“You’re very plainly a fool, Messer Dragut,” was the weary answer. “Hang me, and you hang the only man in all your fleet who can show you the way out of this trap in which you’re taken.”
Dragut started between anger and amazement.
“Strike off my fetters, restore me my garments, and give me proper food, and I’ll discuss it with you.”
“You can show me a way out of this trap?” he cried. “What way may that be?”
Dragut glowered.
“We have a shorter way to make men speak,” said he.
Brancaleone smiled, and shook his head.
“You think so? I might prove you wrong.”
V
It was odd what a power of conviction dwelt in his languid tones. The corsair issued an order and turned away. A half-hour later Messer Brancaleone, nourished, washed and clothed, once more the elegant, willowy Italian in his doublet of sapphire velvet and in pleasantly variegated hose of blue and white, stepped on to the poop-deck where Dragut awaited him.
Seated cross-legged upon a gorgeous silken divan that was wrought in green and blue and gold, the handsome corsair combed his square black beard with fretful fingers. Behind him, stark naked save for his white loin-cloth, stood his gigantic Nubian, his body oiled until it shone like ebony, armed with a gleaming scimitar.
“Now, sir,” growled Dragut, “what is this precious plan of yours — briefly?”
“You begin where we should end,” said the imperturbable Genoese. “I owe you no favours, Messer Dragut, and I bear you no affection that I should make you a free gift of your life and liberty. My eyes have seen something to which yours are blind, and my wits have conceived something of which your own are quite incapable. These things, sir, are for sale. Ere I part with them we must agree on the price.”
Dragut pondered him from under scowling brows savagely. He could scarce believe that the world held so much impudence.
“And what price do you suggest?” he snarled, half-derisively, by way of humouring the Genoese.
“Why, as to that, since I offer you life and liberty, it is but natural that I should claim my own life and liberty in return, and similarly the liberty of Madonna Amelia and of my servants whom you captured; also, it is but natural that I should require the restoration of the money and jewels you have taken from us, and since you have deprived us of our felucca, it is no more than proper that you should equip us with a vessel in which to pursue the journey that you interrupted. Considering the time we have lost in consequence of this interruption, it is but just that you should make this good as far as possible by presenting me with a craft that is capable of the utmost speed. I will accept a galley of six-and-twenty oars, manned by a proper complement of slaves.”
“And is that all?” roared Dragut.
“No,” said Brancaleone quietly. “That is but the restitution due to me. We come now to the price of the service I am to render you. When you were Gianettino Doria’s prisoner, Barbarossa paid for you, as all the world knows, a ransom of three thousand ducats. I will be more reasonable.”
“Will you so?” snorted Dragut. “By the splendour of Allah, you’ll need to be!”
“I will accept one thousand ducats.”
“May Allah blot thee out, thou impudent son of shame!” cried the corsair, and he heaved himself up in a fury.
“You compel me to raise the price to fifteen hundred ducats,” said Brancaleone smoothly. “I must be compensated for abuse, since I cannot take satisfaction for it as between one honourable Christian gentleman and another.”
It was good for Dragut that his feelings suddenly soared to a pitch of intensity that defied expression, else might the price have been raised even beyond the figure of the famous ransom that Barbarossa had paid. Mutely he stood glowering, clenching and unclenching his sinewy hands. Then he half-turned to his Nubian swordsman.
“Ali—” he began, when Brancaleone once more cut in.
“Ah, wait,” said he. “I pray you calm yourself. Remember how you stand, and that Andrea Doria holds you trapped. Do nothing that will destroy your only chance. Time enough to bid Ali hack off my head when I have failed.”
That speech arrested Dragut’s anger in full flow. He wheeled upon the Genoese once more. “You accept that alternative?”
Brancaleone met his gaze blandly.
“Why not? I have no slightest fear of failure. I have said that I can show you how to win clear of this trap and make the admiral the laughing-stock of the world.”
“Speak, then,” cried Dragut, his fierce eyes kindling.
“If I do so before you have agreed my terms then I shall have nothing left to sell.”
