Corsair

by Tim Severin

  When the camels had slaked their thirst, he asked Dan, Hector and the others to go on ahead with him. ‘There’s a second, better, waterhole about an hour away. I will show you how we can harvest the desert’s bounty. It’s time to celebrate with a feast.’

  ‘Please, no more camel’s intestines,’ groaned Bourdon.

  ‘No. This time we’ll have roast ostrich.’

  Sure enough, as they approached the next waterhole, a flock of about twenty ostrich ran off. The giant birds paced away across the desert, their wings outspread. Hector had come across ostriches in the Emperor’s menagerie. But this was the first time he had seen the birds in the wild.

  ‘We’ll never get close enough to shoot them. They run as fast as a galloping horse,’ he said to Ibrahim.

  ‘That’s not how we’ll do it,’ the young man replied. ‘This waterhole is where the birds prefer to drink. All we have to do is dig some holes in the sand where you and the others can lie hidden with your muskets. The birds are suspicious of camels so I’ll take them back to the coffle, and bring the caravan here at dusk. Good hunting!’

  The ambush was easier than Hector had anticipated. He and his three companions prepared their hiding places. Less than an hour after Ibrahim had ridden away, the flock of ostriches came walking back across the desert, unaware of any danger. The hidden musketeers waited until the great birds made easy targets. Their first volley brought down three ostriches. When the flock foolishly came back a second time, they killed another four. That evening the entire caravan fed better than it had done for many weeks, and Hector fell asleep on a patch of soft sand. He was gorged on roast ostrich meat.

  A cry of pain awoke him. He sat up, feeling slightly groggy, and looked around. His eyes had to adjust to the half-darkness. It was still several hours before dawn but the moon had risen and was shedding enough light to see that the camp was in uproar. Dan was already on his feet, a pistol in his hand. Their camels, which had been hobbled kneeling, were straining at their bonds as they tried to rise to their feet. They were roaring and moaning in fright. In the distance there were shouts of alarm. Suddenly a figure flitted between Hector and the last embers of the campfire. For a heart-stopping moment he thought it was a djinn, one of the spectres which Ibrahim had spoken about, evil spirits which wander the desert in the form of men or animals or dust devils. This one had assumed the shape of a human. It was pale grey from head to foot, gaunt and stark naked. It held a spear in each hand, and the hair on its head was long and filthy. As the figure glanced towards him, the creature’s eyes glittered for a moment in the moonlight. It took Hector a few seconds to realise that what he was looking at was a desert thief.

  The attack was over before anyone could react. Ibrahim lit a brand from the fire and went to check their losses. Two camel saddles were missing, and several strips of dried camel meat. One of their animals was bleeding from a deep gash where a thief had stabbed it in the shoulder with his spear. ‘The bandit probably hoped to cripple the creature so we had to leave it behind,’ he commented glumly. He called out for his grandfather to come to look, and when there was no reply, went to where the old man had lain down to sleep beside a thorn bush. He found him sitting, dazed from a blow to the head. With his acute hearing Abdullah had been the first to detect the presence of the thieves as they crept into camp, and had tried to intercept them. They had struck him down without mercy. ‘They must have been watching the waterhole, waiting for a coffle to show up,’ said the old man after he had recovered enough to speak, and various merchants arrived with similar tales of thefts and losses. ‘This time we were lucky. They were only sneak thieves. If there had been more of them, we might have been murdered as we slept.’

  ‘Will they attack again?’ demanded the merchant’s spokesman angrily. He was wearing the same faded red burnous as the day Hector first saw him, and was in a foul mood. He had lost several packs of trade goods.

  ‘They are Tooarick of the Labdessah tribe. They live by plunder,’ answered the guide. ‘It is best that the caravan moves on tomorrow before the word gets out that we are here, and the Labdessah summon their fellows.’

  The spokesman rounded on Hector. ‘You are meant to be our guards! Instead you were snoring by the fire.’ He was spitting with rage. ‘When we march, you will be sure to protect us. Otherwise it will be the worse for you!’

  ‘There is no point in quarrelling,’ the old man intervened. ‘Save your strength for the journey. Now that the Tooarick have found us, they will not give up. They will follow us like jackals.’

  His prediction was painfully accurate. The coffle moved on the next morning but the thieves struck again during the following night. Hector and his companions stayed on guard with their muskets but failed again to detect the intruders and did not fire a shot. The Labdessah were expert thieves. Stripped naked, their bodies smeared with ashes, they crept their way into the encampment and made off with more trade goods. They cut the hobbles of a dozen camels and drove them off into the darkness. A merchant who tried to stop them was stabbed in the stomach and died four hours later. The merchants swore and raged. They shouted at Hector and his companions, and blamed Abdullah for their troubles. But there was no remedy. On the third night the caravan was robbed yet again, and however urgently the travellers marched onward, they knew they were failing to shake off their tormentors. They embarked on a sand sea where a succession of tall dunes extended in every direction like waves on the surface of an ocean. If they looked behind them from the summits of the taller dunes, they could see in the far distance a Labdessah outrider mounted on his camel. He was tracking them, waiting for them to make camp so that his fellows could plan their next attack.

