Corsair

by Tim Severin

  The other galeriens realised it too. A low moan arose from the oar benches interspersed with angry shouts. Piecourt spoke quietly to the remaining warders who loaded their muskets and stood to face the oar benches. The two boats, filled with men, pushed off and began to pull for the shore. Their course was downwind, and within minutes the men were scrambling out of the boats and splashing up on land while the oarsmen turned and began to row back out to the galley. Their return trip was slower, and by the time they reached the St Gerassimus, the water which had been around Hector’s ankles was now up to his knees. Whatever injury the galley had suffered, she was sinking fast

  The boats made two more trips to the beach and soon there was no one left on the poop deck except Piecourt, the rowing master and half a dozen armed argousins. Just before mid-morning the galley was awash, the sea lapping the tops of the oar benches, and the galeriens were frantic. They swore and pleaded, raged and wept, tugged at their chains. Piecourt gazed at them pale-eyed and utterly implacable. ‘May you rot in hell,’ one of the oarsmen shouted. ‘No,’ called the premier comite. It was the first word he had spoken directly to the benches. ‘It is you, you infidels and heretics, who will suffer torments. I shall not even think of you.’ He lifted from his belt the ring of the heavy keys for the padlocks on the oar benches, held it up for all to see, and deliberately tossed it into the waves. Then he turned, stepped into the boat and gestured at his men to row for shore.

  Spray from a wave crest wetted the back of Hector’s neck. In front of him was a piteous sight – the heads and naked torsos of two hundred galeriens glistening above the waves as they stood on their benches and tried to escape the rising water. Flotsam, odd lengths of timber, a galerien’s cloak half filled with air so it floated, all drifted past him. Beside him, Bourdon blurted, ‘I dared not move while those swine argousins were watching. I’d have been shot. Let me have some slack on that chain so I can try to get at the padlock.’ Irgun, the big Turk, reached sideways, seized the padlock where it was attached to the coursier and held it steady. The galley was so low in the water now that every wave submerged the padlock, and sea water gushed out of the keyhole as it reappeared. Bourdon lay prone across his companions and began to feel inside the padlock with the tip of the spike. He choked as a wave crest filled his mouth, then closed his eyes as if asleep as he concentrated on feeling for the levers within the lock. Twice the spike slipped out, and once the point stabbed into Irgun’s fist. The big Turk did not flinch. Finally Bourdon withdrew the tool, bent the thin tip at a right angle, then plunged it deeper and gave it a twist. The padlock popped open.

  ‘Well done!’ blurted Hector, the pressure on his ankle chain suddenly relieved. He took a deep breath and bent forward, head underwater. He groped for the heavy bench chain, pulling it clear of his leg irons. To his right he felt Karp do the same. Coughing and spluttering all five men scrambled up on to the coursier whose top was already being lapped by the waves. ‘Help us!’ screamed an oarsman from a neighbouring bench. Bourdon turned and handed him the spike. ‘You’ll have to help yourself,’ he shouted back. ‘There’s too little time.’

  Hector looked around him. Amidships the galley was entirely underwater. Only the poop deck and the rambade were above the waves. The rambade was only a few paces away. Hitching up his leg chain to his belt hook, he shuffled on to it.

  ‘What do we do now?’ asked Bourdon, looking at the distant shore. ‘It’s too far to swim. Our leg irons will drag us down. They’ll be the death of us.’

  ‘Not if you do as I show you.’ It was Dan who spoke. He crossed to where the empty gunpowder kegs were still lashed in place. Selecting a barrel, he unbuckled his heavy galerien belt, wrapped it around the keg, and cinched it tight. ‘Hold the barrel in your arms, sideways like this, and jump overboard. When you’re in the water, make sure you get the centre link of your leg chain on to the belt’s hook. Then push down with both feet. It’ll be like riding in stirrups. The barrel should take your weight. Don’t try to swim, just concentrate on staying upright, clutching the barrel, and the wind and waves will carry you ashore.’

  With that, he jumped into the sea, holding the barrel against his chest.

  Hector watched his friend come back to the surface, the keg in his arms dipping this way and that, spinning and turning in the water so that one moment Dan was on the surface, the next he was beneath the sea. But soon Dan had found his balance and could be seen leaning forward across the keg, with his face far enough out of the water so that he could breathe. The barrel gyrated slowly as it drifted towards the shore. ‘Come on. Hurry!’ he shouted back at his companions, and one after another they leaped into the sea.

