Barbarians on an Ancient Sea

by William Westbrook

  “Lookout!” called Jones from the quarterdeck. “What do you make of her now?”

  “A small frigate by the looks of her!” came the answer. “French or I’m damned!”

  That sent excitement through Renegade’s crew; to a ship so long in harbor on the ways the prospect of a prize was beyond welcome. The tension onboard was palpable and Jones felt it, as well, and he longed inexpressibly to command a ship in battle again. It had been a year since Renegade had been in action.

  The ships were growing closer and Jones ordered the British colors to be hoisted to see if that would flush the same action from the oncoming ship. It did, the French capitaine showing unexpected spunk in the face of a bigger foe. On the ships came; on their present courses they would pass within a quarter mile of each other. Jones ordered the helmsman to fall off to leeward so as to close the gap and attempt to force the capitaine’s hand before he had to show his own. Renegade had the weather gauge, though the French actually preferred to engage from leeward, a position that left them in a position to retreat before the wind. In fact, at a mile and a half the French ship bore off northward, the capitaine’s spunk having evaporated, and ran before the wind in an attempt to outrun the big British ship. Renegade quickly fell off, as well, and followed.

  “Deck there!” came the lookout’s call. “She looks to be a Venus class!”

  Jones knew immediately that he was chasing one of the class of small frigates favored by the French. He knew them to be lightly built, not from any want of good design or materials, but because of intent: French ships were not built to be away from port for any great length of time and thus the need to carry a great store of shot and supplies was limited. Jones pictured the ship in his mind and knew that she carried twenty-six 12-pounders and was probably a good sailer.

  But not, as it turned out, as fast downwind as the much larger Renegade. Within two hours the British ship was up to her and her name could be read: Honneur. It was soon after that Jones had stolen the Frenchman’s wind and forced the capitaine to accept the inevitable. This was a race he would not win. Without firing a shot he hauled down his colors and hove-to.

  Renegade had her first prize in a very long time. After he had sent a boarding party across to Honneur, Jones began pacing the deck deep in thought, smiling to himself as he walked. It was not every day that a French prize could be taken without a shot. He wondered how it would look in the Gazette, and then he chided himself for caring.

  Here was his gig coming back, hopefully carrying the capitaine’s orders, assuming they hadn’t been thrown overboard. At word that the French crew were locked below decks, Jones breathed easier and ordered Renegade’s guns secured.

  This battle, such as it was, was over.

  It was much later when Jones sat in his cabin and pondered the interview with the French capitaine of Honneur which, to his mind, had produced little in the way of useful information. He had invited Sir William to sit in on the interview and translate, for he spoke many languages, including French. Honneur had been on her way to Martinique to take off several officials and return them to France, no more. Jones and Sir William had reviewed the capitaine’s orders and concluded he was telling the truth.

  Jones and the crew of Renegade were delighted that the French ship had been taken without a shot, for that meant it was not necessary to repair damage—shot holes and shattered spars and the like—before taking her to the prize court. Jones ordered a small prize crew aboard Honneur to follow Renegade to Gibraltar and the prize agent there.

  If Lord Keith was not there, his orders were to proceed on to Genoa to find him.

  FORTY-EIGHT

  CLEARLY, THE GAME WAS UP.

  What exactly about their appearance had tipped off the janissaries was hard to know. But Fallon was sure that the failure to understand the questions put to them didn’t help their cause, and no amount of Senegalese did either. Obviously, Fallon was a white Christian they’d never seen before and that made the janissaries curious, as well. Aja did his best to confuse the situation but in the end they were both roughly rousted up, searched and their weapons taken. Then they were made to walk down the small, steep road through the lower city to the bagnio by the quay and the holding pens that waited there. Well, Fallon thought ruefully, it had been his idea to see the holding pens and now they would.

  Just outside the pens was a squat building and it was into a room there that Fallon and Aja were led and told to sit on two wooden chairs. A third chair, behind a wooden table, was empty. Two janissaries remained to guard the prisoners and stood behind them, stoic and silent.