Dragut turned aside and strode to the taffrail. He looked across the shimmering blue water to the fortifications at the harbour’s mouth; with the eyes of his imagination he looked beyond, at the fleet of Genoa riding out there in patient conviction that it held its prey. The price that Brancaleone asked was outrageous. A galley and some two hundred Christian slaves to row it, and fifteen hundred ducats! In all it amounted to more than the ransom that Kheyr-ed-Din Barbarossa had paid for him. Yet Dragut must pay it or count his destiny fulfilled. He came to reflect that he would pay it gladly enough to be out of this tight corner.
He came about again. He spoke of torture once more, but in a half-hearted sort of way; for he did not himself believe that it would be effective with a man of Brancaleone’s mettle.
VI
Brancaleone laughed at the threat and shrugged his shoulders.
“You may, as profitably hang me, Messer Dragut. Your infidel barbarities would quite as effectively seal my lips.”
“We might torture the woman,” said Dragut the ingenious.
On the words Brancaleone turned white to the lips; but it was the pallor of bitter, heart-searing resolve, not the pallor of such fear as Dragut had hoped to awaken. He advanced a step, his imperturbability all gone, and he spat his words into the face of the corsair with the fierceness of a cornered wildcat.
“Attempt it,” said he, “and as God’s my witness I leave you to your fate at the hands of Genoa — ay, though my heart should burst with the pain of my silence. I am a man, Messer Dragut — never doubt it.”
“I do not,” said Dragut convinced. “I agree to your terms. Show me a way out of Doria’s clutches, and you shall have all that you have asked for.”
Trembling still from his recent emotion, Brancaleone hoarsely bade the corsair to call up his officers and repeat his words before them.
“And you shall make oath upon this matter,” he added. “Men say of you that you are a faithful Moslem. I mean to put it to the test.”
Dragut, now all eagerness to know what plan was stirring in his prisoner’s brain, unable to brook further suspense in this affair, called up his officers, and before them all, taking Allah to witness, he made oath upon the beard of the Prophet, that if Brancaleone could show him deliverance, he, on his side, would recompense the Genoese to the extent demanded. Thereafter Dragut and Brancaleone went ashore with no other attendant but the Nubian swordsman. It was the Genoese who led the way, not towards the fort, as Dragut had expected, but in the opposite direction. Arrived at the northernmost curve of that almost circular lagoon, where the ground was swampy, Brancaleone paused. He pointed across a strip of shallow land, that was no more than a half-mile or so in width, to the blue-green sea beyond. Part of this territory was swampy, and part was sand; vegetation there was of the scantiest; some clumps of reeds, an odd date palm, its crest rustling faintly in the breeze, and nothing else.
“It is really very simple,” said the Italian. “Yonder lies your way.”
A red-legged stork rose from the edge of the marsh and went circling overhead. Dragut’s face empurpled with rage. He deemed that this smooth fellow dared to mock him.
“Are my galleys winged like that stork, thou fool?” he demanded passionately. “Or are they wheeled like chariots, that I can sail them over dry land?”
Br
ancaleone returned him a glance that was full of stupefaction.
“I protest,” said he, “that for a man of your reputation you fill me with amazement. I said you were a dull fellow. I little dreamed how dull. Nay, now, suppress your rage. Truth is a very healing draught, and you have need of it.
“I compute, now, that aboard your ships there will be, including slaves, some three thousand men. I doubt not you could press another thousand from the island into your service. How long, do you think, would it take four thousand men to dig a channel deep enough to float your shallow galleys through that strip of land?”
Dragut’s fierce eyes flickered as if he had been menaced with a blow.
“By Allah!” he ejaculated; and gripped his beard. “By Allah!”
“In a week the thing were easily done, and meanwhile your fort there will hold the admiral in play. Then, one dark night, you slip through this canal and stand away to the south, so that by sunrise you shall have vanished beyond the skyline, leaving the admiral to guard an empty trap.”
Dragut laughed aloud now in almost childish glee, and otherwise signified his delight by the vehemence with which he testified to the unity of Allah. Suddenly he checked. His eyes narrowed as they rested upon Brancaleone.