  Hector grew more and more frustrated. ‘We can’t go on like this,’ he confessed to Ibrahim on the fourth day of their ordeal. The young man, who normally rode beside his grandfather in advance, had dropped back to join the rear guard. ‘The caravan is being bled to death.’

  Ibrahim shook his head. ‘My grandfather tells me that it is impossible to shake off the Labdessah once they have attached themselves to a coffle. They are like the parasites that feed on the camels. Once they fasten on to their victim they do not let go.’

  ‘Then I suggest we give the Labdessah a nasty surprise.’

  Ibrahim cocked his head on one side as he looked at Hector with sudden interest. ‘You have a plan?’

  ‘The Tooarick don’t yet know that we have good muskets,’ Hector said.

  Ibrahim thought for a moment before replying. ‘Not unless they witnessed you shooting the ostriches. Otherwise you have not yet used your guns in their presence. The Labdessah have always attacked in the dark, and they are armed with spears or knives.’

  ‘Then I propose we deal with them as we dealt with the ostriches. When we come to a suitable place – a dip between the sand dunes where we are out of sight of the pursuit – Dan, Jacques, Karp and I will get down off our camels and prepare an ambush. We will scrape out shallow holes where we can lie in wait with our muskets. You ride on, taking our camels with you, and rejoin the coffle. With luck the Labdessah will blunder straight into the trap, and we will give them a bloody nose. Later you can come back and collect us.’

  Ibrahim’s face lit up. ‘We could set the ambush right now, over the next sand ridge. I’ll tell my grandfather about it later. But please be careful. The thieves have the eyes of falcons and would immediately notice anything unusual. We must work quickly.’

  The next hollow between the dunes proved an ideal site for the ambush. There was a patch of soft level sand on which grew a few withered bushes, no more than two feet high. Here Hector and his companions slid down from their camels and hastily scraped out shallow trenches for themselves. Placing their muskets before them, they lay down, and Ibrahim quickly threw sand over them to cover them. Then he remounted and led the camels off in the direction of the marching caravan. ‘I’ll be back before nightfall,’ he called. ‘In the name of Allah, shoot straight!’

  Hector
lay on his belly, feeling the heat of the sand spreading up through his thin cotton garments. To his right, about twenty paces away, Karp was similarly buried. Away to his left lay Bourdon and Dan. Each man had picked a location where a low leafless bush gave additional cover but did not interfere with his sight line. They lay in a shallow arc, facing the way they had come. Before them the dune sloped upward quite steeply, then came to a crest some fifty yards away. That was were they expected the Labdessah to show.

  Gently Hector checked that the lock of his musket was in working order. Unwinding the end of his head cloth, he draped it loosely around the delicate mechanism to protect it from the sand. Then he lowered his face down to the sand, blew gently to clear a few loose grains from his nose and mouth, and closed his eyes. He settled down to wait.

  After some time he became aware of a tickling sensation on his forehead. A small creature was burrowing up through the sand towards his face. He raised his head slightly to ease the pressure on the sand and give the creature an easier passage. The tickling became more of a scratching. He lifted his head higher still, allowing an inch or so of free space, and felt a slight rasping sensation just below his hairline. The creature was almost clear. He opened his eyes to see what it was. Less than an inch away stood a scorpion as long as his middle finger, and as fat. The insect must have detected the flicker of his eyelid, for suddenly it stopped and raised its sting, curling its body ready to strike. Hector held his breath. The green sea-pale transparency of the scorpion’s shiny body was the colour of the tiny crabs which had crawled across the rock pools when he was a boy. Its armoured body was like a miniature lobster, only curled in reverse. He was almost cross-eyed with the strain of keeping the deadly creature in focus, yet holding completely still. The muscles of his neck complained as he arched his head even farther backwards. Ibrahim had warned them of the Saharan scorpion. The sting would kill a dog within six or seven minutes. A man would die in as many hours, from convulsions.

  For what seemed like an age the black tip of the venom sting wavered in his face. Then the scorpion relaxed. The body slowly uncurled, and the insect crawled off on its crooked legs.

  The next time he raised his head, Hector was shocked to see two camel riders had already started down the slope of the sand dune before him. They were Labdessah. Both men were swathed in loose blue garments, and their heads and faces were wrapped in folds of black cloth leaving only a narrow slit for their eyes. They were halfway down the slope, the feet of their camels plunging into the soft sand, when another half-dozen Tooarick appeared on the skyline behind them. Hector reached forward gently. His arm was numb where he had been lying on it, and he could feel a tingling as the blood began to flow again. Very gently he peeled aside the cloth protecting the musket lock. He took slow deep breaths. His eyes never left the two Labdessah as they rode closer.