  Some minutes passed, then a short, swarthy man in a green caftan and golden turban entered the room from a door on the right, conferred briefly with one of the janissaries and sat at the table opposite the prisoners. A gold necklace hung around his neck and a jeweled cockade was fixed to the front of his turban.

  “I am Doruk, and I am in charge of the dey’s prisoners,” he said in lingua franca. “Who are you and what is your business in Algiers, may I ask?”

  Fallon considered him carefully and wrestled with how to answer. He was at once afraid to give too much away and, on the other hand, his mind searched for an answer that would free them. In the end, he went for the truth. Well, most of it anyway.

  “I am Captain Nicholas Fallon, Captain of the British privateer Rascal, and this is my second mate Ajani. We are British subjects come to arrange a ransom for an American prisoner,” said Fallon. “His name is Wilhelm Visser. Our ship is in Gibraltar because we were attacked by an Algerian corsair once we were through the Strait and had to turn back. In light of the attack we felt it was too dangerous to enter the country as British citizens outright, so we adopted these disguises in order to find Richard O’Brien, whom we were instructed to contact in order to arrange the payment of the ransom. I have a letter of introduction to Mr. O’Brien.” Fallon reached under his tunic and found the letter and handed it to Doruk.

  If Doruk was surprised in any way by Fallon’s statement he didn’t show it. He simply studied his two captives closely, eyes going from one to the other. The letter meant nothing to him, not least because he couldn’t read English.

  “Where is the ransom money now?” he asked finally, and now his eyes seemed to flicker in anticipation, for if the story of the gold were true it would be most welcome news to Mustapha Pasha.

  “It is on our ship in Gibraltar,” said Fallon. “We have only to see Visser alive and be sure our ship can enter the harbor safely with the ransom. Then we can exchange the gold for the prisoner.”

  Fallon watched the emotions play out on Doruk’s face. It was a dark face, thinly bearded, pockmarked and oily and Fallon couldn’t imagine anything truthful coming out of his mouth. But he was determined to play the hand out and hope for the best. Really, he knew, he had no other choice.

  “British ships are always welcome in Algiers,” said Doruk with all innocence. “Perhaps you are mistaken about the attack. Or perhaps our corsair could not see your flag.”

  Here Fallon decided to go on the offensive, this in spite of the fact they were prisoners at the moment.

  “There was no mistake,” he said angrily. “We were clearly flying British colors. Janissaries boarded us but we repelled them. Not, however, before they kidnapped one of our ship’s boys. We want him back immediately, as well, or there will be no ransom for Visser. We will take our gold and sail back where we came from.”

  That outburst produced a silent stalemate. Fallon hoped his improvised attempt to tie the gold, which Doruk so obviously coveted, to Little Eddy’s release as well as Visser’s would work. Doruk’s face was a mask of oily blankness. There was no recognition of Little Eddy’s capture or signal that Visser was either alive or dead, and Fallon’s fear of failure began to gnaw at him. Aja fidgeted in his chair, as well, aware that suddenly things were at a crux.

  “I don’t think you’re going anywhere for a while, Captain Fallon,” said Doruk with a little smile. “You see,
I don’t know whether you have gold or not. I don’t even know if you are a real captain. What I do know is that we have two new prisoners who are in Algiers under suspicious circumstances, secretly armed. You have told a very strange story. It may be true or not. But I must consult with Mustapha. He is a wise and beneficent man and will know what to do, and I believe he will want to talk to you himself.”

  “Tell me this, then,” Fallon said to Doruk in as insistent a tone as he could muster. “Are Visser and the boy even alive? If they aren’t I swear on my mother’s eyes you will never see a piece of gold.”

  Doruk only ignored the question and smiled. Then he rose to leave and had a word with one of the guards, who nodded in understanding.

  “Captain, if that is what you are,” he said as he turned back to Fallon, “you will be our guests for a while. Please put any thought of escape out of your head. It is a thin line between brave and foolish, is it not?”

