Fallon gained his feet and helped Beauty to hers as Aja tried to sort out the soldiers and crew who had been thrown against the cannons and bulwarks. Barclay was holding onto the wheel with his only arm and trying to stand while Cully’s face was a mass of blood from a brutal meeting with a gun carriage.
Suddenly, a trumpet’s call rent the air above the roar of the wind.
FIFTY-SEVEN
THE JANISSARIES WERE MASSING TO CLIMB ALONG THE SNAKE’S BODY and onto Rascal’s deck.
“Rascals! Soldiers! To me!” yelled Fallon and he charged towards the bows of his ship, his sword out and held high.
The first shot rang out and a janissary fell to Wilhelm Visser’s hand, his musket borrowed from an unconscious soldier. More shots followed as janissaries fired from Serpent’s deck before climbing aboard Rascal. Several soldiers fell wounded but then their comrades fired a volley that sent janissaries tumbling into the sea.
Fallon jumped into the thick of the fighting, yelling furiously and lurching forward on the heaving, twisting deck. He slashed at a man’s neck, almost decapitating him, and took a slash of his own across his chest from collarbone to gut. It wasn’t deep, but the cut immediately began oozing blood. Aja was beside him, as usual, yelling at the top of his lungs and fighting to protect his friend and captain. But he was down! A janissary had swung his musket and caught Aja on his arm and was now raising his weapon above his head for the final blow when Beauty thrust her boarding pike through his spine, sending him to the deck, instantly paralyzed and dying.
Now Aja was up, his left arm hanging uselessly, but hacking with his right arm at the boarders. And the British soldiers were surging forward, their bayonets fixed to their rifles, their drills on the quad coming to the fore as they fired their muskets on the lurching ship and then thrust their way through the knot of janissaries at the bow, stabbing and plunging with their bayonets at anyone and everyone in a red hat.
But the movement was chaotic under their feet. The ships were locked together but the snake’s head was twisting and pulling back and forth into Rascal’s rigging with each sea that swept under the ships. The xebec slammed into the schooner and jerked away, only to be thrust into Rascal again, the sea working each ship independently, corkscrewing them this way and that, their timbers groaning at being wrenched in such an unnatural way.
The agha was aboard Rascal, calling Surrender dogs! in English and slashing with his scimitar; he drove one of the Rascals to the deck with a half-severed arm before Cully, rising up from beside a cannon, pushed his pistol against the agha’s side and fired, the ball passing through both lungs and out the other side of the man’s body.
As the ships were pushed to the northwest the sirocco began picking up moisture from the sea and mixed it with the dust high in the atmosphere, only to send it downward in what the Italians called blood rain, large red drops that splattered to the decks and began to mix with the blood already soaking the sand there. Now faces were dripping blood rain and every man looked to be bleeding.
The Rascals closed ranks around the wounded Fallon and Aja, fighting all the more furiously as a great mass of janissaries charged. But it was the soldiers, Bisanz’s volunteers, who stood against the Muslim elite and evened the odds, giving no quarter, not backing up an inch and then, with a renewed push, they now began forcing the janissaries backwards. Fallon sensed the fighting was at a crux and he cheered the men on with all the voice he could muster.
At last, the xebec’s snake head began to work its way loose from Rascal, the seas releasing Serpent’s grip on the schooner’s side. Zabana saw it from the deck of his ship and called for the janissaries to leap back aboard Serpent but the ships were suddenly free from each other and it was too late. Some of the janissaries leaped overboard in a desperate attempt to swim for their ship but the seas were too large and they disappeared in the valleys between the waves. The xebec pulled free but was helpless without masts and sails and the swells pushed her stern around to Rascal. Now the ships crunched together again, side against side.
“Grappling hooks!” yelled Fallon weakly, not wanting Serpent to drift away on the next wave, wanting to finish what Zabana had started. Most of the Rascals were fighting in the bows of the ship but Cully and two men rushed to lash the two ships together. Now Serpent’s crew were bystanders no more as Rascal’s crew jumped to the xebec’s deck and began stabbing and cutting at them. Fallon climbed unsteadily over the railings and fell to Serpent’s deck and had to struggle to his feet, the front of his shirt a bright red from both his own blood and the rain. Zabana saw his chance and hatred and humiliation shone in his black eyes. He held a sword in each hand and whispered Arabic phrases that the wind took away as he pushed into the fighting to get to Fallon.