  IRGUN DID NOT reach the shore. Perhaps he was too heavy to be supported by an empty keg or it filled with water and sank, or he failed to secure his leg chain on the belt hook. But Hector, Bourdon and Karp drifted into the shallows where Dan was waiting to assist them on to land. ‘What made you think of that?’ asked Hector. He was shaking with exhaustion as he sat down on the beach to rest. ‘Our canoes at home,’ said the Miskito. ‘I told you how we turn them the right way up after they capsize. But it’s not always possible. So if the wind and waves are right, a sensible fisherman just hangs on and waits until he is blown ashore. That’s if the sharks don’t take him.’

  ‘I’ve never seen a shark. If there are any in this region, they’ll soon be feasting on those poor wretches,’ said Hector. He was looking back towards the galley. All that was now visible of the St Gerassimus was a section of the outrigger which had once supported her great sweeps and the blades of several oars pointing to the sky like enormous spines. The galley must have capsized while he and the others were coming ashore. That way, he thought to himself, the galeriens chained on board would have drowned more quickly than if the vessel had settled on an even keel. He had scarcely known any of them, yet a sense of great weariness and gloom oppressed him.

  A touch on his arm abruptly brought him back to his surroundings. Karp was pointing up the beach and making an alarmed snuffling sound. A man was walking towards them. For a moment Hector thought he might be another survivor from the wreck, because he was wearing what looked like a galerien’s long hooded cloak. But the stranger’s garment was loose and grey, not brown. Then he saw other men, similarly dressed, cautiously making their way down the rocky hillside behind the beach.

  ‘Greetings,’ Hector called out, getting to his feet and forcing a weary smile. He spoke first in lingua franca, then in Turkish, but received no answer.

  The group of strangers, about a dozen men, came closer, and stopped a few yards away. They were Moorish-looking but with paler skins. Most kept up the hoods of their cloaks, but those who did not, had shaven heads except for a long lock of hair which hung down the back of their scalps. They wore thin fillets of leather across their foreheads. Only a few carried old-fashioned muskets. They stared at Hector and his companions.

  ‘Greetings,’ he tried again. ‘Can you help us, please?’

  One of the strangers said something to his companions in a language Hector did not understand.

  Then, to Hector’s surprise, Dan intervened. He spoke slowly and haltingly, choosing his words carefully. The man who seemed to be the leader of the group replied and the two of them exchanged a few sentences.

  ‘Who are they?’ Hector asked his friend. ‘And what is that language you are speaking?’

  ‘They call themselves amazigh, “the free people”, Dan replied. ‘Several of the gardeners who worked with me in the gardens of Algiers spoke the same language, or something very similar. I can’t understand everything they say, but they are from a village in the hills. Apparently they saw the galley in difficulties and came down to the beach to investigate if there was anything to salvage. They were frightened of the armed men who came ashore earlier in the boats so they kept out of sight.’

  ‘That must have been Piecourt with the ship’s officers and the other sailors.’

  ‘Apparently they went off alo
ng the beach, and turned inland. The amazigh said that they won’t get far. Their clan chief lives in that direction and they’ll fall into his hands.’

  ‘So what about us?’

  ‘They’ve recognised that we are slaves from the galley, and I’ve told them that you and I are Muslims. If they’re like my workmates at the masseries, they’re also followers of the Prophet.’

  ‘What about Bourdon and Karp?’

  ‘I didn’t say anything about them. The amazigh seem friendly enough. They’re taking us to their village. Once we’re there, they’ll get the village blacksmith to remove our leg irons.’

  The climb through the foothills was almost more than the four castaways could manage. The land rose steeply, one rocky slope succeeding another, the narrow footpath twisting and turning its way along dried-up watercourses and then up screes of fallen rock. Occasionally they passed clumps of pine trees, and beside the track Hector noted plants he remembered from his days in Algiers – wild lavender, purple thyme and white rock roses. Eventually, when the sea was far below them, their guides led them into a small settlement made up of single-storey houses, their walls of unmortared stones. In the centre of the village a mountain spring had been diverted through wooden pipes to splash into a stone trough placed in the shade of a venerable cedar tree. Here the village blacksmith knocked out the rivets that closed the ankle rings on the visitors’ legs, demanding no payment except that he keep the metal for himself, and the village headman asked Dan to go with him the following day to meet with the clan’s council of elders. They would decide what was to be done with the castaways. In the meantime they were his guests.