  Fallon and Aja were led outside to the holding pens. They were stockade built, open to the sky, in a line like open air cells with wooden poles for bars. Most of the pens seemed empty, or nearly so. Perhaps there had been a recent auction, thought Fallon ruefully. But some prisoners came forward to call to them in a polyglot of languages as they went by, and some of them spoke English. Fallon paused once to ask about Wilhelm Visser and Little Eddy but the janissary behind him pushed him forward roughly.

  At last they came to a smaller pen whose gate was quickly unlocked and they were pushed inside. The harsh sun threw a shadow to the back of the cell but the pen appeared empty except for several straw pallets covered with blankets that were on the floor. One of the janissaries reached into a chest outside the cell and produced two more blankets which he threw inside onto the floor. Then the gate was closed and locked with a click that seemed final.

  As Fallon and Aja stood adjusting to their new home one of the pallets seemed to move as a prisoner sat up under his blanket and let out a yell.

  Little Eddy struggled to stand, sobbing and smiling at the same time.

  FORTY-NINE

  JUST BEFORE CURFEW IN ALGIERS THE PRISONERS FROM THE WORK crew on the quay were led the short distance to the bagnio and the holding pens where they were housed. Visser had been thinking all day of Little Eddy, as the boy called himself, and the fantastic tale he’d begun telling last night before the exhausted boy had fallen asleep in mid-sentence. Could it be true that Caleb had come to ransom him and was aboard a privateer in Gibraltar? It was almost too much to believe but here was Little Eddy and the boy clearly knew his son. To think of Caleb so close made the longing to see him inexpressibly painful, but he dared not be overly optimistic. The Algerians were not to be trusted to negotiate in good faith.

  As he stepped inside his pen, Visser’s eyes widened in fear as he saw Little Eddy talking to two new prisoners whom he recognized as the two men he’d seen on the quay earlier in the day dressed as Bedouins. They hadn’t fooled him and, apparently, they hadn’t fooled the janissaries who patrolled the city either.

  “Who are you?” he asked suspiciously in lingua franca. The new prisoners’ robes were gone and they were in ship’s slops now.

  “I am Captain Nicholas Fallon,” said Fallon in English. “And this is my second mate Ajani. Would you by chance be Wilhelm Visser?”

  Visser was momentarily stunned at being found and recognized. Fallon watched him closely and could see surprise give way to comprehension.

  “I am, by God!” said Visser.

  “Then we are in the right place,” said Fallon with a smile. “Everyone we’re looking for is here.”

  Visser, Little Eddy, Aja, and Fallon began talking excitedly, each contributing to the narrative of how they came to be together. Rascal’s rescue of Caleb Visser’s ship tumbled out, and Wilhelm nodded in appreciation of the seamanship required to take a ship in tow in a gale, for he had certainly faced storms aplenty fishing off the banks.

  “There were two ships from Boston in that storm, Wilhelm,” said Fallon solemnly. “The other carried the gold for your ransom. I’m sorry to have to tell you that your other son, Alwin, commanded the second ship which foundered on the north shore of Bermuda. I expect with the loss of all hands.”

  Visser looked stunned. It was a part of the story that Little Eddy had omitted. Tears shot from his eyes as he pictured his oldest son cast upon the shoals, dying in a vain attempt to rescue his father. Fallon let him be, motioning Little Eddy and Aja to the far corner of the cell while the old man worked through his grief. When the elder Visser’s chest had stopped heaving, Fallon approached him softly and placed a hand upon his shoulder.

  “I know you are grieving for your son, Wilhelm,” he said, “and you are no doubt taking all the guilt for his death upon yourself. But it is only what any son would have done. Or any father, come to that. It is what you would have done for Alwin. He delivered the gold to Bermuda, and Caleb found it, and at this moment it is aboard my ship in Gibraltar. And if Alwin were here to know it he would be pleased that he had helped, believe me. I know that is small recompense for the loss of a son, but it is the truth.”

  Fallon backed away and left Wilhelm Visser alone with his memories and his sadness. He had said all that he thought to say and it would be up to Visser to work through it and come back to this time, this moment and what would come next.

  Later that night, Wilhelm Visser called out to Fallon and the others to come closer to talk. He was still immensely sad, but he had found pride in his son and determination to escape to be with his other son, Caleb. He wasn’t through grieving, but he was at least looking forward.