“’Tis a scurvy trick you play your lady’s grandsire!” said he.
The Genoese shrugged.
“Every man for himself, Messer Dragut. We understand each other, I think. ’Tis not for love of you that I do this thing.”
“I would it were,” said the corsair, with in odd sincerity. And as they returned to the galleys it was observed that Dragut’s arm was about the shoulders of the infidel, and that he spoke with him as with a brother.
VII
The fact is that Dragut, fired with admiration of Brancaleone’s resourcefulness, deplored that so fine a spirit should of necessity be destined to go down to the Pit. He spoke to him now of the glories of Islam, and of the future that must await a gentleman of Brancaleone’s endowments in the ranks of the Faithful. But this was a matter in which Brancaleone proved politely obdurate, and Dragut had not the time to devote to his conversion, greatly as he desired it. There was the matter of that canal to engage him.
The Italian’s instructions were diligently carried out. Daily the fort at the Boca de Cantara would belch forth shot at the Genoese navy, which stood well out of range. To the admiral this was but the barking of a dog that dared not come within biting distance; and the waste of ammunition roused his scorn of that pirate Dragut whom he held at his mercy.
There came a day, however, when the fort was silent; it was followed by another day of silence, in the evening of which one of the admiral’s officers suggested that all might not be well. Doria agreed, laughing heartily in his long white beard.
“All is not at all well with that dog Dragut,” said he. “He wants us within range of his guns. The ruse is childish.”
And so the Genoese fleet continued well out of range of the empty fort, what time Dragut himself was some scores of miles away, speeding for the Archipelago and the safety of the Dardanelles as fast as his slaves could row.
In the words of the Spanish historian Marmol, who has chronicled the event, Dragut had left Messer Andrea Doria “with the dog to hold.”
Brancaleone accompanied the Moslem fleet at first, though now aboard the galley which Dragut had given him in accordance with their agreement. And with the Genoese sailed the lovely Amelia Francesca Doria, his chest of gold, the jewels, and the fifteen hundred ducats that Dragut — grimly stifling his reluctance — had paid him. On the second day after leaving Jerbah, Messer Brancaleone and the corsair captain parted company, with mutual expressions of goodwill, and the Genoese put about and steered a north-westerly course for the coast of Spain.
It was some months ere Dragut learnt the true inwardness of Messer Brancaleone’s conduct. He had the story from a Genoese captive, the captain of a carack which the corsair scuttled in the Straits of Messina. This fellow’s name, too, was Brancaleone, upon learning which Dragut asked him was he kin to one Ottavio Brancaleone, who had gone to Spain with the admiral’s grand-daughter.
“He was my cousin,” the man answered.
And Dragut now learnt that in the teeth of the opposition of the entire Doria family the irrepressible Brancaleone had carried off Madonna Amelia. The admiral had news of it as he was putting to sea, and it was in pursuit not only of Dragut, but also of the runaways, that he had gone south as far as Jerbah, having reason to more than suspect that they were aboard one of Dragut’s galleys. The admiral had sworn to hang Brancaleone from his yardarm ere he returned to port, and his bitterness at the trick Dragut had played was increased by the circumstance that Brancaleone, too, had got clear away.
Dragut was very thoughtful when he heard that story.
“And to think,” said he afterwards to Othmani, “that I paid that unconscionable dog fifteen hundred ducats, and gave him my best galley manned by two hundred Christian slaves that he might render himself as great a service as ever he rendered me!”
But he bore no malice. After all, the Genoese had behaved generously in that he had left Dragut — though not from motives of generosity — the entire glory of the exploit. Dragut’s admiration for the impudent fellow was, if anything, increased. Was he not, after all, the only Christian who had ever bested Dragut in a bargain? If he had a regret it was that so shrewd a spirit should abide in the body of an infidel. But Allah is all-knowing.