Fallon saw him and stood gamely to his charge, holding onto the guillotine with one hand to steady himself and holding his sword in the other.
Zabana saw his moment and lunged, but Fallon backed up and parried the thrust and then brought his sword down with every reserve ounce of strength he possessed. Zabana’s right hand was severed completely, though it still held a death grip on his sword as it fell to the xebec’s deck.
Zabana looked at it stupidly as Fallon raised his foot and kicked him in the groin, knocking him backwards and through his beloved guillotine. He looked up at the steel blade dripping blood rain and then at his executioner. His eyes were wide as Fallon swung his sword with both hands towards the side of the guillotine and severed the restraining rope. The falling blade gained extra impetus by the lifting deck and in one seventieth of a second it plunged into and then through Zabana’s body.
Whereupon Fallon fell to the deck unconscious.
Seeing their leader fall gave Serpent’s crew nothing to fight for, or be afraid of, and they threw their weapons overboard and fell to the deck in surrender. The Rascals on the galley rushed to Fallon and hoisted him up as gently as the surging deck would allow and passed him over the railing to Wilhelm and Caleb Visser who immediately carried him below to Colquist, Little Eddy running ahead shouting to clear the way.
On board Rascal the slaughter was almost complete as the dey’s finest soldiers were decimated by Britain’s finest and Rascal’s crew. Those janissaries left standing threw down their swords and some leapt into the roiling sea rather than become prisoners of the Christians they had sworn to kill or enslave.
Suddenly, there was no one left to fight. But there was a ship to save! Rascal had a gaping hole in her bow and the top of every wave slapped water inside the ship. She had no sails up and only part of the foremast and the seas had her at their mercy.
The rest of the Rascals on the xebec leapt back aboard the schooner, leaving Serpent’s crew lying on her deck. But one of them had hidden a sword beneath his body. He lunged at the railing and began hacking at the grappling lines that held the two ships together. At last they came apart, the xebec drifting down Rascal’s side and away behind her trailing rigging and spars.
Now Beauty took charge and began issuing orders to attempt to set Rascal to rights as quickly as possible. The carpenter reported four feet and rising in the well and the ship was yawing badly and utterly out of control as the sirocco raged around it. It suddenly occurred to her that her sea dog’s luck had run out, that the ship couldn’t survive the awful storm as battered and broken as she was.
Then a cannon!
Beauty jerked her head around in wonder that the crew aboard Serpent were still fighting but they had drifted far behind.
No! Out of the brown gloom was an apparition as beautiful and welcome as anything she could imagine she’d ever see—Renegade! How in the world? she wondered. The big ship was coming down from the north under a scrap of sail and already there were men gathering on the bow with a messenger line. It was just what Rascal had done to save Visser, and in just such a storm—minus the blood rain.
Renegade was rolling up the larger waves and moving fast in spite of carrying so little sail. The thing would have to be timed just r
ight and Beauty hoped they had a strong hand with the monkey fist. She was about to find out.
Jones stood calmly next to the helmsman as he guided the ship closer to the desperate Rascal. The schooner’s bow faced north and Avenger would be passing as closely as possible on her starboard side so the messenger line would be thrown into the middle of the ship. Renegade would need to quickly heave-to as the line was walked up the schooner’s deck to be tied off at the bow. Then Renegade could come out of stays and slowly take up the slack on the tow line. That was the plan, anyway.
In the event, the plan failed.