  A single low bush stood in isolation some thirty paces in front of him. It had been agreed with the others that this bush would mark the point where they would spring their ambush. The two cameleers were only a few paces away from it now. He raised his musket and took aim at the leading rider. The target came level with the bush, and he fired even as he heard the sound of Bourdon’s musket to his left, and then a shot from Dan. Through the small cloud of black smoke Hector saw the lead rider crash from his saddle, hitting the ground so heavily that Hector knew he must be dead. The second man lurched sideways. He managed to stay on his camel, which gave a great swerve and began a panic-stricken run across the face of the sand dune. Farther up the dune were sudden shouts of dismay and alarm. The six Labdessah wrenched their camels around, and applied their goads as they forced their beasts into an urgent retreat. Within moments they had fled over the crest of the dune, closely followed by their wounded colleague and the runaway camel of his dead companion.

  Bourdon gave a whoop of triumph. ‘That should have stopped them in their tracks,’ he exulted as he sprang up from his hiding place, and began to reload his musket. Hector and Dan waited for Karp to join them before they approached the downed Labdessah. The man had been killed outright. He lay on his back, one leg bent under him, an arm flung out.

  ‘Did you get a good look at the ones who got away?’ Hector asked Dan.

  ‘Yes,’ the Miskito replied. ‘I’d say they learned their lesson. Only two of them were carrying muskets, and both weapons were obsolete and near useless. They know now that we can bite back.’

  ‘Let’s hope they leave the caravan alone in future,’ Bourdon intervened. He was still jubilant. ‘Maybe those bastard merchants in the coffle will treat us with a little more respect now they know what we can do.’

  ‘We should not wait down here,’ said Hector. ‘If the Labdessah decide to come back, we’re dangerously exposed. We’d better climb back to the crest of the dune. From there we can keep a lookout, and wait for Ibrahim.’

  Feet sinking deep in the loose sand, they scrambled to the top of the dune. There was no shade anywhere, and the sun beat down on them out of a clear sky as they sat and waited for Ibrahim to bring their camels. The hours passed, and they became more and more thirsty. From time to time Jacques, the most impatient, stood up and scanned the horizon. There was no sign of the Labdessah, nor of Ibrahim. There was not a living creature in view except the distant black speck of a circling bird of prey. Finally, as the sun began to set, the Frenchman voiced what all of them had been thinking. ‘What do you think is delaying Ibrahim? He should have been here long before now. The coffle will have moved on so far that it will be impossible for us to catch up with it on foot.’

  Hector rose and shook the sand from his clothing. ‘Wait here and keep a good lookout. I’m going down to check the body of the Labdessah. Maybe he had some food on him, and a waterskin.’

  But when he reached the corpse, he found that the man had carried only a dagger strapped to his forearm, and a small leather purse on a cord around his neck. The purse contained a handful of worn copper coins. Nearby lay two spears which had fallen to the ground when he was shot. His food and waterskin must have been on his camel, which had bolted. The effort of plodding back up the dune made Hector realise just how weak and thirsty he had become. He felt slightly dizzy by the time he rejoined the others, and was glad to drop down on the sand and rest. ‘Nothing,’ he reported. ‘We’ll have to spend the night here, and hope that Ibrahim shows up in the morning. It’s sensible to stay where he knows to find us.’

  After sunset the temperature began to fall rapidly. The four men shivered in their light clothing, huddling together trying to share their warmth. They took it in turns to keep watch, though none of them slept for more than a few moments. They heard scuffling noises from below, and guessed that a sort of scavenger was investigating the corpse of the Labdessah. Fearful that the dead man’s companions might return, they jumped at shadows. Bourdon caught a glimpse of a flitting movement in the darkness. He raised his musket and was about to take a shot when the shadow revealed itself as a tiny fox-like animal with huge ears which gazed at them for a second, then turned and vanished.

  Hector was on watch when the red-orange glow of another fiery sunrise began to light up the horizon. Below him was a remarkable sight. A blanket of white mist, no more than a few feet deep, had silently occupied the sand valley in the night. He marvelled that the vapour could form in such an arid land, and licked his cracked lips at the thought of the moisture, so close yet unobtainable. His gaze travelled down the length of the valley and there, some distance away, were the heads and shoulders of five men coming towards him. They must have been on camels for they swayed back and forth with the characteristic movement of their mounts. Yet the animals themselves were invisible, submerged within the layer of white mist. Briefly he was reminded of the day when Turgut Reis’s galley had glided through the sea fret of Sardinia, and the sailor Dunton had told him that the lookouts at the masthead could be in clear sunshine above the fog. Now, even as he watched, the mist began to ebb. It shrank down, thinner and thinner, and the corpse of
the dead Labdessah appeared like a dark rock when the tide receded. Hector came to his senses. He had been so cold that his thoughts were sluggish. He nudged Dan with his foot. ‘Riders,’ he said softly. ‘Coming our way. Stay low. I’ll let you know what’s happening.’

  As he watched, the camel riders continued their approach. They were in single file, with one man some distance in front. Presumably he was their scout. Something about the way they rode told Hector that they were keeping a watchful lookout. ‘Slide back over the edge of the dune, and keep out of sight,’ he warned the others. ‘They look like Labdessah, five of them. Maybe they’ve not seen us and will ride by.’ All five riders were dressed in the loose blue garments of Tooarick, and the black cloths wrapped around their heads gave them a sinister appearance. The only difference among them that Hector could see was that their leader rode a particularly fine-looking camel. Its bridle and trappings were hung with red and blue decorations.