  Now Fallon told him about Caleb’s wounding in the battle with Zabana, assuring him that Caleb was in no current danger. Visser stiffened at the mention of Zabana, for he had witnessed the corsair admiral’s ruthlessness first hand.

  Suddenly, the door opened to their pen and one of the guards entered and put food down on the ground while a second guard stood by. Their dinner consisted of stale bread and vinegar and water. Just enough to sustain life, more or less.

  “I am feeling overwhelmed that you both are here,” Visser said solemnly after the guards had left. They were all four crowded together on the floor looking at their pitiful dinners. “First, because you have brought my son, Caleb, to try to rescue me. There is no more generous and selfless act I could imagine. And second, because you are now a prisoner just as I am, and for that I hate myself for bringing you here. It is the end of the story for you, I’m afraid. They will work you hard until they auction you, and then you will work like a dog for the rest of your lives for someone else. Or the dey might buy you and send you to the mines. If you are most fortunate you will be ransomed, but as you can see that can take a very long time. I am beyond grateful that you have come so far and risked so much for me. But I am beyond sad that it has been for nothing. I fear I am not worth the price you will pay. Or that Alwin has already paid.”

  There was a sudden silence in the group now. Little Eddy squirmed and looked with wide eyes at Fallon and Aja.

  “Do you think we can escape this place?” he blurted out. “I want to go back to the ship.”

  It was a child-like, innocent question and Fallon smiled with understanding. He wanted to go back to the ship, too, but at that moment there seemed to be no way that was going to happen.

  “Tell me about what your life is like here, Wilhelm,” he said. “Tell me about the guards and when you leave for work and everything you know about the streets and quay.”

  Wilhelm Visser had an eye for detail and he poured out everything he knew about Algiers, the janissaries and what it was like to be a slave in that walled city.

  “After work they feed us, as you have seen,” he said. “A single guard patrols the pens at night, checking the locks around midnight. I have never heard of an escape. Or even an attempt to escape. In the morning they come for us at first light. I go to the docks to unload ships they have captured or friendly ships who are trading with the Arabs. I do
n’t know what they will do with you. I hope it will not be too strenuous.”

  Visser continued talking while Aja and Fallon listened raptly and absorbed every aspect of his narrative, interrupting occasionally to probe or ask a clarifying question. But the more Visser talked the more Fallon could see no way to escape their fate. They were about to be slaves, worked and used until they were ransomed or they died.

  Mustapha Pasha listened to Doruk’s description of the new prisoners with satisfaction, not least because of the possibility to have their gold as well as slaves. Doruk told him that he had ordered Fallon and his second mate to be held in the same pen as Visser and the boy to prove that they were alive. He hoped that would convince Fallon to cooperate, and the dey nodded sagely.

  “I believe we might send a note to Fallon’s ship, called Rascal, to make it plain it is safe to enter our harbor,” said Doruk.

  “But it must be an excellent message, most convincing, and it would be best if it came from the British captain himself,” said Mustapha. “Have him brought to me tomorrow morning and I will speak with him.”

  “I don’t think he will write the message willingly if he smells a trap,” said Doruk delicately.

  “He might smell the trap but he will write the message, I assure you,” replied Mustapha. “Did you not say that Fallon seemed anxious about the ship’s boy that we captured?”

  “Yes, your highness,” said Doruk, smiling broadly.

  “Then have the boy brought to me, as well,” said Mustapha. “I will give the captain something to be anxious about indeed.”

  Late that night, after Visser and Little Eddy and Aja were asleep, Fallon lay on his straw mat and stared at the blinking stars in the constellation above him. The ancient sailors of the Mediterranean saw in those stars a great ship gliding silently on an endless voyage across the sky. They called the ship Argo Navis. It appeared low on the horizon in spring skies and seemed to be sailing westward. Fallon looked at this apparition of a ship, seeing her poop deck, sails, keel and even her compass. It did indeed seem to be sailing to the west. He imagined he was aboard, for staring at the ship inevitably put him in mind of sailing home.