IN DESTINY’S CLUTCH (1921)
Chapter I: Corsair of the Seas
Ordinarily Dragut-Reis — who was dubbed by the Faithful “The Drawn Sword of Islam” — loved Christians as the fox loves geese. But in that fateful summer of 1550 his feelings toward them acquired a far deeper malignancy; they developed into a direct and personal hatred that for intensity was second only to the hatred which the Christians bore Dragut. The allied Christian forces under the direction of their emperor had smoked him out of his stronghold at Mehedia; they had seized that splendid city and were in the act of razing it to the ground as the neighboring Carthage had been razed of old.
Dragut reckoned up his losses with a gloomy and vengeful mind. He had lost his city, and from the eminence of a budding Basha in the act of founding a kingdom and perhaps a dynasty, he had been cast down once more to be a wanderer upon the seas. He had lost three thousand men, and among them the very flower of his redoubtable corsairs; he had lost some twelve thousand Christian slaves, the fruit of many a desperate raid; he had lost his lieutenant and nephew Hisar, who was even now a captive in the hands of his inveterate enemy, Andrea Doria. All this had he lost, and he was naturally embittered.
Yet Dragut was not the man to waste his days in brooding over what was done. Yesterday and today are but pledges in the hands of destiny. He returned thanks to Allah the Compassionate, the So-Merciful, that he was still alive and free upon the seas with three galleases, twelve galleys, and five brigantines, wherewith to set about making good his losses, and he bent his energetic, resourceful knavish mind to the matter of ways and means.
Meanwhile he had been warned by the Sultan of Constantinople that the Emperor Charles, not content with the mischief he had already done him, had, in letters to the Grand Signior, avowed his intent to pursue to the death “the pirate Dragut, a corsair odious to both God and man.” He knew, moreover, that the emperor had intrusted this task to the greatest seaman of the day, to the terrible admiral of Genoa, Andrea Doria, and the Genoese was already at sea upon his quest.
Now once already had Dragut been captured by the navy of Genoa, and for four years, which he cared but little to remember, he had toiled at an oar on board the galley of Giannetino Doria, the admiral’s nephew. He had known exposure to cold and heat; he had been broiled by the sun and frozen by the rain; he had known aching muscles, hunger, and thirst, and the sores begotten of the oarsman’s bench, and his shoulders were still a crisscross of scars where the bos’n’s whip had lashed him to revive his flagging energi
es.
All this had he known, and he was not minded to renew the acquaintance. It behooved him therefore to make ready fittingly to receive the admiral when he should appear. And by way of replenishing his coffers at once, venting a little of his vengeful heat, and marking his contempt for Christian pursuers, he had made a sudden swoop upon the southwestern coast of Sicily.
Beginning at Gergenti, Dragut carried his raid as far north as Marsala, leaving ruin and desolation behind him. At the end of a week he stood off to sea again, with the spoils of six townships and some three thousand picked captives of both sexes. He would teach the infidel Christian emperor to allude to him as “the pirate Dragut, a corsair odious to both God and man” — he would so, by the beard of the Prophet!
He put the captives aboard one of the galleys in charge of his lieutenant, Othmani, and dispatched them straight to Algeria to be sold there in the slave market. With the proceeds Othmani was to lay down fresh keels. Until these should be ready to reenforce his little fleet, Dragut judged it well to avoid encounters with the Genoese admiral, and with this intent he steered a southward course along the coast toward Tripoli.
Toward evening of the day on which Othmani’s galley set out alone for Algiers, a fresh breeze sprang up from the north, and blew into the corsair’s range of vision a tiny brown-sailed felucca as it might have blown a leaf of autumn. It was hawk-eyed Dragut himself, who, lounging on the high deck of his galley, first sighted this tiny craft.
He pointed it out to Biretta, the renegade Calabrian gunner who was near him. “In the name of Allah,” quoth Dragut, “what walnut shell is this that comes so furiously after us?”
Biretta, a massive, sallow fellow, laughed.
“The fury is not hers, but of the wind,” said he.
“She goes where’er it bloweth her. She’ll be an Italian craft.”
“Then the wind that blows her is the wind of destiny. Haply she’ll have news of Italy.” Dragut turned on his heel, and gave an order to a turbaned officer on the gangway below.
Collected Works of Rafael Sabatini Page 475