The monkey fist landed in the sea just short of Rascal and Jones was obliged to sail by and come about for a second approach closer to the dis-masted ship. After some anxious moments maneuvering to get closer, and closer still, the line was heaved again and landed at the startled Barclay’s feet and a crewman reacted quickly and gathered the messenger in and walked it forward to be tied off on the capstan at Rascal’s bow. Renegade immediately hove-to while her big hawser was then winched aboard Rascal, both ships dipping and rolling and falling down the steep seas. The whole process seemed to take an eternity, but once Jones saw everything was secure he ordered the ship out of stays and the helmsman to proceed west and slowly the frigate and her tow clawed their way towards the Strait of Gibraltar. Jones could see Fallon’s crew hacking at the rigging that was hanging over the side to free the ship from the enormous drag it created. They would be at it for some time.
Beauty ordered a detail to begin patching the giant hole in Rascal’s bows and within two hours they had done a fair job of keeping the water out. The carpenter sounded the well again and Beauty set the hands to pumping six feet of water back where it belonged.
Jones anxiously walked to the stern of his ship and looked back towards Rascal. The schooner was following like a disobedient puppy fighting its leash and trying to go its own way. He saw Beauty and thought he could see Aja but he couldn’t see Fallon.
As he stared into the brown air, he wondered why.
FIFTY-EIGHT
FALLON WASN’T GOING TO DIE, BUT HE WASN’T GOING TO BE HIS OLD alive self for a while. He’d lost so much blood his face and lips were pale, and Colquist immediately set to stitching the long cut closed. Fallon was in and out of consciousness and the laudanum helped keep him quiet.
He was the least of the medical problems below deck. Several of Rascal’s crewmen and Bisanz’s soldiers were fighting for their lives down there as surely as they had fought above decks. The cuts from scimitars were wicked, the curved swords sharpened as they were to a razor’s edge by patient janissaries quietly preparing for battle. The tub holding amputated limbs began to fill up.
Wilhelm and Caleb Visser came below to be with Fallon, who was gingerly placed in his cabin cot. They both looked at the man who, along with Aja, had risked his life to unite them. Wilhelm, overcome with emotion, held onto his son’s hand and wept.
After receiving a report from Little Eddy on Fallon’s condition, Beauty’s spirits rose and she began to see progress in getting the ship set to rights. A scrap of sail was rigged to the broken foremast and it gave the helmsman more steerage. The carpenter reported only three feet in the well, and no more water coming in. Relieved, Beauty ordered rum piped up and that one order cheered the men enormously. Barclay estimated the ship was making three knots and would likely make more once the well was pumped down even further.
The dead had been piled along the railings for burial as soon as possible and Beauty deemed it time. After a brief service sailor and soldier alike slid into the sea, stitched in canvass weighted by shot. Beauty said a Christian prayer over the dead janissaries and they, too went overboard. The battle had been a bloody business, and Beauty was doubly grateful to Colonel Bisanz for she knew in her bones the fight would have gone the other way without his men.
When at last she allowed herself to pause, Beauty wondered how in God’s name Renegade showed up when she did, out of the gloom, to come to their rescue. Beauty wasn’t one to look a gift horse in the mouth, but what the fuck was Jones doing in the Mediterranean anyway?
Jones stood on the stern of Renegade and watched the work being done on Rascal. She had a bit of sail up now and that had prevented her yawing this way and that. It had also taken some of the strain off the huge hawser that served as a tow line. The ship looked a wreck, and as he watched the bodies slide into the sea he wondered at the battle she’d fought and won. Victory had come at a terrible cost, as it usually did. Rascal had been lucky to survive.
But, of course, it wasn’t luck that Renegade had found her. Sir William had had a quiet word with Lord Keith after the meeting with Colonel Bisanz and, later that day, orders had arrived that set Renegade sailing towards the coast of North Africa. Lord Keith’s orders were necessarily vague, but they involved ranging as far as Algiers and looking into the harbor. Not close enough to provoke the Algerians, but close enough for a lookout to identify any British ships inside. It was left to Jones to use his discretion if Renegade was challenged.
Of course, the sirocco was a surprise, but Renegade was a well-found ship and could handle storms of that size. The wind was slowly dying off now, and the seas would eventually lay down. Jones fretted about Fallon’s absence on the deck and feared the worst. He had seen the burial service and wondered if his friend was among those who had slid into the sea.