  Dan and the headman left long before daybreak, and Hector and Karp waited all morning for his return, seated in the village square and watching Bourdon entertain the village children with sleight of hand, making pigeon eggs and other small objects appear and disappear. Trying to remember what he had learned from Turgut Reis’s maps and charts, Hector broke off a twig and was drawing in the dust so that he could work out where St Gerassimus had sunk. He had made a rough outline of the Mediterranean when, unexpectedly, Karp took the twig from his hand and scratched a mark to the north of Constantinople, then pointed to his chest

  ‘Is that where you come from, Karp?’ Hector asked. His companion nodded, then clumsily drew some letters in the dust. Hector managed to puzzle them out.

  ‘You are a Bulgar?’ he asked. Again Karp nodded, and held out his hands, the wrists close together. ‘You were taken prisoner?’ Again the nod. ‘Where was that?’ Karp looked down at the map in the dust and, hesitantly, placed his finger at its eastern end. ‘In the Holy Land?’ This time Karp shook his head, and drew some more letters in the dust. They read ‘Kan—’. Hector stopped him. ‘You were taken prisoner at Kandia?’

  Turgut Reis had told him all about the siege and fall of Kandia. It was a famous victory for the Turks. As a galley commander Turgut had witnessed the final capitulation of the city to the forces of the Sultan. It had taken the Turks fourteen years of siege to bring Kandia to its knees, and they had allowed the defenders, Venetians and their allies, to leave after handing over the keys of the city.

  ‘But the Christians were given free passage out of the city, were they not?’ Hector commented. In response, Karp opened his mouth, pointed to the mangled root of his missing tongue, and made an angry gurgling noise as he shook his head.

  ‘The Turks tore out your tongue?’ Now Karp was really agitated. He shook his head furiously from side to side. ‘If it was not the Turks, then who did that you?’ asked Hector gently. He hoped to calm the Bulgar. To his astonishment, Karp got to his feet, drew a cross in the dust, and deliberately stamped down on it.

  The sound of distant musket shots prevented further questions. There was a flurry of consternation in the village. The women and children rushed inside their houses to hide. The menfolk grabbed up their guns and ran to take up position to cover the approaches to the village. But when the volley of musket shots was repeated, it must have been some sort of announcement because the men relaxed and began to gather in the square, looking expectantly towards the path that led up from the coast. After a little while Hector was relieved to see Dan appear. He was accompanied by the headman and a distinguished-looking elder whom Hector guessed must be the clan chief. But what caught Hector’s attention was the armed escort following on their heels – a dozen fierce-looking Negroes carrying spears and muskets. With them was a white man dressed in a long gown of red satin decorated with lines of pink silk ribbons tied in bows. His rapier hung from a wide baldrick of red brocade, and he was wearing a wide-brimmed hat embellished with a white ostrich plume.

  This flamboyant apparition strode towards Hector and his companions and announced formally, ‘In the name of the Emperor, I summon you to attend on His Majesty, Moulay Ismail.’ To Hector’s stupefaction this command was delivered in Spanish.

  ‘HIS NAME IS Luis Diaz and he’s an officer in the army of the Sultan of Morocco,’ explained Dan some time later when the two friends had a chance to talk together privately. ‘The amazigh are tributaries of the Sultan, and Diaz and the soldiers were on a tax-collecting mission among them when he heard about the wreck of the galley. He wanted to interview the survivors about the bombs dropped on the town. He showed up while the amazigh council of elders were still discussing what to do with the other survivors from the St Gerassimus whom they had picked up.’

  ‘News travels fast,’ observed Hector.

  ‘The mortar bombardment was a sensation. Everyone’s talking about a wonder weapon.’

  ‘And did Diaz learn anything?’

  ‘Piecourt is in charge of the survivors, and is claiming to know nothing about the mortar. He said that the St Gerassimus’s commander and all the ship’s senior officers had taken the two small boats in order to go along the coast and try to reach a friendly port to fetch help, and the bomb technician had gone with him. There was not enough room in the boats to carry all the survivors so the premier comite had been left in charge of the land party.’

