stand by but not run out either battery yet,” said Fallon. “Let’s see what we see before we commit.”

  “Deck there!” came the call from the lookout. “Looks like t’other is a sloop! American or I’m a Chinaman!”

  Now broadsides growled in the distance as Rascal edged closer, and Beauty planted her peg in the ring bolt and wedged herself against the binnacle. The set of her jaw said Let’s have it then.

  The s
cene could just be seen from the deck. Two ships were blasting away at each other, the smoke engulfing them in a cloud of gray. The closest ship was indeed an American sloop, with the stars and stripes at the gaff, and the other ship, a schooner, was pounding her at some distance, slightly to the south of the sloop, and the tactical opportunity was not clear yet.

  “What do you think, Beauty?” asked Fallon, as his first mate raised her telescope.

  “I think the schooner’s French but I don’t think she’s navy; at least I can’t see any flag flying. I’m thinking a privateer.”

  That didn’t surprise Fallon, or at least completely surprise him. But it would call up a sense of excitement within the Rascals and make up for the disappointment of the last cruise.

  The situation unfolding before them called for a decision soon. The two ships were sailing parallel lines to the southeast and were perhaps a mile distant from Rascal.

  “Nico,” said Beauty after lowering her telescope. “I think…”

  “There!” Fallon exclaimed, still looking through his own telescope. A lucky shot had shattered the American’s main boom and, with the wreckage dragging in the water, she slewed around up into the wind. With her boom acting as a sea anchor the sloop was hopelessly compromised to maneuver and fight.

  “We’ll drop down between the two ships, Beauty!” ordered Fallon. “Aja, up with the colors! Have Cully ready with the long nine!”

  His mind was running the angles, time, and distance calculations so automatic to him now. Barclay ordered the sails trimmed just so and Rascal came thundering down on the battle, which by now was lopsided and hopeless for the American. The schooner was spilling wind to take off speed and edge closer, firing point blank into the sloop and obviously planning to board.