It was almost two days later when Renegade and Rascal reached Gibraltar and let go their anchors in the shadow of the huge headland. The harbor was partially deserted as ships were slow to return after putting to sea during the sirocco, not wanting to be caught on a lee shore. The harbor itself was roughly thirty square miles and quite deep for much of its center—almost 1300 feet down at its deepest, though holding the bottom anywhere in the harbor in such a storm would worry any captain.
Beauty was surprised to see a flagship flying an admiral’s pennant at anchor. She wondered what it all meant: Renegade, the admiral, all that. But she was about to find out as she saw Renegade’s gig immediately lowered and Captain Jones climb down into it and the gig’s crew begin rowing feverishly towards Rascal.
Jones was met at the gangway by Beauty who, after thanking him profusely for saving Rascal, proclaimed Fallon alive but wounded from a slash down his belly and resting in his cabin. Jones immediately went below and encountered Aja with his broken arm in a sling coming up the companionway. After the briefest of greetings Jones continued to Fallon’s cabin and knocked softly. To his surprise, Fallon greeted him through clenched teeth, and Wilhelm and Caleb Visser backed out to leave these two friends alone.
“Now what have you done?” asked Jones with a forced smile to comfort Fallon. “I promised Admiral Davies that, if I crossed your hawse, I would look after you on behalf of Elinore and I seemed to have broken my word.”
“I must apologize, Samuel,” said Fallon gamely. “But if the cut had gone lower it might have indeed caused Elinore distress.”
At that Jones laughed and Fallon managed a smile.
“But why in God’s name are you here, Jones?” asked Fallon. “Beauty told me you came to our rescue during the height of the sirocco and I confess I couldn’t believe it. That was a very brave thing to do, Jones. We were in rather desperate shape after the battle with Serpent, I’m afraid. But surely you’re a bit far afield from Antigua?”
At that, the story of Jones’ orders to convey Sir William to Lord Keith came out and the subsequent taking of the prize and the meeting with Lord Keith and, later, Colonel Bisanz.
“Yes,” said Fallon. “Beauty told me about the colonel’s volunteers. They made all the difference against the janissaries. I’m afraid we lost some of them but, God, they were brave! But how did you come to find us, Jones?”
“It was Sir William having a talk with Lord Keith, I believe,” replied Jones. “Next thing I knew I had orders to approach Algiers and look into the harbor for you. But I found you rather sooner!”
With that Jones could s
ee that Fallon was growing tired and he bade to take his leave. Fallon did not object, for he had much information to digest and his eyes were growing heavy.
Jones was barely in his gig when he saw his number go up on Artemis’ yard. Lord Keith wanted to see him.
FIFTY-NINE
“I MUST SAY YOU ARE A VERY POOR PATIENT, NICO,” SAID BEAUTY. “Colquist tells me you are getting up and moving about against his expressed orders. He’s very afraid you will pop your stitches.”
It had been several days since Rascal had anchored and Beauty had seen Fallon’s condition improve significantly over that time, though he had no business getting up.
“Yes, he’s being a bit of a nanny,” said Fallon with a smile. “But I am feeling stronger and I’m quite bored out of my mind.”
“Well, perhaps this will relieve your boredom,” she said. “Lord Keith would like an audience with your highness. He sent word this morning and will come to you to talk.”
“What do you think that’s all about?” asked Fallon.
“You won’t have too long to wonder,” said Beauty with a grin. “Unless I’m mistaken I just heard his coxswain call out so the admiral’s gig must be alongside.”
Beauty left to thump up the companionway and welcome Lord Keith aboard. The work was going full tilt on deck to return Rascal to her usual condition but the masts were still out of her and would be until the yard sent word they were ready to swing two new ones aboard. But here was the famous Lord Keith coming through the channel.
“You must be Beauty McFarland, first mate on Rascal, I believe,” he said warmly. “I have heard wondrous things about you, not least your ability to charm crusty army officers into doing your bidding. But that is our secret and should stay in Gibraltar.”
Barbarians on an Ancient Sea Page 27