  ‘I wonder where the boats were heading.’

  ‘Piecourt didn’t say. He and the rowing master were there with a dozen sailors and several petty officers, some of whom I didn’t recognise. They weren’t at all pleased to see Diaz. They had already asked me if I could persuade the amazigh to send word to Algiers, to the Jewish ransom brokers there, about their plight. Piecourt even offered me a reward if I could arrange this.’

  ‘Well, all that’s changed now. I have the impression that the amazigh will do whatever the Sultan or Emperor, however he styles himself, wants.’

  ‘No doubt about it. They made no objection when Diaz told them that he was taking charge of survivors from the galley. He said they were his prisoners from now on, and he would be sending them to the imperial capital at Meknes to be questioned.’

  ‘And does that include us?’

  ‘I expect we will be better treated. The amazigh informed Diaz that we had been slaves aboard the galley. Apparently convicted criminals and runaway slaves from other countries are given their freedom once they reach the Emperor’s territory, provided they can make themselves useful.’ Dan hesitated. ‘Hector, there’s something else you should know, though you may not like what you hear.’

  ‘What’s that?’ asked Hector.

  ‘The Emperor accepts tax from the amazigh not just in cash but in kind. If the amazigh cannot pay in cash or goods, they sometimes offer their young women for the Sultan’s harem. They pick out the girls with the palest complexions. The Sultan has a special liking for women with fair skins. He also buys them from the corsairs. In Meknes you may be able to trace what has happened to your sister.’

  SIXTEEN

  ‘I PICKED UP the hat and gown from the rubble of one of the forts outside Tangier, though the feather was sadly mangled,’ said Luis Diaz, preening himself in his colourful costume. ‘One of the English officers must have dropped them when the garrison ran back inside the main defen
ces after blowing up the fort. I was with the Emperor’s siege army at the time. Moulay is determined to capture Tangier from the King of England and add it to his dominions.’

  ‘This Emperor Moulay, what’s he like?’ asked Hector. In the two weeks he had been in the Spaniard’s company, Luis had proved to be an amiable escort, friendly and always ready to talk as they travelled into the interior on their way to Meknes, the imperial capital. Until now Hector had tactfully avoided asking how the Spaniard came to be serving a foreign emperor in Barbary.

  ‘Moulay Ismail is shrewd and utterly ruthless,’ answered Diaz frankly. ‘He’s the most unpredictable and dangerous man you would ever wish to meet, a despot who treats everyone as his personal slave. Oh yes, and he loves animals.’ He gave Hector a mischievous glance. ‘It’s just that some of his animals expect to be fed. Last time I was in the palace, Moulay was watching the senior comptroller of his treasury trying to avoid several hungry lions. Moulay suspected the comptroller of false accounting so he had the man lowered into the lion pit in the palace menagerie. The Emperor was sitting up on the edge of the lion pit, looking down as the animals stalked their prey, and he was enjoying every minute of the show. The wretched financier ran around for a good ten minutes, whimpering and pleading for his life, before the lions finally pounced.’

  ‘Was the man genuinely guilty?’

  Diaz shrugged. ‘Who knows. The Emperor didn’t care, and he had other things to think about. The lions were still excited. One of them leaped up and tried to pull the Emperor off the wall. If Moulay hadn’t been wearing a mail shirt as he always does, he would have been dragged down into the pit as well. But the lion’s claws didn’t get a grip.’

  ‘Why on earth do you serve a man like that?’

  The Spaniard grimaced. ‘I’ve not much choice. An unfortunate matter of a death at Ceuta where I was serving as a soldier. Someone was killed in a brawl over a woman. I thought it best to leave the city and offer my services elsewhere. Besides, I’m in good company. Men from almost every nation serve Moulay – two of his doctors are French; his field artillery is operated by Hollanders and Italians; there’s a clever gardener from England who does the royal parks, and so many Spanish are enlisted in his cavalry or as musketeers that we have formed a mess of our own. You’ll meet some of them when we reach Meknes which should be tomorrow, or perhaps the next day, if this cursed mud and rain doesn’t slow us down too much.’